Yossarain For Peace

New Life..New Beginnings

2011-12-16T07:28:00.001+05:30

The other titles I had in mind are

Search has Ended
Love of My Life...At Peace..
Hitched ..And In Ishtyle..
Sandwiched..
Online Shootings..A Hit!

Well, forget the last one. It doesn't make sense to me either. If you are smart enough and have been keen enough and if you have known me enough over the last few weeks or know me through someone who has known me through last few weeks, it would be no surprise to what I am hinting at.

Yes,finally its happening. All those filmy targets that I set for myself, all those fiery feelings of 'If I am getting married, I will only marry someone whom I have fallen in love with' or 'My marriage is only going to be via register marriage' or 'What's the hurry with marriage? Let me just chillax and get married around 27 , 28' are swept off my feet. I have now reconciled to the fact that love just happens, you don't plan for it, you don't wait for it, and you have absolutely no control over the nature of things.

The Beginnings -

Anup and I just came back from some movie and got into the only remaining opened decent restaurant in Madhapur - Shanghai Chef. This is a point to be noted as everything nice is fast disappearing and we found ourselves racking our brains to find restaurants in and around Madhapur other than KKD or Shanghai Chef. That's beside the point. While we were waiting for the food to arrive, I keyed in the profile number that nanna had messaged me and waited to see the results. I liked her at the first sight and started seeing few more snaps. I had already been briefed by mom and dad that the shooting would happen not in a regular set-up but at a some designated place where it be more casual. They also did prod me to call someone and take with me to meet her. With all that in my mind, I was quite interested to meet her.

Over the next few days the place and meeting details were getting fixed. Nanna had told me that her father would be calling me and fixing up the place and time around Saturday and asked if I was free. I told him I would be going to office and anytime should do. Saturday came and I was happily watching 'Rockstar' when the call came. I took the call and told him I was in a movie and would be calling during the break. It set me to thinking what if he is gonna call my dad and tell about how I was at movie when I first called rather than at office that my father must have conveyed. This would then percolate to they perceiving me not being truthful and cancelling out my meeting. Crazy eh? Mind is such a crazy thing when its not under our control. Luckily for me, nothing of that sort had happened.

The Meet -

It was decided that it was gonna be meeting at Chutneys, Banjara Hills, 4:30 P.M. Even though this was all an informal set up I was nervous like hell, I phoned my mom and dad and told them I would be going to meet her. They were quite busy with their work and wished me luck and let them know. I was expecting a little more reaction than that but I realized I was making this out to be more than it actually was. I phoned Anup to decide if kurtha is a better choice. He said a big NO and asked me to go on with a T-Shirt and jeans. With wardrobe in place, sun glasses, I set out for the restaurant. As I was about to get in after parking the bike I saw her getting into the restaurant along with her father. I thought to myself it would have been better if it was only her. To my luck as our first introductions got over, I got to know he had come only for dropping her.

We got a seat near one corner. Looking at her nearby I could see her smile more clearly and it was much better than what was in the photos. We started off with usual questions about each other bio data of what was in the profile, what was not in the profile, our college times and I was more curious to know about her singing capabilities. Just as the mood was about to set in, I got a call from Deepak. Not wanting to sound rude and knowing some problems at stake, I picked up the call wanting it to cut short.

5 minutes passed and I was sitting there still talking, silently gesturing a sorry to her and continued hearing. It went on little more, so I took her leave, and went away from the table to talk. It was then I realized being a highly dependent candidate is both boon and a bane.The module that was hitting on, noone else knew about it and he was calmly asking me to explain in clear words all the flow! I wrapped up the discussion as fast as I can and told him I would get in touch with him in another 2 hours.

I went back to the seat and apologized profuesly and also told her about the importance of the call. We then talked a little more about food preferences, outings, the idea of marriage, what our expectations are.Meantime, we also ordered a plate of idli each as I had a late lunch. She also seemed impressed that I had actually cooked upma. I sensed I could connect with her as the talks went on. She seemed cool, smart, trendy (she wore a gorgeous dress that day :)) and affectionate. What I loved the most is her passion for music which she has been doing regularly for over 7 years after office/college, her sweet smile and effortless talking, her interests in telugu movies. We decided to call it a day and move on as it was over 30 minutes since we finished our idlis and she was afraid they might shoo us forcibly. It would have been wonderful had it ended there with just enough moments on a first date/shoot/whatever, it didn't

"Sir, Bill"

This has got to go down as the one of the most embarrasing episodes of my life. At the time of the bill, I saw that I had hardly any cash left excepting some 80 bucks and it seemed card wasn't accepted with bill being only 120. She took the cue and paid for it. It was really complicated back story to why I couldn't draw money but (my PIN wasn't working) and I was living on borrow and carry cash policy. Unfortunately the renewal didn't happen in this case. What a Timing I tell ya! I hoped she understood and I gave her a weak smile. The bill was paid and I also offered her to drop her home just to compensate for the bill payment but she refused and went off.

Everything went good and I needed some time to think, this is what I have told my parents. What happened next ...wait and watch..

My friends this post ends here now with a follow up coming and 'Sir, Bill' story is going to repeat and haunt me for days to come. No complaints though.. :)

Life So Far..Random Ramblings

2011-11-06T13:37:00.001+05:30

Every day I am so full of thoughts I just wish I had Siri to note them down for me.

*Siri. What an ingenious beauty Steve has left us with. An intelligent voice response system with which you can send message, do dictation, pick calls, check restaurants, get directions, make to-do lists, set up alarm so on and on. Its endless capabilities are mind numbing. Of course the directions and restaurants thingy is only in US of A. I spent some considerable amount of time pouring through the great things that this is capable of doing and the praise for it is universal. Period. Chitti was telling me the other day when we met that speech recognition softwares usually get almost 50% of them right but Siri stands at 75 percent. That's astonishing. I just want to own the darn thing. Last checked - 16 GB unlocked stands at 31K. Not bad at all.

*When has the browsers stopped becoming news? Just checked today Firefox has newest version with 7.x, Chrome - 15.x, Opera - 11.3. I am surprised no tech blog is covering it be it Mashable, GigaOm, AllthingsD. Maybe the news of browsers have lost the fizz and people don't care about it anymore. As far as my personal favorite goes its Chrome, through and through. I do miss the nifty little feature of Firefox CoolPreview plug-in though.

* I am becoming a terrible sleeper. The last four days I have been sleeping around 3,4, or 5 sometimes and getting up as early as 7 or 9. I am sure some bits of such pattern is responsible for my laziness and lethargic feeling I get every now and then.

* These late nights have first started off with watching 'LOST' or 'Heroes'. Last week though I haven't been seeing them at all. Strangely though I haven't been able to watch the movies that I have downloaded and kept. I have around 10 movies 'yet to see' and the one that tops the list is 'I saw the Devil' a thriller from Korea that's supposed to chill your spine quite literally.

* With lot of gusto I started my morning walks last week. I got up around 6:30, dressed my self and set out to walk up till Hitech city. It took me just 15 minutes of brisk walk one way. Felt refreshed and powered. But then Diwali came up, adding to a holiday and then pattern broke up. I hope to continue from tomorrow. Fingers crossed.

* Of late I have been talking some things that I shouldn't be talking about in the first place. Talking about people on their back feels so terribly wrong and upsetting. I need to make sure I keep my mouth shut and not to crib about people. Its just not worth a conversation. Everyone has something positive to take.

* I got caught lying other day when I told someone that I have checked their website but I didn't. The other person found out as I told what I assumed would be on the site. That's the first time it struck me small inconsequential things like that, there is no point in lying. Just tell the truth, that you didn't and be done with that.

* Saw this wonderful thing the other day in bus. As the bus arrived, all the people at the stop got in and there were two girls left standing. Within few minutes, two guys got up and offered their seats. They then got down the next stop to take the next company bus. Women are wonderful beings and they need to be respected. It felt so great seeing that not all have forgotten about manners.

* Talking about bus, every time I start to get down the steps of the bus once it reaches the office, at last step in the foot board I hear this resound thump with every foot stepping on it as people leave. Thup. Thup. Thup. It reminds me of scene in 'August Rush' where the kid hears every single sound that is made naturally or unnaturally. Love that feeling.

* Did kichdi today after a long time after facing many ill omens as if nature is acting against my will to let me cook. I got up today around 9, saw that there ain't potatoes or peas to do my version of green kichdi.
So got my purse and wen to IDBI to draw the money. Says no cash. Then I crossed the road, went to the ICICI, said wrong pin. Deja Vu. I already lost my pin twice, didn't want to screw up again and wait another 15 days for new one. I put my card in again, punched each number carefully one by one. It worked. So got the money, went to Shilpa market and bought peas. There wan't alu. Just as I came up I saw that rice in the packet was minimal. Went down again to super market brought the rice. I cleaned the rice, got the mixture and just as I was about to light up the stove, the matchsticks didn't respond! One strike,two strike, matchbox out. I was in no mood to go down and buy matchsticks. Just as I though there is some mystical being watching me and having fun in seeing to it that I can't stick to my game plan, there it was hidden in some corner of the racks a small matchbox full of sticks.

* Shocker of all the things - I have just finished seeing back to back two awful movies - Beastly and Blue Valentine. Beastly - a modern retake of the the classic 'Beauty and the Beast' with a modern twist. It dragged on midway and then it got predictable. Had some nice intimate moments though. Blue Valentine was outright pathetic. It's such a crappy film about two people's lives alternating between their current constant fights and irritations with each other to the initial romance when they hit upon. Neither of them was appealing and it had hellava skin show which wasn't appealing either. Just when I want to get back to the days of enjoying some really nice off beat movies I end up with this duds. Next on the list are - Cedar Rapids, and 'I saw the Devil'. Hell yeah!

*Have been stuck with the book 'Tigers wife' for what seems like eternity. Need to get over it and get to 'The Glass House'. The book is terrible but again I hate leaving books unfinished.

Started off the posts with points 1,2,3 but then things started popping random. Stuck with stars.

Online Shootings - Status Call

2011-10-02T23:00:00.000+05:30

As expected, my interest has dwindled considerably. There has been so much pressure at office that I am exhausted thoroughly. There hasn't been any mirch masala action so far excepting seeing some snaps of the prospects that my dad kept sending. I haven't liked them much. I have been in touch with Sravani though through occasional chats. I am getting to know about her interests, likes, her daily routine and then there came work and its almost a week to try and get back on track.

Random Rants of the day

2011-09-26T22:24:00.000+05:30

Yesterday I had decided that I was gonna work only for 8:30 to 6:00 come what may as I saw no point working 12 hours per day. On top of that I want to do my own homework after I get back after proper relaxing. Anyways, it didn't happen and I am really surprised to see my lead tell me "why are trying to rush like a girl?". I need to start setting some protocol upfront and tell him straight things aren't going to work if I am pressurized.

I should also start cutting down on lot of relaxation time especially the time when we enter the office in the morning and the time it takes to settle down and do the tasks. Added to that there is a snack break which is totally avoidable. Let me see if I can start tuning myself to the timings I set for myself.

I read 'Frozen Thoughts' today and I loved the concept of incremental progress and start doing anything any day by treating every day as a new beginning. So here I am today about to read MDX for an hour before hitting the bed.

Turned 5

2011-09-25T22:57:00.002+05:30

Today I complete my 5 years experience. Recollecting the post I had written quite long time back about the expectations and the pressures around, its starting to show the effects now. I have gained tremendous insights and had a great exposure in Paris, meeting different people, holding meetings, getting client rapport. Its been a great smooth ride so far. Appraisals this year around put me in the third place. I was little hurt as I believe I deserved a better rating for all the amount of hard work I had put in and the client appreciation I have received. Talking to Chandan on the same day I have got some rationale behind the concept. From management perspective they need to do justice for all and since I had been given an onsite opportunity, it was compensated in this manner. This is what I have gathered from good many people. I can't do anything either excepting that I believe I need to put in lot more effort for the upcoming year to have a speedy scale.

Turning 5

Coming to the matters at hand, I am not really happy with the way things are and it's high time I pick myself up and start taking my life and career seriously. I have always wanted to learn and master the SQL Server Analysis Services, that aspect of SQL server which deals with real intelligence. I am so looking forward to the next 2 weeks when things will heat up considerably and then we are forced to learn and master the technology to be able to meet the deliverable in this new heavy duty project release.One disturbing thing though is that I am being forced to work on SSIS and SQL big time as all our effort is still focused on the first stage of our data transfer that purely deals with this aspect. To make the matters worse, Chandan currently roped in on to our project is going to handle the aspects. I am happy that it helps the overall progress of the project but it bothers me a lot when not being in a position to take up the role myself.

Anyways its just a matter of time now when things will heat considerably and I will be treading on the SSAS once and for all. The larger picture of course is that I need to make myself as strongly proficient as possible and become self independent and to able to master and command all the aspects of SQL Server BI stack. This includes extensive reporting, cube building and MDX querying.

Deviating a little here, I absolutely hate the discussing the topic of salaries or colloquially speaking, remuneration with my colleagues or with anyone for that matter. With my close buddies, especially banda, hari, mote, venky, chitti it feels ok to tell. Again I only them if they ask and never ask in return. For me, what matters the most is my job and how I deal with it. There is one stand out here though - Venky (SwamiNaidu). More than just hearing and occasionally jabbing fun of my incremental progress as others do, this guy just rips the heart out with his candid assessment and makes you feel like a imbecile and stupid. Any other person I wouldn't bother but with this guy it feels like a wake-up call. He tells me on the face of it (over the phone) that I am doing worse than most people among my fellow class mates.

With marriage on the cards, this becomes even more relevant and if I don't do something, I might become just contended with the life and take it as it goes. Without taking names, I indeed feel really low and in the heart of hearts I want to really go out and get into the best leagues out there. I remember during my first shift I was desperately searching for a break and Accenture proved to be the only best thing I could hold on to. Of course, MS plans were also partly responsible. Now the reality is different, and this time around I wan to be the guy calling the shots, with at least 4 to 5 offers in hand and to chose and decide what I want to be in. For this to happen, among many things, I need to get focus and concentration, the kind of passionate learning I was doing during my initial stint at Satyam.

Turning 5 indeed has now hit this point hard and hope to achieve the great heights in future both for my life and my to-be wife.

Choosing a choice - Darn difficult

2011-09-24T17:43:00.002+05:30

Somehow yesterday I just got to thinking about few things that where we need to make a constant upgrades and it ain't easy at all. Here is how they go -

Facebook Profile Pic-

Facebook has so become ubiquitous that it has now become a common practice for everyone to conciously smile and always lookout for that profile pic. It's a huge thing amongst all the folks. Getting that right facebook pic is like a million dollar thing. I have observed this when I was roaming around countries. People literally shriek "Yeah! Got my facebook pic". Once you get it, you then start eagerly looking forward to comments and stuff. Needless to say I fall into this category. Its been ages since I updated my pic but I don't see any good ones yet, so I will let it pass.

Wallpaper-

This is the toughest of all. Ask around any geek folks you will find that the most difficult task of the week is to get a right wallpaper.One keeps searching for that elusive wallpaper that you want to get noticed by at least 2 or more people. This is more to impress others than having something that looks good and again this is the most sought after by Indians. If you start searching google the top most would be santa banta.and the wallpapers there suck big time. I am guy who loves wallpapers of animie or animation or movie wallpapers and they are darn hard to find. Relentless search for one stop solution for my next best thing literally takes up weeks sometimes and now I have a permanent solution for it - wallbace.cc. This is THE greatest wallpaper site ever much better than the other chincese sounding wall paper site.

Ringtone/Callertune-

Both are difficult choices. I can't believe myself that I have had this ringtone of 'Ninne Pelladutha' for almost a year now. Before that I had the tune for 'Manasa' of Munna movie. I would love to keep one classical sounding music -calm, non disturbing and soothe full to hear.

Well, frankly when I started off I had so many things to write but the week itself was very hectic, so right now I am just wrapping it. Would definitely write a sequel to this.

Online Shooting - A month Later!

2011-09-12T07:34:00.000+05:30

Funny how time passes so quickly. It's been a month now since I first started searching for my soul mate, my would be, my should be or my love. So the much awaited "shootings" didn't happen as somehow the Rajhmundry party were not ready for the shooting yet. Sad I just thought I can bank on this first experience to gain in-depth knowledge on what exactly happens in a shooting.

Anyways there are 2 more prospects that are actually offline that my dad has shortlisted. One by the name Sruti and the other girl who Mohan Rao Tatha knows but are just waiting for the nakshatra match. Quite suddenly yesterday I got a 'Express Interest' from Sravani in Shaadi.com with all the favorable conditions both to my parents and myself. Looks cheerful, sporty, trendy, and one with modern outlook. Currently as per what she said in the profile, she is at US on onsite deputation and is expected anytime soon. She is smart enough to keep her full name with which one can find her easily on Facebook. That gets me to thinking it wouldn't be such a bad idea to keep mine too. I am now very excited and curious on how to go about now. Should I or should I not become a premium? I am in the same quandary as before. I think she also has kept her profile very recently. Let me have round 2 talks with my folks and based on that I will proceed.

And yes, it turns out I gotta kuja dosham because of timing of birth. Tough luck now with all the mindless people zeroing on that aspect. That's about it.

Mom's Pleasant Surprise - True Lies

2011-09-10T14:14:00.001+05:30

Mom had me completely flummoxed with her ingenious act today and I would remember this for long long time to come. Early this week my parents had called me up and asked me to come to Guntur for weekend for my first debut (the details of which will come soon). Keeping mote's points in view I agreed as food is a major weakness for me. Since mom is staying at Guntur while dad is in Eluru it was decided that both mom and I are going to come to Eluru. Mom, a highly devoted worker, was very much reluctant to take leave on Saturday and top of that Saturday being only half a day, there was no point in taking a holiday.

She told me that she would be coming by Saturday evening. On Friday with all the packing done, I first phoned dad to find out if mom had taken the laptop away to Guntur as I was planning to do some work on it. He said no and that the laptop is still there. I then asked him about what he had for dinner and which movie was coming on t.v. It seems that he had a nice pizza with veg puff for accompaniments and he also told me that he was watching 'True Lies' and then we cut the call.

After 15 minutes I got a call from my mom. As I was really busy packing my stuff I didn't have time to pick up the call and only phoned her after reaching to the pick-up point near Keshav Reddy sweets. I told her about the huge baggage of clothes that I was bringing and also told her that as planned we would be picking her up on her journey mid way back to Eluru at Vijayawada to have a nice wholesome lunch. I again talked to her for 10 more minutes asking her about the dinner plans and what she was doing. She also told me that she was watching 'True Lies'. I immediately quipped "Arre nanna kuda ade chustunnadanta. Manchi movie maa" and I cut the call and told her that I would give a message once the bus starts.

Time moved on, I went from Madhapur to Nampally, pickup point where there is another 1 hour waiting time. During this time nanna called and asked me about where I was and I told him it doesn't look like bus is gonna come anytime soon. He in his usual tones blasted all the private road transport folks for harrassing people and then told me to give him a call once he reaches and he would tell the directions to take by auto. Got in the bus, enjoyed the movie, came to Eluru, got down, came home and cow-a-bunga! - Mom was already Home! Awesome mom! I gave her a tight hug and told her this was one of the best moments I would cherish. Even though it wouldn't have mattered waiting till 5 but I always wished she to be there to spend my 2 whole days. THE best surprise indeed. Now I know the WHOLE meaning of 'True Lies'.

Big cheers to my mom and dad for playing his role well!

Fun with Movies on Volvos!

2011-09-10T13:18:00.000+05:30

Yesterday I was on the bus from Hyderabad to Eluru. Unlike the regular buses that start as expected and land at the destination as expected these buses are one hellava exception. They first take you from Madhapur to a pick-up point and then your waiting starts. I had waited almost hour and a half. Quite Irritating.

Much before net on the phone, I always used to spend my time reading some novel. They just whisk away the time and make you wonder if there was any waiting at all. Now I have altogether interesting way to do the same by reading the blog posts via the fantastic Google Reader app. Of late I am not having the time I need to read the blogs at office, hence the unread count keeps going on and at certain point you lose it. I can't remember when was the last time I was updated with Mashable/GigaOm posts. If I see any of my friends posts I would of course read it then and there and the same applies to some rare and best blog that I folllow especially Jabberwocky. There I was flicking through the Likaeable Bloggers category and reading all the new ones. I loved reading the one on Sports and one with Xena. So cute.

Once on the bus my thoughts were focused on the movie that was being played. Getting very impatient with the guy blocking my way in the middle who couldn't figure out his seat number and kept asking the driver (emandi seat number 44 ekkadandi?). It was right at the end. I pushed him aside, got my window seat and then got immense unbelievable satisfaction of watching the T.V. on a volvo. It was Allari Naresh movie and good fun too. It looked recent and I was little sad that the movie was in its second half. I unconditionally love all the journeys in the Volvo's for the sole purpose of watching a movie in it. I get so pissed off during those rides when I find that for some mechanical/electrical trouble, movie becomes unavailable. There is something about the journey and luxury of watching a movie alongside that makes the ride so very comfortable. Has anyone felt that? Of course that's not to say every movie they keep is a blockbuster but most of it, even though I might have seen it before, I still enjoy it. I think that's one of the great things here in India. Back at Europe when I was touring between the countries those buses lacked this basic commodity. I used to pity them a lot for missing this out but again they had WC fitted in the bus. That's something we need to catch on. Anyways if I haven't been clear enough so far, I LOVE volvo bus rides with movie in them.

Mom's Action Points and tasks ahead

2011-09-10T13:16:00.003+05:30

One of the things about my mom and to lesser extend my dad is that they have certain things to tell and they want it done exactly that way, right away. Mom had two major gripes about me and she has her own way of telling it - like repeating it at least minimum 5 times. In those 5 times the tone first starts patronizingly, and then slowly picks up the speed and at the end I become a useless creature unable to maintain my daily life. Such it goes. I don't know, why don't they just stop with saying it once and hearing my response out. Nope, the show has to go on and you just can't do anything but listen.

First item on the menu is the maid's money.
How in the world are we agreeing to pay 800 bucks just for cleaning the house, cleaning the utensils (which again I hardly cook, or don't cook at all according to them). Instead why can't we just pay 200 more and get our clothes washed by her? Unnecessarily I am just wastng away money. Frankly I am also not sure if we are paying high/low as I remember back when I was with Nikmo it was somewhere around the same price. Also, did I even think about asking around how much others are giving? It is certain that I am paying exorbitant price just for nothing.
Action Point - Fire the maid, ask around for cheaper options, or pay more and get additional work done (see point below)

Next up is Washing Machine.
Why didn't I get my stupid washing machine fixed even though its been one week since I moved? Why don't I get a plumber and get it fixed rather than watch a stupid movie on Saturday? (Just to be clear here my movie was in the evening and I don't know how these two link up). I am therefore utterly lazy and just don't care about the basic necessities of living. If you haven't figured out yet this and the one above together form a single point. Just for sake of clarity I am splitting into 2 pieces. The wholesome conclusion is that I either fix the machine soon or give little more money and get it done by the maid.
Action Point - Get the machine fixed.

Next is my hair. I have a huge dandruff problem.
Among umpteen ways to tackle it the best way according to my mom is rubbing lemon on my scalp on a daily basis. For some days I did and then I became lazy as I prefer to shampooing every day. When peddiah and peddama had come recently to Hyderabad they suggested some shampoo that they say is highly effective. Being the lazy person I am I didn't note it down which never went unnoticed by mom. This came to the surface again and then she tells me I have completely stopped caring about you. Why should I tell you? It's your problem and you should have written it down. I don't know what will happen of you. That small hair you have also will disappear soon and no one will marry you. Of course the last bit was in slightly humorous tone.
Action Point- As Indrani atha suggested to me I would consult a hair specialist as it is a problem within that cannot be cured by external shampoos or conditioners or whatever. It needs to be attacked on the source. When/Where? yet to be sorted out.

Lastly its the bed.
Suddenly when I am moving all my stuff out of I realized I didn't have a bed to sleep on in the new room This was on Monday and I definitely knew I had no choice but to borrow a bed from there temperorirly till the week ends. The first weekend though whisked away as I spent time getting things needed for the house like mugs, buckets, chair, shampoo, heater rod, etc. Also that was just one weekend where I spent my self fully occupied by going to Aliens Space Station and in the evening to a movie. I wanted to postpone this event to the next week. Only this week I am here in Eluru. Mom is understandably livid with fury as I didn't have the decency to buy new one and return back the old one soon. How did I not think that Avva's house would require beds and Avva would get tensed arranging the beds? Good point actually. As you grow old and knowing my Avva fully, if the guests start pouring in, which is expected sometime soon this month, she would want to arrange beds, linen and everything. With one bed missing she will get upset and starts getting cranky. That effect is seen on Amma and in turn on me.
Action Point- Go to Kurl-on and buy the bed as soon as I can along with a cot.

Well..that's for now and lot more to come. Man, I enjoy having it written so that I can know where I stand in all these.

Masala Dosa maane Red Chutney is a must

2011-09-08T07:09:00.001+05:30

After years and years of having Masala Dosa it is an unwritten rule that when you ask for Masala Dosa its not just the aalu that one should keep inside but also the red chutney made from onions. That's how it always has been in any tiffin center across Andhra for good number of years. This was one of major gripe when I was at Bangalore.

Sadly this is how it has become now in some of the tiffin centers here too. I really hate seeing Masala Dosa without red chutney spread in it. Period.

Online Shooting - Lost Opportunity

2011-09-07T07:34:00.001+05:30

The girl who had accepted my interest the day before rejected me today. I guess she was waiting for the response and as it turns out another major fight had occurred between my dad regarding how in the world did I express interest without consulting them. I hate to say this but my dad is fully into the community thing. He feels the culture and the caste of a person is everything.

First I phoned mom and told her about this. She said go ahead, pay and talk to her. I then phoned dad and that's when the whole fight began. He also told me to wait for sometime from my end in the search process. We have now made a rule that I will not express any interest till they see and they say that it is okay to express my interest.

So yesterday night I sent the sms about my details to my dad and I don't know still what's the response for it. Today I logged in and see that girl has now declined my interest ( :( ). I feel really terrible now. I should have gone ahead and paid and phoned her.

Even now I can pay and give her a ring and find out about her. Something is holding me back. Anyways the search goes on. I can now foresee major fights ahead with my dad as I know that the only check they are ready to do is the caste and nothing else. I have decided that I will go through this process of first short-listing, sending them mail, wait for their approval, phone and fight about validating the disapproval two times max. After that I will entirely stop online thing and just go with what they say even though it might take LOT of time.

Again going back to the profile her partner preferences only reads for Sr. Managers, VP, Team Leads, from India, US, UK. Maybe she had accepted me by mistake or maybe she realized something wrong with my profile. Am I being stupid? I don't know, its all so confusing.

Online Shooting - May Day! May Day! Got a Hit!

2011-09-06T06:45:00.001+05:30

Finally after almost 30 rejections in 4 sites (yes, my counter need to be updated) I have got a hit yesterday from a beautiful and smart girl in Bangalore. She is of age 26 and working as an Architect and interestingly she was one of those persons who had in the partner preference with mother tongue as Kannada. Aaduvari matalaku arthale verule anna pata loni satyam ippudu bayataku vastundi.

Anyways the flip side is both of us turns out to be Free Members. So all we can really do is just see the name and nothing else. I need to become a Premium member and that's where I am now little hesitant. It costs me about 5k for 6 months visibility which gives me the provision to send messages, chat with the fellow members, get profile highlights for 90 days etc. Should I take the plunge? As Patnayak says, "Really yaar, this is your long term life partner, you shouldn't be thinking about all that". Doing this would mean, going in with the Shaadi guarantee that says - "We guarantee you Express interests or money back". This in turn would mean something really might happen in the next six months which is kind of pressure situation for me.

Because of such thoughts, I have for the life of me I can't understand, started doubting the authenticity of interest expressed. Why did she chose me when she clearly had her preferences as people from US/UK/India? I know I am turning out to be a jerk but I really am getting tensed and worried about it.The thing is though I want this to happen, I don't want it happening real fast and I am looking at marriage somewhere next year.

On second thoughts I can always tell the would-be to be that I am ready for marriage only next year. The only problem now is broaching this subject with my parents. First about Shaadi.com which shouldn't be a problem but again I will put to grilling for my preferences. I hate to see a repeat telecast but I would need to do that.

And yes, finally I would like to admit that I was having a wonderful and over the top feelings all throughout the day yesterday. Getting your interest accepted is a real special feeling. It is now left to see how this will culminate.

Stats-

Interests Expressed by me - 45

Accepted so far - 1

Declined so far -30

Waiting for Responses - 15

Interests Expressed by others - 3

Accepted - 0

Declined - 3

Yippie!

Online Shooting - Week 4

2011-09-05T07:55:00.004+05:30

As expected my interest levels have come down a bit with the lack of responses. I still do check the sites regularly to the extent of seeing if anyone has accepted or rejected my profile. All the people I liked or expressed interests in mostly had their partner preference to be of certain Mother Tongue or Religion/Caste specific to a community.

I see lot of good looking profiles from Bangalore/Delhi/Mumbai and also occasionally from Andhra/Kerala. Even though I knew that they had certain partner preference with those two criteria I was hoping they actually meant that first preference would be that and they are open to everyone. Apparently I am proving to be wrong. You see the site also gives you the ability to put 'Any' and 'Your Preference' both. Its up to the user to decide what she means. So number of declined have increased.

Over last week all I did was search and peruse through profiles all the way till page 33 when I thought enough is enough. Interestingly one good thing I have found out quite accidentally and which should have been obvious is giving me good reasons to take it as the way it is going. You see all the sites have more or less called me to inquire when I will be willing to change to premium membership, when I am planning to get married. Somehow I felt a bit choked and told them I will apply when I think time is right and not to push me further.

While 3 of them have just called once, the ones from my community site have called me at least 4 times by different persons so far urging me to jump. It is in one of those calls that I heard the guy tell me "Sir, daily we get at least 4000 profiles, premium membership will give you maximum availability". They don't end the call the usual way, "thank you sir, Is there anything else I might assist you" they just slam the phone down abruptly. No Kidding. Anyway the point to take away being 4000 profiles a day I know if I keep my frequency of checking weekly once I will now have new set of 30,000 profiles to check. Even if 100 people are logging in I would have 700 new people to look for.

Of course this 100 would come by taking out preference, salary, mother tongue etc.I also think its time I change my bio. This I have felt middle of last week much before Mr.Mote woke up from his slumber and gave me valuable tips. Somehow I know that what I wrote isn't as appealing as it should be and I don't see any emotional punches in it. Will give it a grilling tonight.

Knowing the Enemy -

The other major change I have done is to change the profile pics and play around it for a while. This morning I have also seen the other way round i.e. knowing the enemies. I began going through grooms and I see that I stand fairly good chance with this ( after setting some specific filters of country-India, Working as -"software", Age-"25-29", with photo visible to all,caste -...) on page 3. The first 2 pages the people were looking really bad. By removing the filters of 'software' and 'caste' I am nowhere to be seen in the first 10 as all the folks from all parts of country are getting piled up. Well that ain't a easy task pushing everyone aside.
Profile tweaking would be the first step definitely and then I am still not sure if I need to jump on the Premium bandwagon yet.

Stats -

Interests Expressed by me - 27

Accepted so far - 0

Declined so far -13

Interests Expressed by others - 3

Accepted - 0

Declined - 3

Online Shooting - Week 3

2011-09-01T11:50:00.000+05:30

Finally the confrontation has begun, the one I didn't want and the one I know I will fight for. Ever since I have ventured online I knew that I had to do it in private and on my terms. Having my privacy intruded is a huge source of discomfort for me and the way mom and dad keep asking questions I was sure my search wouldn't be pleasant.

So far there have been 2 major verbal brawls

Rejection - How to properly say NO to no -

Last week Nanna had sent me the photo of a girl which he had found the most perfect and rightful girl. He also went on to tell me that if I was okay getting married in the next year early months. The icing on the cake, I was told, was that usually in our community finding girls of that height and that fairness is nearly impossible and that this was a God sent gift for me. Anyways burdened with so much expectations and fully knowing that this girl doesn't meet one of the mandatory criteria I had kept for myself (a working girl), I finally had a chance to look at the photo.

I didn't like what I saw. I just felt she was little short, little stout, looking little aged and this is all from the photo.This is what I told them on the phone. Dad wasn't happy, Mom too wasn't happy. They kept persisting that in photos sometimes the girls don't come good and I need to see her in person. Like that's THE golden rule. Furthering adding to this bizarre logic is that the girl's is hailing from a town where Balu annaya's wife is hailing from. Even after telling them not to bother finding about her, my parents went on to do their own background search and their joy knew no bounds.

Everything was just perfect except me agreeing to it. I now am forced to see the girl even though I don' want to see her. Just irking them further was my stupid admission that I rejected a girl on the matrimony website hailing from Kadapa. I had a good 30 minutes hearing from my fuming mom and dad on the phone with my side of conversation being only saying 'ok' for every 30 seconds literally. I just wish they first had seen the girl and why I declined.

Drinking and Non-Veg- Really? How can I?

This is more to do with my profile. One of the things that I hated the most during Prat's profile set-up was my parents insistence that he keep his profile as 'Vegetarian' even though he loves chicken like a second skin. He later turning out to be a vegetarian for the respect for Gowthami is entirely different subject and yes, he has now turned back to non-veg.

I hated such display of profile. Its a blatant lie and I firmly decided then that I would never want to do the online matrimony with my parents hanging around. Circumstances now forced me to relent to them and I had my profile put up in the site few days back with the way I wanted.

Yesterday was when finally they really read that I had kept 'Drinks Occassionally' and 'Non Vegetarian'. So over the phone I had 20 minute duel strongly arguing with them, putting out all the sentimental punches like 'I don't like it but I am doing it for you. Please don't expect me to be happy with such display' etc.

Rethinking over what has happened I now feel 'Drinks Occassionally' can never be justified in the eyes of the Indian thinking of uncles and aunties, no matter how truthful I am. As Chandan says "Your occasionally might be one week, how would they justify?" So I am not consciously hurt now when I have changed my drinking habits to 'Never Drink'. Besides it's the bride I need to impress upon not the father-in-law.

Putting it as 'Vegetarian' though is completely out of question.

This is the decision I have now come upon - I am no longer going to visit the site that my parents have forced me to change my preference.

Interests Expressed by me - 23

Accepted so far - 0

Declined so far -10

Interests Expressed by others - 3

Accepted - 0

Declined - 3

Online Shooting - Week 1 - Induction

2011-08-21T02:55:00.003+05:30

As I now decided to start my search for my ideal soul mate I have begun the process of registration into marriage matrimonials. Just with few searches on the net I zeroed in on Shaadi.com and Jeevansaathi.com. I also then tried my hand at Bharatmatrimony.com.

Of course not all at same time in the same day. The first one was the Shaadi.com where I spent considerable amount of my time filling in all the necessary details, taking time talking about myself, my partner preference, doing some profile searches etc. I then observed few patterns -

1. Almost all of the folks don't prefer people who Occasionally drinks (i.e. me)

2. Real good looking beauties were looking at salaries of 7-9 lakhs

3. Searching for partners who have self-registered narrowed my searches down to 200 of which majority weren't that good looking and those who were were from either Bombay/Delhi (and yes they had Occossionaly drinks to their habit)

That's for now. After 2 days I edited bit of my description and re-posted my profile. Here is how it goes -

Hi, myself Karthik. Something about me - I love reading novels, films are my second life and friends come the next and family is always the first especially my loving mom. I am cheerful, happy and try as much as I can to avoid getting into any arguments. I always love to maintain peace around and am also easy to get along with. I like going out on trips at least twice over a year and love hanging out with friends.

Both my parents are working as bank employees. My dad works as Senior Chief Manager in Andhra Bank while my mom is a clerk. I love my mom the most and of course dad the second best. I have been very fortunate to have such sincere and hardworking parents teaching us all the live's best values.

I always believed in getting married a la filmi style finding the right woman at right time at the right place and had told my mom vehemently that if I get married its going to be love marriage. Reality seems much more different though. I have now decided the best way to go about is through net to which I have quick access most of the times. I realized matrimonial sites are fantastic platform to look for people who have similar set of interests and ideas and am thoroughly enjoying the process of finding my wife-to-be.

I like blogging and I reel off all my frustrations or my feelings through my blogs giving me absolute peace. Am an avid movie fan encompassing all genres be it English, Hindi, Telugu, Japanese etc. Love eating food and a huge fan of Chicken Biryani/Noodles. I also enjoy reading about latest gadgets and gizmos. Am a huge fan of Apple products. That's about me in short.

Hoping to find the nice and caring person with whom I can share and enjoy the life's next adventerous journey.

I added few more photos, got my cell number registered and before anything else I created another gmail id. Interestingly my activity monitor says it's a healthy 100% and also tells me its important to maintain so.

Basically I hate caste system and am pretty much open to anyone for marriage except people of Muslim religion. Nothing against the community but just that I may not be comfortable with it. Keeping this in mind I hadn't really gone to any community specific site so far.

After a week of searching I realized everybody has set of preconceived notions and reservations with their own communities hence I have relented to put my profile there too. Surprisingly the site is much more friendlier and sophisticated, quite in the leagues of jeevansaathi or shaadi.com

Well here is my ranking of the four sites in the descending order -

1. Shaadi.com - Fantastic site, excellent search features, large database.

2. Jeevansaathi.com - A naukri.com venture is sure to get full marks. Perfect.

3. Aryavysyamatrimony.com - was expecting large crowd of gultis being here. I then realized this community is not specific to Andhra, its all over India. So I guess searching here I won't be losing much. Just registered to it today.

4. Bharatmatrimony.com - Horrendous site. After signing up, I got a call, a real call from a person enquiring all my details when I am in the middle of my work such as my name, occupation, father's name, address, etc. Every other site had an IVR with press 1 to confirm option. Secondly, site itself looks like an outdated garbage version of v1.0. Not aesthetic and not good profiles too. It put my interest off.

So far in the first one week the stats stand as follows -

Sites registered - 4

Interests Expressed by me - 12

Accepted so far - 0

Declined so far -4

Interests Expressed by others - 1

Accepted - 0

Declined - 1

I guess I will be doing this series of posts and quite frankly am enjoying the process. The whole wait time adds to the fun. Let me see if my interest levels are maintained as I go on.

Shooting has Begun!

2011-08-21T00:06:00.003+05:30

After years of appearing unfazed and quite happily shrugging it off as a nice family joke where everybody has fun asking questions like "when, why so long, shall we start searching now, people are asking etc." the time has now come to get to the reality. This has been a post in making for almost months together now but never materialized just because I never though I would go on bride-hunt and the whole process looked very cheesy to me. The time now has come to be part of it and its proving to be much more entertaining and adventurous than I thought. Before I proceed to it I just want to recap about how this renewed interest has first begun.

Around a month back I had almost 2 hour long discussion with Mote on Skype. This was our third skype conversation and the last one during my stay at Paris. He is one guy whom I have lot of faith in and look forward to his opinions and thinking. For this particular time I poured my heart out about my thoughts on marriage. Marriage for me has always been knowing someone through months or years, understanding their likes and dislikes, and then finally tying the knot. What I really want is to get married by falling in love. If every step of your life all you do is select, why is it that when it comes to marriage you go by the traditional way of hunting a bride purely based on looks, weight, height etc. I always stuck by this reasoning. On top of that how compatible am I to accept someone , a complete stranger into the life I have set for myself.

I have been leading wonderful life so far in the last 4 and a half years since my job has begun. I thoroughly enjoyed my bachelor's life hanging out with friends, roaming around, spending lot of empty time doing nothing, downloading movies, reading books endlessly on weekends, just sleeping, not tiding the room, having binge parties on the weekend so and so forth. As the last year started ending I realized much of fun has come down and quite frankly life started becoming boring as most of folks have spread out and it wasn't that great. I started going alone to movies, started spending time all alone by myself.

This was exactly what Mote had told me. Same life cannot come back and that one has to move on. This is what maturity is all about. It doesn't mean that marriage life cannot bring back the fun with friends, it is just that life has to go on. Moreover looking around be it Chitti, Niks, Nikmo, Venky all have some or the other criteria stopping them from taking the marriage step. I had nothing in the pipeline. So what was it holding me back?

I couldn't come up with proper answer except that by next year( which was how I had planned to start of my bride hunt) I wanted to reduce at least 5 kilos and make myself fit. I know it was foolish thing to keep but reality is easier said than done. So there was nothing really stopping me and I am not looking at Post Graduation anytime soon. He again advised me to think it over and start taking steps. Finding right person requires right amount of energy and time to be spent.

We then ended the call and all the remaining days marriage thoughts weren't on my mind. The topic again took a solid shape with my recent meeting with the other alter-ego Nikhil. Nikhil, Rajavardhan and me had a nice dinner at Cafe Bahar relishing on the mouth watering kebabs and chicken biryani. Just wanting to catch their opinion I brought the subject of marriage.

Deja vu, they exactly said what Nikmo, my mom, my dad, my uncle had said -"What exactly are you waiting for? you don't have any plans yet, why don't you at least start searching?". That is when I made my decision to start the hunt. What am I losing anyway but instead would be gaining much needed distraction and engagement from my current kind of stressful life.

I came back to home and told my mom that I was ready and that they can start putting the word out to people. As expected mom got all excited and went on telling about getting the gothram done, this done that done. Since there was a huge function gathering next day in order to avoid embarrassment of people checking me out and telling me "Finally we heard you are ready" 20-30 times, I told them to broach the subject up till September 1st.

Until then I have started my own bit. Read on to the sequel,

Random ramblings

2011-08-11T22:24:00.002+05:30

First off, when I was talking to Srinu today, he casually asked me when I was planning to marry. I casually told him maybe next year or year after that.

"2 years aa..vaddu babu..chala late aipotundi"

Then there was this one from my mom "tvaraga pelli chesuko ra. andaru oka la vundaru. kondari age avute face mudaraipotundi. Pratap chudu ippatiki koncham young ga unnadu". Mom was so darn clever. She conveyed exactly what Srinu said albeit in a circuitous roundabout manner.

I strongly believe in the dictum "If I think it doesn't apply to me, I ignore it and laugh it off". This applies to any taunting, teasing, that my friends do. It really doesn't bother me as there are too many things in my life apart from these to bother with. Age is something that has stuck a little hard.

I can see whale of difference between mushy-me and no-mushy-me and thank god for the brave step I took to take it off. Maybe back then I realize now that everything was perfectly justified when they kept referring me as looking aged, looking old etc. But now with the new look I certainly don't feel old but why do people still referring to me as old. When it comes to age, they go ballistics on hearing I am still 25 (when i was 25). They always say I am somewhere around 28, 29.

I thought I had two solutions for it -

1. Reduce weight

2. Reduce Weight

and Reduce weight

As Balodi bhai puts it "If you are slim and fit, even if you are bald you will look like a hunk". That thought put me in high spirits for very long time until someone else told me "Bhai, i think its got something to do with your shoulder length. You look okay. "

And here is where I rest my case. I am happy the way I am and the way I look.

Unlawful law of Temptation and Control

2011-07-30T08:45:00.003+05:30

I am so sick of writing all my weighing troubles now that I don't even feel an iota of guilt for the airy promises I have made such as the ones below -

Anu, if at all you really read this anytime, understand some day very soon without bloating about and keeping it under wraps, I would show you how disciplined I can really be and prove to me, myself and me alone that living healthy and fit is the best way to live.

I have been promising Anu that I will jog for the last three weeks and I haven't been able to fulfil the wish though.

I vow now to stop eating rice, oily foods and anything that got to do with fat inducing crap. And to Nikhil - "Dude, I definitely am going to keep track of number of days starting this vrath/fast". Watch out!

Those are the golden words going around ages and none of this I have kept up. Some thoughts that keep recurring in my mind are

"If there is one and only one thought that keeps recurring in my mind day and night, every single minute, every passing hour, every passing day that is of losing my weight and staying fit, how hard is it to control my mind and discipline my body? " (Apparently it is hard).

The other one is from one of my can-be-watched-100-times-without-getting-bored list of movies 'Sister Act I' - "If you wanna be somebody, if you wanna be somewhere you better wake up and pay attention". Actually this applies to two things one for writing, one for maintaining my body.

Both these dastardly thoughts too go pfff the minute the main topic of this post kicks in i.e. of Temptation. What happens is this, I start off my day with thought of not eating any rice, any oil, anything that is fat worthy. If anyone of these law is not abide, my mind automatically states that it is perfectly okay to restart the next day as I have already violated the rules.

"I ate pongal today that is made of rice and dal. So I can eat chicken biryani today."

"I worked so hard man. What am I working for if not for food? I can and should eat something substantial today to fill the hungry stomach- chicken noodles. Tadaaan"

"What are you having today? Noodles? Nahi yaar, you are tempting me too much. I will also eat noodles today"

"Choclates at the desk. Run..Run..Run."

"Second serving, third serving, gobble it up"

Temptation and control make your mind take crazy decisions. Even if I have successfully maintained my controlled diet for a single day, it is enough for my mind to tell my body that I am at liberty to celebrate and bombast about it to all the town with an excuse to eat as much as my heart desires. Amazingly, I was not alone in this as I discovered someone else telling me the same.

One great thing I have learnt is shopping is the best thing one can do to get back to reality check. Ill fitting clothes, lose shirts, really broad pants are enough to make you feel disgusted with your bulging stomach. Add to that the ridicule that friends bestow upon you and the ill reputation that one builds up around as with me -

"Karthik, kabhi bhi chicken se door nahi reh sakta hai yaar"

"arre bhai mein ek saal se dek raha hoon, he is not going to change"

"He is pathetic. Absolutely no control. Happily asking for one more cake. You should control dude"

Again an open question now, can I or can I not keep up my promise this time until the next post? Only Karthik can tell and he will.

P.S. Started this post 2 days back and feeling so relieved to complete it.

P.P.S Wanted to make this as short as possible but I realized I have absolutely no control on the length of the matter be it in official mails or the blog posts. Quite heavy on the head I must say.

Not so good feeling

2011-07-29T20:35:00.002+05:30

I have done something today that I am not happy about and feeling terrible about it. After having collecting my bike insurance papers from the agent around 7'o clock, I had dropped Debasis (my team mate) at his place at Begumpet. We then sat together and had burgers chatting away for a while. I then started off back to my place. Just as I was about to increase my pace, I saw a small handicapped kid asking for lift.

I slowed down and he got on the bike. He said he had to go to Ameerpet. I told him since I was going to Jubilee Hills, I would be dropping him at the Panjugutta junction. The rain has started pouring heavily. As I kept on going forward, he was telling about the difficulties he was facing in finding a job. Knowing someone in Uppal he had come here from his village to find a job only to find that he had no way of contacting them. Having exhausted his money in searching for them, he wanted now to go to SR Nagar as someone had told him that there are some opportunities for work and that was where he was heading at 7:30 P.M. in the rainy night. He also told me that he had 500 when he had come to the city and now it was over.

That ticked me off on hearing it as I knew what was coming next was if I had any money to offer. Instead, he didn't do any such thing. He was just telling about his current situation. Since I did not how how far SR Nagar is from Panjagutta and vaguely remembering that SR Nagar is really from Ameerpet, I mentally decided to drop him off at the cross roads as expected.

That is what I did after 15 minutes. I dropped him off and it was still raining badly. He thanked me, looked around for a while and then started walking ahead with one leg limping. I moved a little and then gave him Rs. 200 and told him he can get catch any bus and that would take him to Ameerpet or SR Nagar.

In the next 5 minutes the rain stopped completely but by that time I felt terrible and really bad on not helping the chap. I could have easily dropped him and maybe come to Jubilee Hills via Krishna Nagar road, though I am not completely sure. Still, I had nothing to lose as this was a Friday and neither anyone was waiting nor I had any plan.

All the way back I was thinking about the same thing. I hope he does get some job and do well. From now on I would be more kind to people and not close off any affection.

Come on its not Common

2011-07-22T08:35:00.002+05:30

Nothing much but exactly as the title says, ' come on' is not ' common'. Its a mistake I make and also by many I know of constantly using the latter for the former. The first time it came to my notice was when Anu brought it up on facebook when she replied back to something I said "What is common?".

From then on I have ben very conscious of my usage. To my utter horror I discovered that in my play such occurence had crept in several times.

Its really funny how people just accept it and move on. Have you also been doing it? Time to make it uncommon now. Come on, you can do it.

P.S This is my first ever post through mobile using swype and in 13 minutes tops with least amount of correction. Freaking awesome, ain't it! Now I no longer need to crib about holding back my thoughts to blog and forget about it.

Blogging anytime anywhere guaranteed! Take that Iidiots!

Laptop Blues..

2011-07-21T23:54:00.008+05:30

I love my laptop and having been relentlessly using it for the last 3 and a half years, I can't see myself living without one. In fact my connection with cyber world dates back to pre-engineering days of downloading hundreds of softwares such as anti-virus, desktop gadgets, utilities, games, anything under the sun be it free or commercial. It then moved on to more suave pass times such as torrents and then I never looked back.

In my addiction to my passionate hobby of movie watching I sometimes overstep the boundaries and have resulted in abusing my laptop to no end. Within 2 years it lost all its cool and literally has become a oven of sorts. Within span of 20 minutes it goes uncontrollable heat levels and if you are new to using my lappie you would be shocked with the first taste of that emanating heat. I am used to the heat now. Changing the battery, motherboard at the cost of over 10,000 rupees didn't help my cause at all and the only respite I have is that I really don't use my laptop on the 'lap' but on the 'top' of the table. The freedom of working on my laptop without the power has been taken away permanently.

Making my life much more miserable is the fact that it cannot run without power. Power cut, you are cut is the mantra. All your information GONE, unsaved information GONE, movie download in the middle GONE, data transfer halfway completed GONE, GONE GONE GONE ...pfff...vanished in thin air. I have experienced each and every one of this and much more that I care not to remember. Since last year's July I had been seriously mulling over buying a new one for my own. For me its just pointless working with some piece of metal garbage that puts my heart and mind bitching constantly against each other. I just don't deserve this. It was driving me crazy.

I knew this was a highly sensitive topic that needed to be carefully handled before broaching it with my mom and dad. I was fully determined to get one during last year boxing day period of US. That dream was broken and shattered when I came to know about my Paris trip. Nothing much to complain and it gave me some consolation of avoiding any major fights with my folks at home and I totally forgot about it.

During my stay at Paris, around March I had come to know that all employees who were SSE and above (that's me) will be getting a compensation of 50,000. I was completely stunned and I could literally see some lappies with wings circling around head. For the first time I wanted to ask myself, and believing myself God indeed is a GOD! THUD! Stamped - Laptop this christmas - Guaranteed!

Chapter closed! Zipped! Boom! Hurrah! Party..party..party..

But, yes there is this ugly butt problem. Something unexpected had happened. This is usually not the way that can ever happen with Prat but it did. He had accidentally broke his laptop and the cost of repairing was almost as good as buying a new one there. So tadaan, smart that he is and also now living with his lovely intelligent wife, decision making wasn't hard. They needn't consult anyone. Two days later they had brand new kick ass laptop at their doorstep with over the top configuration and all the bells and whistles that comes along. Next logical and stupidest thing they did was to send it back to India into the safe custody of my parents during the last 5 months.

If you are a smart-ass, by now you might have figured out the dilemma I now face. Since you aren't, by looking at your dumb quizzical look, here is how it went.

Dad call tech
Tech come take laptop
Laptop fix, working,
Dad go tech, take laptop.
Dad go attic, put laptop

Around a week back, I accidentally slipped my thoughts to my mom that I am planning to buy a laptop this year. I have been doing a lot and I mean a lot of searching for the dream laptop that I needed with reasonable price and I was confident, totally 100% confident that I was completely in reach of getting it around 33K max during the sale period. The config, just to drool over it, was was Intel i5 Processor, 4 GB RAM, 640 Gig Harddisk, Dolby speakers and DELL. At least once in a day I keep checking if it has got cheaper, little cheaper at least.

From the wide range of history that I know of the folks who got their laptops I was 1000% confident that I can get the same damn thing around 29K too. Come on, the other icing on the cake being the US market is under going one of the worst sale crisis and discounts are the only way PC market can stay afloat. This christmas its gonna be like no other. Every dream that I have built around this beautiful desirable thing has now been rammed against the wall.

My dad truly is a genious. Even though I had told this to my mom more than a week back and we did have a minor tussle arguing about the use of buying it, I adamantly told my mom that this has been something I have been waiting for years and not a random decision. Also, I added that compensation can take care of all this. She agreed and I had won the battle only to realize it was to be fought again.

Last Sunday, as we were coming back from darshan at some point the topic of money had come.

"Nayana, ee vache year varuku dabbu jagrataga karchu pettukovali..pelli chesukundam anukunav kada. ala ani enjoy cheyyadam maneyaku, baaga tinu, bayataku po. ee time lo ne nuvvu baga enjoy cheyyalsindi."

"sure nanna..nenu konni office wear konevi unnai ante..prastutaniki peddavi emi konevi levu..flat gurinchi nenu kuda alochistunna"

"good..adi rami reddy to matladanu, kani kudar ledu ra. evi kaali levanta. Inkoti chuddam le."

"sure nanna.."

"adokati..nuvvu inko laptop kontannanavu anta amma cheptunde..."

Silence. I knew the first bomb had been silently dropped. I know where this was going and also knew where this will land. Sadness just enveloped within myself and I could feel that sorrow was beckoning me to lie in its cruel arms and padding me to sleep with it, making me silently cry and challenging me, in fact daring me to go ahead. So I went on...

"avunu nanna..naaku eppadnundo konalani vundi.."

"nee laptop vundi kada ra.."

"adi old aipoyindi nanna..chala heat kuda vastundi..power idi adi chala problems.."

"ok, mari anni di vundi kada DELL..manchi laptop, baga repair ayyindi, chala bagundi adi teesko.."

Another brief silence. I lost it. I do not know how or why but i knew there was no going ahead now. Life indeed is a cruel thing. Why am I getting this treatment? As my thoughts rattled on in my depressed brain, the rationalization went on..

"utta cinemala kosamaite nuvvu laptop teesukoni waste..ledu naaku project kosam kavali..naaku aa high end config daani kosam avasaramu..deento kaadu ani aite cheppu..ok..naaku no problem..teesuko kottadi..emi ok na?"

What am I to tell? It's precisely for that very reason I need the new laptop, enjoy the movies in better aspect ratio 16:9 widescreen, dolby. Ever since I saw it in Kalyan's laptop I couldn't come over that feeling. Also yes partly it would indeed help me with my work too, I can take it along anywhere I want, I don't need to be constantly plugged in, no longer heat and goddamit its Win 7 Home Premium with 640 Gig and 4 GB RAM! Isn't that reason enough? Isn't that joy enough? Why should some things in life always have to be a justifiable cause.

"pratap di chala old nanna.."

"old sare le..work cheyachu kada..adi kakunda nuvvu antunna DELL ee laptop kuda. anavsranga enduku waste cheyyadam. nuvvu daani kavalante higher configuraiton ki marchuko extra vi add chesi"

Another silence. On the contrary, trying to get back to my rational mind, maybe I can do some upgrades to the laptop much cheaper, more RAM, more Harddisk, better processor, just maybe, i don't need to spend that extra 50 grand. So the supposedly sensible, truthful, thoughtful, budgetful, rational mind of mine keeping in view of the PROS and CONS of the situtation has rationalized and made me say

"avunu le nanna..correct ee..chustanu..enta hard disk add chesaru nanna"

"emo ra..teledu..chudali..initiki vellaka nenu teesi chupistanu..chudu..nuvu actual ga teesukoni po..mememi vadatledu daani.."

Fast forwarding to the present day moment, yesterday I had mind boggling sound effect when I switched on the laptop to see the movie 'Shutter Island'. I was content and delirious at this unexpected outcome. Maybe somethings can be adjusted, maybe I didn't need the new laptop, maybe I can upgrade, just maybe..

I sealed my fate today just around 3 hours back when I told my dad that laptop indeed was great and I liked it. Dad kush and he also told that he felt he had forced upon his decision and was in fact planning to shell out all the money for the new one by himself. Hearing my verdict he pointed me rightfully about how good the money can be utilized for something else..True indeed or is it?

Have I shot myself in my arm again.. I think so. Pouring my heart out in this eloquent post, I indeed realized I speak too soon and I should have stuck to my stand. I just want my laptop. I just realized how much of turmoil I had gone through and the mountains that I built upon for the new one as I write this post. I even had checked out the local prices at the Dell center the very first week I came back from Paris.

Good lord! Why am I such a pain in the backside? Why do I chicken out? I guess the only way to find out is to first by figuring out the costs of upgrade. Maybe mentally it may give peace and the true joy is only in buying a new laptop.

Amen!

DTC Memoirs

2011-07-17T13:48:00.010+05:30

Yet another farewell gives me a chance to refresh and go back to those wonderful peaceful moments of the past, when things were just settling down. I have so much to say that I thought I will have a post on this for my blog. Here it goes.

The Beginning-

On the first day of landing here at Hyderabad, during my orientation, it was a very unpleasant thing to hear that I was put on bench. It also had some weird bay name to it too. I had been promised skies (was told that I would be working for Microsoft you see, thank God that didn’t happen) but landed in gutter. How stupid can it get? Over the next few days my grumbling came down and I was enjoying my bench days bunking right after lunch/gym in the evenings. Even during those times I met up some wonderful people who were in the same soup. Human mind is really funny. The joy of finding someone who is undergoing the same emotions with the unexpected results ( be it bad marks, bad dress, wrong address or as in this case sitting on bench after moving from company). It was during the same time that Nikmo and I were on full on diet mode, eating minimum food, doing some small exercise in the morning and staying light. I had also joined the golfing sessions by my aunt at Boulder Hills. On one particular day I got a call from Pranav asking me to meet him the next day for a project assignment.

For some reason the next day I was running late to office as I had completely forgotten about the call. I was doing little extra golfing time, when it suddenly struck me that I had something important to do that day. Putting my helmet on, I zoomed like a maniac on a high snaking through the heavy traffic and landed HDC around 9 minutes flat. Still panting, I called up Pranav and got the room number. Went to washroom and cleaned up myself to make myself bit more presentable. I just stayed there for two more minutes silently thinking and telling to myself that no matter how the work is, I hope I have a good team to work with a nice lead. It is a statistically proven fact that 90% of the people quit because of the managers/leads and this being my first move, I was little apprehensive. Entering the room, the first relief I got was seeing the young, fresh smiling faces. That kind of did it for me, hate being with budde log. No offence to nobody. I settled down and Pranav rattled on about all the abc’s of the project. Sounded good, with a transporting background and my ears pricked a little higher on hearing that the project was being done in collaboration with Paris team. I had also joked to my mom that I may go to Paris on that day when I called her up to catch up with the new project. Just drifting off a little here, in one of my first ever play that I had written, one segment carried off a conversation between wife and husband arguing over the issue of ownership of T.V. as wife want wants to see Bigg Boss whereas the husband is all rooted for IPL Semis. There is a dialog where the wife chides her husband that he tells virtually everything to his mom, even being as stupid as telling about the bug status. A bit of confession, I may say, I am slightly like that in reality and maybe the inspiration was rooted in me. I really like telling my mom everything and sometimes I tell her unnecessary things about deliveries, deadlines etc. So that day it was all about what my project was, number of people in it etc.

Work initially wasn’t much as I was given the task of testing. It was around December I had joined and team at Paris were going on long leaves leaving behind substantial amount of work for offshore. I was introduced to Anuradha and was told to take the KT from her of how the Corporate Website and Back Office works. One of the legacies I carried forward from my Satyam Days was my ability to go to trance-like sleep state where I am half-awake twirling the mouse up and down and staring at the computer. I was notorious for this and I do this usually when I don't have much work and right after good lunch. Sushma, another team mate of mine, along with me were involved in taking the sessions. Much to their horror and my embarrassment, during the course of KT, having Anuradha in the middle and we both on the sides, I was literally drowsing through the session yawning sometimes, struggling to keep my open. Luckily, being the genteel lady they were, they never complained and in fact Anuradha used to continue the sessions with slight remarks of ‘Karthik, I think you can go have a face wash now’ with a huge smile on her face. It also happened that sometimes even that was not enough to keep me awake. The sessions have been the toughest to attend to. To justify my stance I would say it wasn’t their fault but it was the objective of the session that’s at fault. Imagine a person teaching about website navigation as simple as ‘Go to this Menu->Click on this sub-menu->Click on this item’ for every page there is that we maintain and then after reaching the page explaining about all the elements of the page – ‘here you give your first name, here last name’ for over 40 minutes in same monotonous tone without a break. Why couldn’t it be as simple as ‘This is the website, do whatever you want and discover it’. That’s how my second project induction was at my earlier company which again dealt with a website front. The next month the work was at bare minimum with one task of a package and some debugging of reports.

Recollecting my initial times, chatting with clients was a bit funny. Back at Satyam, we dealt all our communication through mails or meeting and never with office communicators/chat. I remember asking Mote about how I should reply for a smiley and when to put a smiley, which is appropriate etc.? There is always the line that we shouldn't cross and all that crap were there. As we moved through cycles, through weekly status meetings, through the bug fixes, life began to gain momentum and for one particular time it got pretty hot with 5 whole days of torture for fixing a peculiar bug. I also got one of the best compliments too by our then manager Benoit for value-addition for a job he had assigned to me in quick time. There is whole new back story to it which I definitely ought to blog sometime.

We as a team were enjoying the whole process before the honeymoon period ended as Benoit was taken over by another lead at Paris - Idriss. His way of dealing things had shook each and everyone out of their happy cozy lives and united in a way we never wanted - frustrated and angry. Nobody liked giving status updates every half an hour, nobody liked doing multitasking and yet maintaining all the deadlines, nobody liked multiple meetings, and most important of all nobody liked escalations. Too many problems but we had one cool head Babar for us, shouldering all our responsibilities and to see that we weren't under scanner all the time. In fact, we went one step ahead and were firmly in the director's seat dictating our terms. There are lot many more things that had happened after that and not everything was exciting in terms of the workload. I was working on DTC part time and Presto most of the times and was in this mode for quite long not really facing large brunt of the project.

Let me now just highlight the best times -

Coffee Breaks -

Babar spear heads this meetings with his amazing in-depth knowledge of Indian history, mythology, Real estate, police, love, kidnappings ..err.. almost everything under the sun aptly named by all as the 'walking wikipedia' a.k.a wikitalkie. Between 10 a.m. to 12:00 p.m and 1:00 p.m. to 5:00 p.m. on most of the days we gather as a team and go to our tea breaks. Once we settle down, we are transported into a whole new world and time cease to exist. We start with some topic as trivial as everyone's favorite food and then see the discussion going to abc's of lodging an FIR. Sometimes we stick to one and everybody has something or the other to say or add and it will be good 30-45 minutes before one of us realize that we had come to office cafeteria. This break up is done with huge reluctance. I can still savor those lovely moments. Happily enjoying the fantastic unexpected sojourn with your lead right their leading the party.

Meeting Minutes:

Meetings..hmm..meetings..just the word itself gives me that warm pleasurable feeling. Having worked in projects before that had not many meetings and little less people too, the meetings at DTC gave me ample scope to vent out my feelings and blabber rubbish continuously. For the first two months it was chaired by Pranav and it was like attending a convent congregation, performing the task of taking down the defects methodically and mechanically, planning for the upcoming weeks and ending the calls.

Enter Babar, exit Pranav, and voila it was just , AWESOME! We were no longer under the 'Eye' and free to do whatever we want. We enter the room and Babar starts off the calls. Meanwhile Joey, Sushma and I will be busying ourselves with games on my kick-ass phone only to lend support when its needed. Sometimes, we just go to the call fully knowing it was gonna be a 10 minute ritual but we utilize it to the full 1 hour booking doing nothing but good amount of idle chit-chat pulling each other's leg, discussing about vacation plans, thinking about a possible trip (it's still an open point, if you ask me), discussing about parties, or just idling away time. During the not so busy cycles of delivery this was quite common and we used to have ball of a time during the 'DTC- Meeting'.

I am attached to it so much so that, even though I was completely out of it, with a great reluctance and nostalgia, quite painfully I removed the 'DTC Weekly Meetings' from my Outlook calendar. I also took a screenshot but somehow I am not able to find it now.

Joe -

Am singling out Joe here because he is fit to be singled out like a Joker in the Pack. Mostly funny and mostly dumb (sarcasm). Joe is one of the best people I have met in my life and I admire his outlook towards life with clear focused intentions, his religious discipline, his conventional views on marriage, his affliction to food. Its precisely for these that he is gullible and easy to get started off on a conversation and bug him to no end. He just can't accept some things and I have never fought so furiously with anyone trying to rationalize certain arguments. It is so much fun poking fun at him. There was this one tiny little time when this went overboard (and I did behave like a jerk) which had a cold war feel to it. It just cooled off immediately the day after anyway.

His greatest weakness that I have observed is his inability to get along with Hyderabadi food and marriage views. Somehow we both as a pair are nicknamed 'tom and jerry'. Ironically I am supposed to be the Tom (the loser who gets hurt no matter what he does), when in fact I should be the Jerry (the clever, witty, innovative, creative mouse that gets away with Tom in whatever it does and in style). It was a open-and-shut-case, I win all the matches. Since its the majority that gets the say I let the case rest with all of them truly believing in the fact that Tom is the best in taunting and getting what he wants i.e. ultimately winning. On second thoughts I would rather be cat than a whining mouse. Howzzat!

Team

The team as a whole have been one of the best I have worked with. With absolute no egos and ever helpful to each other we have well supported our tasks and sharing our duties. In times of trouble, we huddle together, have a 10 minutes discussion, laugh about it and let it go.

Carole's visit

Another great highlight. When Carole, our onshore big shot manager, had come to Hyderabad for meeting sessions we were completely floored. That two hours meeting we had with her, we felt as if we were given free tickets to avant-garde theatrical performance I had ever witnessed. Mesmerizing to say the least. Tracing the history of e-Ticketing, DTC, talking about the government problems, project handicaps, challenges facing ahead, road maps and it went on. Never once was she off-the mark and it was completely impromptu performance. I was literally spell-bound. We also had a quite nice time with her during the AFMS bash with Joe, jumping like a kid, to get a solo pic with her. Such a sweet kid, ain't he?

Twists-

Around November last year, we were supposed to shut the shop. It was in news, it was in papers (Danish i mean), it was in their parliament, it was everywhere. The writing on the wall was clear. The landmark judgement was doomed to failure. We also had a farewell celebrations too. Personally though all of us were quite sad knowing it and were also little taken aback with calmness with which Babar had taken the news. Somehow miraculously 90% certainity became 0% and BAM we were back on track doing same things again. Only this time around my percentage of involvement receded gradually.

Well, that's all there is to it. I know I am missing something but it will be for later posts. Let me end it all with some personal notes -

Babar garu- For the life of me , I can't remember why the thought didn't strike me to bring more chocolates exclusive to team. I really feel bad about it. I am at loss of words right now to express my feelings except to say that you have been one of my greatest inspirations.

Narsingam - You have been the unseen glue sticking our spirits of undying passion to the cause by being there and helping the team all the time. You have excellent leadership qualities and though it may have felt like a joke when I kept mentioning you would be the next 'TL', I did mean it. With your soft entry to PNG, I hope we will get to work on some common tasks. Even otherwise I definitely would like to seek your counsel on movies, inner gossip, and life in general.

Joey- refer above

Sirisha - Silent and hard-working. Hope you have great time under Babar and reach fantastic levels. You are in one of the most enviable positions ever and am sure you will have great learning experiences of your life going ahead.

Cheers!

Money Matters a LOT now

2011-07-10T22:43:00.003+05:30

Being away from home for 5 months at Paris, I have started to see things in India little more differently now. In particular, the money, paisa, dabbu.

Bapuji..bachao hume

Right on my first day at office, during lunch I got the first shock of the peaked prices. One Chicken Biryani - 175, 1 Drums of Heaven - 245. Actually this is little funnier. The menu was divided into two columns for Appetizers and this item was among the list of other non-veg items. A huge left hand flower bracket grouping all these were listed as the price quoted. "So all these put together would be 245 right? Like a platter I mean", I inquired with Sushma who was sitting beside me. "Come on yaar, its only one item. By the way, don't worry too much I am giving the party", she replied back with a smile. I smiled a weak response. Once the orders were placed, we were then continuing to discuss about other things like the bygone days of DTC, the new faces in AFMS, the new building.

Someone then had asked me how I came to office that day. "By auto, I had to pay 150 bucks!" I replied. By this time Sushma was exasperated with my over attention to money and declared to the bench "Guys, I think from now on we can expect that anything that Karthik is going to talk about will be followed by a price tag". Funnily, I never bothered so much on the money after the initial one week stay at Paris. Coming back, I feel all the prices have shot up and people were utterly apathetic about it. Maybe this being a party nobody was really paying much attention.

The following day I tried out the common cafeteria. Woof. Smoking! Chicken Noodles - 65! Wait. Look over there - 'Sub of the Day - 99 Only!' Since when did 99 become only? Is this a mock BATA rate? Of course I knew the prices here would be more compared to our usual cafeteria. What I wasn't prepared was to have a meal with a drink one would be shelling out at least 100 bucks.

The third day, Wednesday was when I felt I was back on the ground. Lunch this time I had at our cafeteria and just like 5 months back the prices were still intact at 18 bucks for 2 roti/ paratha. So things weren't as bad as I started imagining. I am definitely sure though that something is not right. Prices did skyrocket but I am yet to sink in that feeling.

The climax of the episode was when I was filling my petrol. 1 Ltr - 72 that's a 16% increase from 62 when I had left. Why is it that such inflation is being accepted without any major protests or for that matter by the blogosphere community. I admit I haven't been following national news but heck I have been on to the blogs as good as ever.

With such steep prices, and slow moving salaries, how are they expecting us to continue to live our lifestyle of binging out once in a while, movies, shopping and then the enoromous work that the job demands? With my now renewed focus on my health and diet, it is indeed giving me an incentive to watch how much I spend over eating, drinking and making sure I stay healthy without leaning towards extreme starvation.

Speaking of spending I have almost spent 3 grand buying clothes and books. Whoopsie, where is the monthly calculator!

Photos and Facebook

2011-06-14T00:14:00.001+05:30

What is it with photos and facebook? Why do I have this great urge to keep looking back at Facebook to see if anyone has commented on anything. Wasn’t life better when you had only few people to share your things with? Sometimes I wonder if I am overdoing it with large number of photos. Facebook does crazy things to you. I want to move on focus on my travelogue blogging but I am just getting carried away with nothing special to write about. I am stuck at Spain and I wonder how I will do with the rest of the cities.

Anyways, coming back from the trip today and having a whole day off isn’t helping my cause either. I know in the next 4 days I need to get my things straightened up and leave to Berlin with a guilt free mind. For that I need to keep a check on all the issues that the team is facing and cleaning of the existing issues. On top of all this, I need to iron my clothes, segregate my belongings and get ready for tomorrow. Not big tasks, but tasks nonetheless.

So here it is, I have now decided to give FB a break and comment only when someone else comments on it.

Spain Travelogues - I

2011-06-03T14:15:00.001+05:30

Talking to Devarsh on the phone and telling him about what to see, what to do, which hostel to book almost over 40 minutes I realized I am doing a grave mistake by not really penning down my thoughts. Memories of the trip are still fresh now. Give or take few days, I am sure I would forget all.

Photos no matter how many one takes, what stays with you forever are your experiences and thoughts. These need to be captured when they are in the reach as months or years from now I am sure I will come back to like it. Just as the way I enjoy reading about my trip to Warangal.

How it started -

As I look back, Spain has been an hasty decision and proved much costlier too. It all started with my late booking. A month before the trip I had applied for 4 leaves. Two leaves on first fortnight of May, and two more on Last fortnight spread over a weekend like an extended weekend. I had done this hoping to properly plan, chose places and then book the tickets. As the days passed by though I knew the days were getting nearer I had no clue how to go about it. Frankly I was little afraid to take the first step, as I was leaving all alone. I even wanted to cancel the leave.

Again, thanks to the exuberant and high spirited Nico who sat with me showed me the places and started the bookings. We wen to the site – www.momondo.com and checked out the cheapest fares and booked the flights. In a matter of 40 minutes my first ever cross-country tour was all set.

Run…Run…Run…

It was early in the morning, around 5’0 clock I had booked a cab. Unfortunately on the day of my travel, railways had raised a ruckus and were on strike. To top that the only free connectivity I had which was RER B train was supposed to be pathetically slow. So, I had chosen the only option I had which was the cab. As I was about to enter the cab I realized I forgot my wallet, ran back and started running down. Again I realized I had forgotten my charger. So twice I ran up and down before finally settling into it.

The day of the journey I had hardly slept and my mind was so filled with the trip that I stayed myself awake by completing as much workload as a I can.

The feeling was excitement mixed with some fear especially when it came to my passport. I am a guy who loses things at the drop of a hat. Always thinking about something, concentrating on two things at a time, looking lost, tensed all around. With such well-known reputation and knowledge that I have about my ownself, forget the world, I was all the more nervous about carrying it off – the lone journey.

Anyways, the cab was around 60 Euros and frigging expensive but was promptly on time.

Thoughts about my body, my future and my glamour

2011-04-24T05:31:00.001+05:30

I am so bloody distracted to write that even though I had my Live writer open for about last 20 minutes I was busy browsing through the Versailles website figuring out the rates for weekends.

Almost 3 months have passed since we have set foot here and the two things that I promised myself I would achieve is – Lose Weight by exercising daily, Brush Twice. I have achieved the latter but the former I still have to experience. What is it about weight that can lift any person’s mood from sad to happiness to sad again? Why is it that weight has become such obsessive thing to be judged and compared with? Just to think about the days when I can where the real good T-shirts I want without the XL tag or seeing myself amongst the fit and healthy folks here and get that warm fuzzy feeling that says ‘Yes, meine kar dikaya,’ to all my nay sayers.

As everyday my sleep hovers around 2 or 3 I wonder if I would ever achieve this going forward. So this constant state of excitement, guilt, and finally resentment is going to stay. Even though I want to say from Monday, I would get up in the morning, try to go to Parc De Luxembourg or go up and down the stairs 3 times to start with, I know this would be for short. I want to enjoy that.

One of the greatest appeals of being slim and trim is that, as Balodi bhai has put it, if you are slim and fit nobody cares even if you are bald. The body just takes care of your entire glam factor. Strangely the thing that’s pricking mind all throughout has been the thought of marriage. I want to be the most perfect eligible bachelor around and not some fat guy with huge tummy looking like 30 poking around for girls.

Ironically though as much as I am eager to be fit for bride hunting, the thought of marriage is scaring me. Let me just dedicate that post for later bits. But for now, though this conflict exist in my mind I am more than willing to accede just for now that I want to be fit in the market.

One good thing is I already see some improvement in myself as I must have definitely dropped 3 Kg’s at least. My stomach is lot more slimmer. The sad thing is this is not natural and am sure a months stay back home would get these kilos back where they belong in jiffy. These changes should always happen with a plan, wherein there is always a space for exercise come what may, rain or shine. Any goddamn exercise that involves burning of calories.

Thoughts to boost me up - I no longer feel exhausted climbing the 4 floors of my stairs and I definitely am enjoying walking around streets of Paris than taking Metros.

Fingers tightly crossed for my next post on weight or exercise. Anu, if at all you really read this anytime, understand some day very soon without bloating about and keeping it under wraps, I would show you how disciplined I can really be and prove to me, myself and me alone that living healthy and fit is the best way to live.

JAI HO!

IMDB Revamped

2011-03-25T16:42:00.002+05:30

Yet another change brought out by IMDB

I wonder why it took SO long for IMDB to make this change. I mean, wasn't it obvious they needed it. Flixster had it ages back on facebook. Anyways it doesn't work perfect though. I mean searching for Nagarjuna Akkineni/Akkineni Nagarjuna turns up void in the look up but on search it gives the results. That's a bit weird.

One other change that makes it very hard is what they did with the left menu bar. The whole piece of links have been pulled to the bottom of the page making it highly inaccessible to check for them. It kinda limits the ability to make faster search for more information on the movies. Anyways I think we are gonna live with that.

Go IMDB!

Mr.Boss, Mr.Interface, Mr.ODS, Mr.Staging

2011-03-23T06:57:00.002+05:30

One Big Intelligent (BI) Family

Being in a small group has tremendous benefits and damn good fun. I have enjoyed such close bonding in all my projects so far right from Satyam. At one point of time it was just 2, me and manager who had been on project for over 3 months. Anyways, everyday going to work amongst these people feels so good and we all have hearty time no matter how hard the task is at hand lazing our assess off till late in the night.

We are the team handling the Business Intelligence part of the project hence the BI. Time for introductions (from L to R)-

Williams Tapsoba – Mr. Boss – Ever so smiling, highly intelligent and man with large heart. He always says, in his French accent, ‘Alwais be hapi and kip smiling’. He hails from a country in Western Africa (Burkina Faso).
Me – Mr.Interface - Good, happy going guy.
Soufir Takarit – Mr. ODS /Mr. Coffee (which he hates and we love) – ‘Hey guy’ his oft-quoted phrase and a funny guy really. With such round shape of his head he has this habit of making a growling expression you gotta fall for it. Another fantastic person to work with. He hails from Algeria.
Ilyas Brahmia – Mr. Staging – Another Algerian. He is a soft-spoken, humble and extremely hard working person I have met. He hardly sleeps for more than 4 hours a day and he is as fresh as a daisy.

This photo was taken at Pica Dino, an Italian restaurant, specializing in pasta and Pizza where our Boss had treated us for the good work spent on the project and deliverables. It was one amazing ‘Bologne’ pasta I had and utterly delicious pizza.

Forget the acronyms, its kind of inline joke and bit technical too. One of the best things that happen to us from time to time are the meetings. Meeting with our Boss with a schedule of half an hour means you ought to be ready for an hour or more. If it’s a quick meeting, you are good to go for half an hour. Actually he has this habit of repeating some of things he said two to three times that by the time we are out of the meeting we can recite every word of his instructions even in our sleep. So we can easily cut away 25 minutes of his half an hour meeting.

Well, not all the time anyway. I mean to say there are only some times when an half an hour meeting actually feels like half an hour, you see. That apart, we as a team are battling with forces beyond our reach. Its like groping in the dark for getting something out of nothing. As our new entrant Dave puts it, Garbage in, garbage out.

It’s a learning process really. I haven’t been involved in such stage before where we had to start analysis and design for a whole new product for which requirements are still in nascent stage. I enjoy being with these two blokes going to coffee breaks where we pass our time releasing our stress and having some language lessons.

One such lesson today and quite enlightening one at that – Indians have the habit of saying ‘W’ as ‘V’ which I found myself shockingly saying it involuntarily. So water actually becomes ‘vater’. It has made me overly consious now and I will put in all I can to overcome it. Thanks guys.

Note: Corrected after taking inputs from Mr.ODS a.k.a The Champ

Arch De Triomphe

2011-03-21T02:21:00.001+05:30

This can also be called ‘A Weekend to Remember –IV’. which is how I started off the series. Re-looking at the content again I now have changed my mind and to with the idea of place of visit. I will be redoing the others shortly too. I have been to this place thrice so far with different people and different timings and every single time it has amazed me.

In Paris, government has certain restrictions on the height of the buildings. By doing so, on some of the buildings you have the fantastic view of the whole city. One such building is Arch De Triumphe and others include Eiffel Towers (yeah!), Sacre Coure Church, Notre Dame Towers, Montparnasse Towers (a recent edition) and at some buildings at La Defense.

This place is kind of strategically located in the center and offers a complete 360 degree view of Paris. At this place around 12 roads converge but none of these roads take you to the tower. For getting in you need to use underground tunnel or a Metro which again leads you to the entrance of this tower. More about that later. Its kind of funny story. It is just mind-blowing just to be there and seeing it. I especially loved it when I went first time with my roommate. That was the time when it was slightly raining, some fog around, and city was just lit up. Its absolutely amazing.

This monument has been built to commemorate the dead soldiers who valiantly have given their lives for the country. India Gate at New Delhi slightly resembles the Arch De Triomphe.

Fact – I have been wrongly quoting that the inspiration for India Gate has come from French architecture and that it was done by the same person. Searching through the web I see no connection. Nikmo, Devarsh, if you are seeing both are not the same guys. I have actually been misled by my mom, who had originally told me on the phone that both have been inspired by the same and I didn’t cross check. So here I am rectifying it.

It has 284 steps to climb in a narrow pathway up to the top in a spiraling fashion. I got claustrophobic the first time and second time it was good. I was quick and energetic. Once you get to the top, you have one more layer of steps to reach the open space from a huge hallway. Here, one can see huge wreaths pasted on one wall along with statue of a soldier.

Mini-mini and Mini Arch De Triomphe

Going further there are two hand sized mini replicas on a stand of about 2 feet height of Arch De Triomphe on a circular disc which can be moved around by hand which in turn moves another larger replica made of paper like material about the height of the stand right in front of the smaller one. On this second one a steady narrow beam of light is shone on to it and those segments are highlighted by this light go on to be proejcted on the large screen projector hanging on the wall. This gives you the ability to see every part of the Arch De Triomphe exterior in more granular detail. Absolutely fantastic. So, we finally climbed the top and nothing much to say other than being fully left dazed and speechless with the grand view.

Here are some of the pics, for now of this monument, will be updated with all later on-

Arch De Triomphe

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A Weekend to Remember - III

2011-03-21T01:35:00.001+05:30

Note: It can be read as a single entry or you can take same time out to understand the contextual meaning better by reading this first and second parts. No compulsion though.

Visit to Louvre-

Louvre was originally a palace and a fort to fend off the enemies built by Napoleon the third. It then took on many forms before finally succumbing to being a museum. According to statistics, nearly 8 million people visit Louvre every year. It’s every art lover’s dream to be here like Mecca call to its pilgrims. The glass pyramid as entrance has been the newest addition to this historical monumental piece or architecture. On enquiry with the lady at the reception and guaging by the time we intended to spend which was around 2-3 hours, she suggested us to take the Masterpiece tour which was of one hour duration guiding us along the most worthy monuments ending it with Mona Lisa.

Interesting thing about guided tour is it has the simulation for number of steps you need to climb or walk along with a real panting and breathing that a person experience. Frankly you can walk faster than the guy in the simulation. But you gotta be careful, otherwise you will definitely get lost.

As you start this tour, the first thing you come across is the replica of the Louvre Castle in a glass enforcement where you can see the building in its entirety.

Louvre Museum – Replica

It gives you certain architectural details of it and then proceeds to show you the last remaining towers or broken towers which was restored. The next to be seen is the Egyptian sphinx. This was my first look ever at a Sphinx. It was majestic. Though it might be 1/20th of the actual size to the ones at Egypt, it was still amazing to look at.

Egyptian Sphinx

We next come to one of the museum's most famous works - Venus De Milo.

Venus de Milo – As seen from the Front

Its an ancient Greek statute that is known for the mystery it shrouds upon people of its missing arms. It is believed that the Goddess of love and beauty is looking at the apple she was holding in her left hand. What is amazing is to see the drapery around her lower half seems to be slipping off the figure giving it a sensual look.

Venus de Milo- As seen from the Back

Seen from its back the lower half of the statue seems hastily done and not having the finest details as seen from the front. This was because the statue was intended to be placed on one of the sides of the walls of a hall.

The next up is another masterpiece – Victory of Samothrace or Goddess Nike.

Nike of Samothrace (As seen from the front)

The greatest thing about this masterpiece is the complete improbable structure that it represents. It is believed the Goddess of Victory Nike has descended upon the ship to honor the sea battle. Taking a look at the statue closely one can see that Goddess standing upon a square piece has landed on arched bow of the ship which in turn is perfectly docked on a plain surface. In reality such objects would dislodge the piece from its standing.

Nike of Samothrace (As seen from the side)

Another thing to notice is, the sculpture itself is so formidable that one does not notice the missing hands or the head. It signifies a grand presence of its own. As seen from the side the drapery is seen as blowing against the wind combining the motion of the descent and the stillness of the Goddess. And then…

Mona Lisa

As Seen from the center and just before the cordon

Zoomed in

Mona Lisa is beauty to be experienced. It has one of the grandest showcase possible. As you enter the room, where Mona Lisa is showcased first thing you notice is the huge crowd thronging all around the room. At three quarters of the room and in the center a huge wall with its sides chipped so that there is room for 3-4 people to pass through side by side on either ends. The wall though doesn’t touch the roof. Right at the center of this wall and at a height of about average height of person i.e. 5ft 8 in from the base you can see Mona Lisa. The height is one of the key factors to appreciate the beauty of the painting.

As you move around from one side to other side, you see her eyes moving along with you. This is one of the well known facts but it is the height that adds to this effect. Apart from that one of the mysteries is behind her smile, its like she is about to tell a secret but she is held back at the last moment. Mona Lisa attained fame because it was once robbed off its existence for over 2 years before the thief was caught and painting brought back to safety. The fervent search piqued the curiosity and increased the aura surrounding the painting making it one of the greatest masterpieces.

We then went on to see some of the finest pieces of Renissance art of 17th century. Nikmo was very keen on seeing all and somehow for him this is what real art is and his goal was only to cover these. I still can’t understand how he has got about knowing art and what to like. Its really strange. What I mean by saying all this is, for a meusuem with its artifacts and paintings enough to satiate one for over 5 days, for him that 2-3 hours we spent was the only thing that mattered. I did force him along to cover all the floors anyway.

Having seen Muse De ORsay before his arrival, I knew art is something you need to experience. I mean listening about the background of the painting, the symbolism, the material used, the age of the painting, one need to have patience enough to go through them all and enjoy it. You can’t say one period is all that matters. That’s what I think though.

Here are some of the other masterworks -

Death of a Virgin (A controversial Painting)

And few others just to conclude my Louvre Experience. Coming up next Arch De Triumphe and Versailles Palace.

Louvre Experience

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A Weekend To Remember - II

2011-03-19T16:41:00.001+05:30

At the Airport -

After all the drama that ended on a most positive note, I finally made it in time to meet him at the airport only to discover the plane has been delayed for another hour. Waiting at the airport with so much tempting food around was just too good to resist. Not surprisingly all the rates were high. I bought a Baguette and sat myself down to watch the movie ‘Flushed Away’. I also had sometime to think over of what all has happened and how good it felt to be there and have my holidaying uninterrupted. Somehow I was reminded of Ravi Teja’s movie ‘Kick’ where he is constantly looking for a ‘Kick’ in his life. With so many experiences under the belt and the most recent one being the Adventure for Visa Stamping to Paris, I can for certain say the excitement and fun only comes with a ‘Kick’. ‘kick’ leka pothe mazaa ne ledu..

Finally around 8:20 walks in my Hero right out of the exit terminal. First thing I noticed was he was quite, how do they say that nicely, hmm, well-proportioned. I mean in the 5 months since he left India, I can say he has changed and gained a LOT. Completely knocked off my feet with this new avatar and asked about the horrendous injustice the photos do to his real figure I get a sly look and a cunning smile as reply. Prodded further, he concedes, he has mastered the art of Photography and has taken a special course in the art of highlighting bodies within certain perspective so that the best part appears. I truly bow to the master and I was fully determined to learn that course. Through our first trip in Metro, I let him into the underbelly of Paris, the network that holds this city bustling continuously with activity.

Nightlife Begins -

We reached home around 9 with pushing and pulling of his suitcase. Like any respectable host I offered him the best of wine, chocolates for him to settle down, get a feel of our house. I then bluntly told him I really didn’t do much groundwork for the next coming days and that we can start off right away doing that. He didn’t have much choice anyway in the sense he had about 5 to 6 things to see around Paris which was the best he could gather. Those we could have covered in a single day at the most. So nothing much to do beyond that. But I wanted him to know Paris has much more grandeur than he believed and we mapped out all our perceived destinations for the upcoming day. With our itinerary settled we set our foot outside to explore the ‘real life’ that he sought.

Notre Dame Cathedral was our first stop we walked near the church for a while. It was built around 1345 B.C in a span of over 200 years since the first brick was laid. It is one of the finest examples of Gothic architecture and the greatest landmarks of the city. Every façade has finest inscriptions of figures, people who looked liked priests, incarnations of Jesus, his disciples and so on. Illuminated at night it was a grand sight to behold.

Once we are done with that we took a walk to St.Germain, one of the posh and most happening area around Paris in the night and in the day. This is where the fashion happens (as my TL said) but you get the drift, right?. Asking one of the passersby, a tall well-built English guy, who not only told us the locations but also took the pains to come along to the beginning of the lane, leaving his other two friends, and showed us two choices – Rue De Princess Lane, Odeon Lane.

This is where my gyaan into city culture began. I haven’t been a regular drinker nor have been the one who used to binge out a lot in the night. So with a highly experienced chap at the side, it was time for me to listen and enjoy the talks. City is not the same at night as what it is in the day. Especially in different countries like US, Europe where there are no restrictions to close down the bars by 12:00 P.M. One gets to see the local fervor at these bars where lot of people hangout. At both the streets there were numerous bars busily serving the customers. We first strolled around for a while exploring both the streets, Mote mentally ticking off the ones to see and the ones to skip. The time was around midnight. Though the main boulevards were quiet these streets were just fully occupied and teeming with activity.

One of the things that people immediately notice around here is that all the bars/brasseries (as they are called) have a seating arrangement right outside their hotel with double seats facing the street. Of course there is a heater on to keep it warm. It is a very beautiful arrangement as you can enjoy the pleasantness of the city and relish the food at the same time having quality discussions. So the bars having the vacancies outside didn’t have food, much to our disappointment. A bit more walking and enquiring got us to a wonderful nice cozy bar with a really hot ladies serving drinks.

We ordered margaritas along with club sandwich and Ham with bread. We then started talking about American way of life, the freezing cold weather that affects the metabolic activities, the family inheritance laws, the passion behind teaching, the duty of the government, movies, sports, pub culture, friends updates, future plans and so many things. It was so nice and time moved on ever so fast. One of the best things about being with him is it never felt like there had been 6 months of separation. Its as if he just had been away for few weeks. He (apart from Venkat) was the only one with whom I used to converse in English all the time. I just couldn’t bring myself to speak in Telugu with him somehow. Anyways the point is he has tremendous knowledge on various topics that it always feels like you learn something new with him. It might go to trivialities later on but overall it enriches your thoughts.

By the time we came back home it was around 4:30. Checking my mail, I see that my boss William had mailed 4 times at varying intervals asking me to submit one of the deliverables. Actually, before leaving our place I had dropped in a mail asking for a document which I needed to complete it and I thought in the morning I could do the stuff and send him. I immediately drafted a mail and sent him the docs. Within few minutes I had a reply asking for few corrections. My goodness, have I been working with Zombies? Na, just kidding. But still, this was way beyond normal limits. I mean, I further had 3 more mail exchanges with him. He had coherent replies all along.

The time swept past 6:30 A.M and we saw no point in sleeping. We then set out to explore Paris starting with Louvre, Muse De Orsay (which we skipped), Arch De Triumphe and to end with Eiffel Tower. That’s how the first day ended/started.

A Weekend to Remember -I

2011-03-19T15:22:00.001+05:30

A bit into Flashback-

It was sometime in last October through gtalk/phone that Nikmo told me about his plans to come to Paris as he was about to take some apprentice course at Spain in the coming March. This was the time when my plans were just about to kick off and I was all set to sail in November. Though I was very excited I had also some stupid thought that since my assignment would be of 6 months starting November, I feared I might miss him. You see, some bizarre thought in my mind told me that March would come after April and actually felt really sad. Furthermore I wanted to talk to Kishor/Pranav (my TL/Manager) and ask them if I can extend my trip by 15 days just so that I can meet Nikmo who was scheduled to come March 9th. It was only when I discussed this with none less than my dad I got the wake up call. This added on to my Legendary absent-mindedness in my family and they still talk about it for now.

Anyways, it felt like a long time then. As months passed, days started getting near to my Paris trip, even the one and a half month for his arrival felt as if there is a year in between. Somehow by being away from the thought that he was going to come soon, it felt I could enjoy the feeling of waiting and reunion for much longer time. Now he has come and gone just like that. Everything has happened and it has been one of the most memorable days of my life being with him on those 3 days. The last week has been the most hectic week and I couldn’t pen down my thoughts as I hoped too.

Pre-Homecoming -

March 9th was no ordinary day in my life, not when Nikmo is coming anyway. That whole week we had been literally pushed to the limits for the work. As they say, when things are supposed to go bad, everything comes stumbling down. I had issues to deal with in all the segments of the projects, some of which were quite stable until then. Just a day before I was expected to take leave half day my ever so charming and as cunning as a Fox, William (my current Lead) had in one of our meetings almost convinced me to make my leave a half a day one. Through his nice persuasive arguments, gently reminding me about the project commitments, the pressure from above, the dependencies of other teams, the urgency of the tasks, what not, everything in the book, he got me to agreeing to let me come work up till 1 or 2 in the afternoon and then push off. Soufir, another colleague of mine, rightly says he is the perfect Businessman and he gets what he wants. Though I put a brave front agreeing upon everything I wasn’t happy inside. I worked frenetically on Wednesday closing upon as much as I can. I just can’t see this happening. It is one of those unspoken principles that if one had to chose between Project and Personal life, one needs to do justice to his bread and butter. This time I was desperate to break this one for one single time. I was ready to be their slave and work my ass off for the rest of my stay here excepting this one day. I was feeling restless and unhappy. The nest day around afternoon the situation stayed the same. I didn’t want to tell any of this to Nikmo through mails and start off his welcoming to Paris in disappointment.

Around 5:30 we had another meeting for the status updates. These are never short and I was feeling tensed and my mind was elsewhere altogether. I was supposed to catch Nikmo by 7:30 at airport. And then a miracle happened. It seems somehow because of the varied works I was handling, William had a talk with powers that be and convinced them that our team needed one more day to give the deliverables. So we had our deadline postponed by theoretically one day but in actual over the weekend. I was so overjoyed that I want to jump and hug William and everybody around. He did it and I have much more tremendous respect for him.

Frankly when worse comes to worst, I knew it was just matter of half a day that I would be losing. We still had 2 and a half days to look forward to. But thank god, it didn’t and William came to my rescue. The trip would definitely not be the same with that half day gone. It was the most unexpected and completely unplanned days ever and the way it went was just about perfect.

Windows Live Writer

2011-03-11T11:23:00.001+05:30

Woah..I still can’t believe MS has think kinda thing!!!

So there ..did it.. Lemme see the results..

Courtesy – Mote!

Boating on the Seine River

2011-03-05T12:33:00.005+05:30

If you look at any website that details about the Tourism in Paris, you would find one of the must see items to be 'Boating on Seine River'. These services are offered by many Cruise companies here and have the boats moving around every hour from one of the boarding points bordering the Seine River.

Seine is a river that runs right in the middle of Paris. It connects major tourist attractions and so through this boat ride a viewer gets the pleasure of seeing all things in an hours time and enjoying the cruise as well.

Last week we had been to one such cruise and I would say I was highly disappointed with it. I wanted to be on the cruise in the evening time to enjoy the city at night. My room mate argued that if it is in the night we will hardly be able to take the pictures and its not worth it. The same argument has been concurred with my lead Nicolas who said you gotta visit both the times, one in the daytime , once in the night. So I didn't argue much and went on with it. So around 3:30 P.M we reached the Beatuex stop at Eiffel.

We saw many boats parked across the shore line and there was nice cool breeze all around. First after getting the tickets, when you enter they ask you to pose for a picture. These are not for you, mind you. These pictures are meant to be taken for advertising their cruise all round the paris. Folks, anytime you see a picture of me and my friend in a mock boxing pose pasted across the walls of a Bar or Brasserie/Motel/Gare don't freak out. Its definitely us.

The boat has two sections. First half is fully covered with glass domes having room heaters in it and the other end we have open seating arrangement. There are no fixed seats and anybody can get seated anywhere or keep moving around once the cruise starts. Beside every seat you have a a huge arm-length device with a speaker and some dialing options numbering from 1 to 9 placed in a nice holder with a wire like extension that you can easily pick up and put it to your ear while sitting. Each number corresponds to one language 1 for France, 2 for English etc. As the cruise proceeds you can listen to the running commentary by pressing the appropriate options. You are foretold in the beginning that the commentary would be on at the prominent places.

Anyways, as we reached some nice places, we were torn between two choices - should we listen to the commentary or try getting the pics. When I say try getting the pics, I really mean 'Try', because until and unless you have those SLR cameras the ordinary compact ones are not worth a dime. You cannot get the whole shot in a nice angle. And top of that you have the boat too coming in the background. What happens is this as boat approaches some place really nice we sit down, listen to the commentary and then go about photo business. These are the times when announcements are made that there is going to be commentary. There are times when there is no announcements but commentary would be still running.

From time to time you would be hard pressed to check if something is running or not. By the time we realized the cruise is over, I got a feeling that we had been missed out on few of the places like - Arche De Triumphe for instance. We didn't see that and nor did we catch Statue of Liberty as promised in the cruise map. It was a very dissatisfying feeling. Firstly though we did get to see some of the magnificent monuments such as Louvre, Eiffel, State Building, Notre Dame the feeling doesn't last long until and unless they give a pause to let people sink in the commentary and take photos. This need not be a very long pause of course, even a 2-3 minutes stop is sufficient. Secondly the pictures as already mentioned above doesn't do real justice to the way they are meant to be taken.

Overall my conclusion is this. Paris is called City of Lights for a reason. All throughout the city, you would see mind numbing varieties of lamps, with modern bulbs inside. Every monument has been adorned with highly researched planned arrangements of light to enhance the glory and rich history that they present. In light, (pun intended) of this I strongly feel one should take the cruise in the evening, layback and enjoy the splendour that the city has got to offer. Since you know the camera is worthless to you to be in the picture, you will better start focusing on places along with the commentary. That's a win-win situation if you ask me thereby enjoying the whole cruise MUCH more.

Again, I don't completely want to rule off going in the morning excepting one needs to take a lunch cruise/private party kind of boating trip. That would be somewhere around 55 - 100 Euros. With these options you are given appropriate breaks and the cruise is much longer. I stuck to the 10 Euro thing and its not worth it.

I await Nikmo to come and make sure he enjoys the way it is meant to be. Eagerly waiting for the next weekend to make the trip again.

Here are some of the pics -

Bauteux Parisians - supposedly the best

About to get into the boat

Louvre Meuseum

Captial State Building

Near Champs - Elysse

My Culinary Experiences - I

2011-03-03T02:22:00.002+05:30

Barring our first week in Paris where we had a luxurious stay at hotel, we have been cooking for the last 4 weeks every alternate day. Initially after coming into the apartment seeing that we are not having any electric cooker or pressure cooker that I had been used to cooking it felt like a great hindrence. Adding to the misery our stove is an electric one. If anyone has not have worked with electric stove, don't expect oil to spurt or anything like that. It takes lot of time to get the actual burn. Its all over now.

Coming to me and my cooking. I gotta mention about one special person apart from my mom who has influenced lot of my cooking skills. He is someone who after reading my post about cooking looked for his beloved name on my earlier post (Ctrl+F). That's mote a.k.a nikmo. He had tremendous energy when it comes to cooking. Unlike me he doesn't believe follow recipes to the book. He just gets it. Of course there must have been a lot of cooking experience behind it. What I love about him is the excitement with which he gets down to business starting with the shopping for ingredients, cutting the vegetables, marination and finally cooking. There used to be weekends specially planned for boozing with his chicken as the main dish. I am definitely inspired by him and want to reach his levels. I hope I do.

Anyways, here are the dishes I cooked so far -

Emoticons & Expressions - Lost in Translation?

2011-03-02T02:30:00.005+05:30

Have we really lost the way to express our feelings through words without resorting to emoticons? Can't we derive simple pleasure of knowing the person's opinion and feelings behind their writing just by grasping their meaning? Why have all these smilies become so darn important all of a sudden?

I consciously try to ensure there are no emoticons in my posts. I have failed in it already as I recall now typing this that the post about the cooking had a smiley. Be it the comments, posts, chat, everywhere we come across this and inadvertently use. Limited usage is always good but over and above that it becomes really meaningless.

Apart from that I start seeing some posts that goes like these -

soooooooooo cuteeeeeeeeeee

awwwwwwwwwwww

schweeeeeeeeeetttttttt

yippieeeeeeeeeeeeeee

These are mostly seen on girl's posts. Not all the time of course. Even then can't we "stress" our feeling through quotes or LOVE something with caps? or simply with Capital letter?

Since this is all about the way the language is getting out of hand, another thing that I feel people can really start adopting is changing the way they chat especially sms style. Words like smthg, LFMAO, ROFL, and many other which I am not able recollect. Trust me folks, conversations become much more pleasurable when written in full. Very recently I had a conversation about this with Joe on the same topic. I mean not exactly about how we both agree upon this being bad or anything. It just came up in our discussion. I am not able to recollect the context but ultimately his side of argument was that in sms what he typed was perfectly valid and that it was my lack of common sense making me not understand what he wanted to convey. Seriously, that was the time it struck to me to write this post.

Amit Verma has a wonderful take on the same subject and can be found here - link. Thanks to one of his posts /Jai Arjun's posts I realized exclamation is a single time occurrence of your shock or suprise. So there is absolutely no difference between writing once! or writing 10 times!!!!!! The latter if you look at with this small trivia I just said seems utterly waste and devoid of any sense, doesn't it?

I really hope people change and become more adept at making nice, meaningful way of expressing their feelings.

Facebook - De-Addiction

2011-03-01T00:52:00.004+05:30

I have a very urgent task to complete by tomorrow morning for which only 20% of the work is done and here I am sitting at home writing this blog. The point is Facebook has literally taken the fun out of my writing, my thinking, my activities and my priorities. By writing this blog I want to declare upfront I wouldn't be FaceBook'ing for at least 2 weeks from now. Let me see how hard is it gonna be.

Only few days back I observed Sruti Puli being absent from Facebook totally, like pfff, gone up in the air. She was die hard FBian liking the posts, posting the comments, posting videos, all in an instant from her net connected phone. I don't know the reason behind her absence but I am willing to bet she wanted to get rid of FB and experience 'real' life. I always believed the self-control comes from within and it should not be forced upon. Liking cutting the cable connection, stopping play time, stopping movies and many such things that parents resort to in controlling their children and making them focus on studies. My parents didn't believe in such restrictions. Mom was in control of all our studies and she had a very proper way of going about it. Exams or no exams all days were treated the same. We had proper 2 hour play time, then studies , movie in the night (on a weekend) and then sleep.

Holidays was a different matter altogether. During exams time we automatically cut down the play levels as for one you see no children coming out to play. Also, the fear of exams, tension and many other things are on your mind that you hardly care about losing your playtime. As we grew up, we were left on our own to make the decisions. Excepting for one time when my mom forcibly took away all the novels in my room during Engineering 1st or 2nd year, I don't remember any time my parents being strict upon controlling us. That was the time when my reading was an all time high and I was going on a marathon reading sessions. From then on though, I learnt my lesson.

Fast forwarding to the present, FB has become an obsessive compulsion. Comments and likes started bothering me more than the work. Time to time I go to gmail and check the Facebook folder for any updates. If not the mail, thanks to the ubiquitous wi-fi, I keep refreshing the FB app for any new messages. Browsing through the news feed, commenting and then having some laugh on some of funny videos has become a very absorbing fabit. If I don't find videos, then I start going to friend's wall and browsing the archives. I somehow absentmindedly am seeking some solace from it. Its a very annoying and disturbing feeling to be living like this. Whenever I write/post/like I expect a wall post or Like. How stupid, isn't it? That's true and I am willing to accept that I am one. I don't want this burden anymore.

I want to force my self to quit this Fabit. I wanted to do this right from morning. But because of the fabit, I saw the messages and commented too. From then on all through my office time and beyond till now, I haven't even opened once. Of course, mail is providing the updates of lack of updates. That I will leave it alone. I know one more day, nobody will even bother. You see in such fast moving feeds, there is no point in going back to old topics and writing something.

Phew! Enough is enough, back to work!

P.S. Of course, not ALL is bad in FB. Its a different debate altogether for some other time.

First Best Chicken Curry

2011-02-26T04:38:00.006+05:30

Simple ...easy..Chicken Curry

Technically this is my second chicken curry. The first time I made it was in Bangalore. The only witness to the taste and make of the curry was Mr.Manyam Tej and myself. So not many can vouch for it and I doubt Manyam would give favorable review. Also I wasn't that satisfied with the output. It was slightly over burnt as the pieces were too large. Of course, the recipe again was from my mom. :)

This time around , in Paris, I got the chance to put into full force my culinary skills along with the super expert guidance of my mom. The result to say the least is super duper delicious..Just goes yummmmm......

Actually we were limited by so many factors, no ginger garlic paste, no cooker, no lemon which are considered essential ingredients. But I have realized moms are the greatest when it comes to do cooking with anything at their disposal. All you need to do is, for future reference, call your mom list out the ingredients you have, the time constraints, the cutlery, and they will tell you what to do in a jiffy.

Ok, here goes the recipe as given by mom 'word to word' (with slight alteration in formatting) -

Note: Steps 11 and 12 ought to be performed in sequence after Step 5. I had forgotten it.

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

Hi kar,

Since you don't have the basic ginger garlic paste the curry may not taste great. If possible get some garlic and ginger,lemon,tomatoes from the mall. In my language basic ingredients are onions,garlic,ginger,lemons, you must have them for your non veg curries.

Ok do the following as soon as you reach the house.

First take out the chicken frm fridge and keep it outside.
You finely chop 2-3 onions.
Add oil in a frying pan-5-6 spoons,
Add 6-8 menthulu,avalu,jeera and if you have pepper add crushed 7-8 of them
After they splutter add the finely chopped onions, fry them till they bit brown. remember this forms the gravy. So you can add more or less,
After 7-8 min of frying add turmeric,chilly powder and then the chopped chicken pieces.
Fry for sometime and then add little water , not a lot . Keep it cover for 15 minutes.
Then once it is 3/4 cooked, taste the gravy.
If you feel it is little sappaga (bland) then add some red chilly powder. Now you add that briyani powder one and half spoon.
Then let it simmer for another 15minutes.
In case you get ginger and garlic then just crush 3-4 pods of garlic and a small bit of ginger crushed. You add them when onions are fried along with chilly powder. In the end squeeze lemon.
If you get tomatoes then you can add after frying onions and before adding red chillies, (if you don't get those don't worry).
You can add little bit of cobara podi (its a powder mixture of dry coconut, salt, chilli powder, heated in oil) which I have sent. It may give some good flavour, add that when chicken is 3/4 cooked

ok bye

amma

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

My Sweetest and most lovable mom :)

Ingredients -

Chicken - 500gms

Onions - 4 Finely Chopped

Tomatoes - 2

Avalu - 1/2 Spoon

Jilakara - 1 Spoon

Chilli Powder - 1 1/2 Spoon

Biryani Powder - 1 1/2 Spoon

Ginger Garlic Paste - 1 Spoon

Even after such nice and details explanations I screwed it up. Here are the mistakes I did. Problem is I read these instructions 1 by 1. Fact of the matter is I did have tomatoes, paste of ginger and garlic (freshly made by yours truly by crushing and grinding them hard putting them under a flat surface , smashing them with a ladle) but did not use them. I had nicely cut onions, ginger-garlic, tomatoes and had them ready. I kept doing as it was specified in the above steps only to realize that sequence had broken and somewhere I lost the track. Anyways the final output has come excellent and we finished the whole gravy in just half an hour watching the wonderful movie - 'Ala Modalaindi'.

I am now very much confident of making this curry again and much more delicious. I realized I had put too much water instead of good number of onions. The trick of the trade always is onions form the base of the gravy. It ought to be properly cooked. Until the next best curry..Ciao!

Here goes the photos -

Chicken..of course..

Cumin seeds, Jilakara

Ginger Garlic Human Made Paste...Sadly unused

Tomatoes..another unused by product

Onions..the most important ingredient of all

86 and Counting - II

2011-02-23T02:42:00.004+05:30

No second part can be complete without the first. You are highly advisable to read the first part before dwelling into this.

Its been 25 days in Paris so far. The most prominent thing that I would want to point out is that I haven't been able to shed not a single gram of weight so far. I am telling this even though I haven't checked my weight. I feel so confident about it I am willing to be 100 Euros on it.

Its the conversion syndrome that ticks of for anyone who goes overseas I guess. This happened with me and the first week we were quite attentive of every detail. Everything looked darn expensive outside and so we stuck with noodles at night for all the days till we moved out from the hotel. Back at office, I relished every dish I could get hands on for lunch. We have a cafeteria downstairs at the office which specializes mostly in steak, bacon and sometimes fish (fillet). It's an absurd assortment of food - Fillings- french fries, palak paste, shoufle (some mashed vegetables), rataoutielle (yes, i had it, it wasn't as great as it sounded in the film), boiled potatoes, mixed boiled vegetables, Main dish - fried steak, fish, chicken, turkey. The actual rate of the food is around 4 to 5 euros. Since we aren't the main stay employees we are charged 4.9Euros as tax. So lunch always comes around 10 Euros. Frankly I am enjoying the food and have no qualms to continue and taste different varieties. There was this one time where the whole dish contained some fish gravy and boiled potatoes in it. My friend is having difficult time. He is a guy who doesn't eat anything other than chicken or sea food.

On the weekends we satisfied oursleves with McD or KFC. After the first week, we moved into the new apartments and have brought some groceries and have started cooking. I made upma, dal, noodles, alu fry, bendi fry, mixed vegetable curry, dal again. We have decided on the first day of our cooking that we are going to cook on the alternative days and we have been very good at maintaining it so far. Nothing much happened in the first two weeks of our stay with regard to food. Though we cut down on the intake from the office, it was only to be compensated by McD -1 Big Cantal, 1 Huge bag of French Fries, 1 500ml Coke guaranteed to fill the stomach.

I swear I have never eaten so much junk food in my life. Its scarily funny how we keep cribbing out this very fact and then went out the next day to eat the same junk as we were left with no edible choice at the office. Common, who can eat big boiled potatoes or boiled cabbage or spinach with steak, bacon or fish?

It is now the third week of our stay and finally we have managed to break the jinx and started carrying our lunch boxes. Though I am happy we are having our own ghar ka khana, the amount of rice we have been eating is just too much carbs. If I don't take some steps now my dreams of cutting down on weight would never be fulfilled and I will forever remain etched in guilt. The only other viable alternate choices that I see are fruits for the night and cereals/flakes in the morning. Of course I gotta do that damned exercises.

Apart from many other things I had dreamed of doing once I have come here, it is surya namaskaras and jogging in the morning. As temperatures here hover around 3-4 degrees, forget jogging, I couldn't even move myself out of that nice cozy warm bed. In the next few days let me see if I can do the former.

I have been promising Anu that I will jog for the last three weeks and I haven't been able to fulfil the wish though.

Toure Eiffel - A moment to remember.. forever

2011-02-06T05:20:00.008+05:30

"Eiffel Tower is just another steel structure. The real beauty of it is only at the night" If you hear anyone tell you that or anything remotely close to that and if you know him please kick them hard in the rear. Really hard. If you don't know them, well god help these lowly creatures. No, really I mean it.Only today I was I had this very interesting discussion with a friend of mine, Mihir, from Portugal about the splendid architecture beauty that Paris has got to offer.

Travelling around metro for over a week now and also keeping in view of the 40 minute journey from Airport, I can say its nothing like I have ever seen. I mean , seeing so many hollywood movies what stays with you is these jungle of skyscrapers all racing to tower one another. Paris is completely different. All the buildings are of mediveal type having arcs on the top and they are not skyscrapers. Maybe 40 -50 stories height and all are of same height. They all have this archaic feeling exuding the rich history. Be it the metros or the the restaurants or the apartments or I don't know most of the buildings are built barring glasses. It's not to say there aren't any buildings without glasses. There are but all these must have been only in the last century compared to 16th Century buildings, these are very new.

Every building here amazes me. With this renewed interest that has started gathering within me of the last one week stay, as I got to the place where I could see the edges I was completely dumbstruck. Oh God, what was I even thinking when I typed those words parroting other people's opinion that its just a steel structure in the morning! I was being so stupid. How could I even muster such thoughts? Comparing it or even calling it a steel structure is a abominable sin, if you ask me. There I was standing, holding my breath and taking in all the beauty it had to offer. I just don't have enough words to describe that beautiful feeling within seeing such an amazing monument.

All hail the French government who have taken extraordinary care to give the utmost benefit to every person to enjoy this wondrous structure. Of the four views it has got to offer, one side is completely left for the public, almost half a kilometer stretch. You see hundreds of people with innumerable varieties of cameras - slr's, compact, videographers trying hundreds of ways to be captured along with it. We even saw a newly married couple dressed in their suit and wedding gown come along with a professional photographer with this huge camera, tripod stand, some pads to enhance the lightening. They were there for almost 30 -45 minutes getting the right pose, moment. That has got to be the most romantic site I have ever seen.

With one end devoted to this, enough care has also been taken to make sure there are no other tall buildings in sight around it for about half a mile radius. What is left is this huge gargantuan structure that gets its glory in full attention. It feels as if someone from above has just cleared some space in the middle of a colony and erected the tower. It is just plain intimidating to look at.

Once the tower lit up, its view altogether is changed. But I would like to say now that the true and absolute beauty is when we can see it without any glitz and glamour. One needs to see it in all its naked glory without any embellishments.

I am truly blessed to have witnessed this Wonder of the world and this has been one of the most unforgettable experiences of my life.

My Adventurous Start to Paris - I

2011-02-05T03:21:00.004+05:30

If blogging has taught me anything, it is that memories are best captured when they are still fresh. There are so many wonderful things happening around me that I want to remember but often gets washed away in days that pass by.

Anyways my last days before starting off to Paris have been one such set of days which I want to recall. At the outset I would like to say no packing is ever complete without mom's hands. This is a statement everyone ought to remember. After vacating my room in December, I spent the whole month of January at my avva's place. It had been one of my best days at Hyderabad with Anu too being there. Though we never got to shop together for my trip, we had fun in just talking stuff, going out (It was kinda wierd being with so many girls on the day before Anu had to depart and when all their friends had come). On the first week of Jan, mom too had come just to see me. The kind of lashing I had got on that day after they saw the state of the room I had been in still rings in my ears. Since it was only a week or so I had been there, I didn't bother much moving things around and just kept them lying.

Again, the weekend being the only time I had got to do shopping and stuff, whatever I bought I just dumped it near the table. Just to be clear on what exactly the room contents were, I had 2 suitcases, 2 bags, 3 carry bags nicely kept at one corner of the room. I know I could have dumped the contents, removed the unnecessary stuff, arranged the neat ones. But the way they were at that moment, I didn't think it was nearly as ghastly as my says it was. Neither my mom or dad shared the same view though. For them, I had done something so terribly bad that I have shamed their upbringing. Damn, what on earth are girls genes made of anyway in handling such stuff? Why are their rooms always kept so darn well? I am pretty much sure, mote would have made a much bigger mess of the whole thing. As usual I didn't argue much and anyway they took upon the tasks themselves to clean it up. Well, why bother with the whole shouting anyway? Parents, I tell ya!

So a week after that mom had come again, this time with mission in mind. The task was simple but something I had been postponing just waiting for the confirmation date. The date of travel wasn't sorted out by then. With mom, no such thing happens, she wanted the things right away. It was one of THE best things we did - that is sorting out what is needed, what else to buy and removing the unwanted stuff nicely in one of the bags. She made me pack all the things in different bags. This relieved my mind completely and gave me so much clarity in all the coming days. I exactly knew what was needed - a adapter, one pair of jeans, one cap, one jacket.

These simple items turned out to be much more complicated than I had imagined. I had spent one whole day going around 3 malls in search of one pair of perfect jeans. I have become very bad at choosing things and I lost the ability to chose nice dresses - be it a pant, shirt, or jeans. Nothing I see seem good or fit. It was one of the most dazed shopping experiences in all times. This is something I have started seeing in myself of late and its not a pleasent experience. Without anybody accompanying me, I feel I chose one of the worst dresses and I go into depression. My mind then goes blank. Anyways with such feeling, I put this on hold for the last day.

As the days went by and the date was set, the frenetic activities increased. With only few days to go I bought the suitcase of my choice. Fight broke out between my parents and me, details of which can be found in another blog. Cutting the story short and coming to the last day. This is how things stood.

The tasks pending from my end were -

Getting the universal adapter
Getting one pair of paint
Buying one extra pair of glasses
Buying torchlight
Get the Office laptop

There were much more. It turned out the weight wasn't enough. I still had the capacity to load 7 Kgs! Mom made sure every kg was properly utilized. With everything running so peacefully, it all went downhill once I reached office around 4:30. Everyone's eye literally was on my eye. Pranav, my manager, then dropped the bombshell by telling me to make sure I carry a medical certificate declaring that eye's stye was not contagious. I hadn't still procured the goddamn office laptop. It was 6:30 in the evening. My backup was not yet done. All these was just creating havoc in my brain. ...

To Be continued...

P.S. I am so tired right now. I have the much more important task of documenting my Eiffel Tower Trip. Will come to this again sometime soon..

Performance, Pressure and Appraisal

2011-01-20T11:32:00.003+05:30

It's been a great year at Accenture and looking ahead the next 5 months at Paris promises to enrich my experience further. The real worry though is what kind of life I am looking ahead. Having 4+ years of experience I am reaching the dangerous zone of "5+" where people have larger expectations of your work and personal life. While some insist "just B.E. is not enough" there are many countless voices that continuously haunt you to be career focused, smart and highly intelligent making enough moola to become a marriage material. These are mainly influenced by your peers or friends.

It is a very challenging path ahead and am eagerly looking forward to it. I have always believed goal setting, career focused, excelling in skill-building were the norms for some deranged front benchers for whom life is all about studying and getting good marks. The only mantra that I have carry forwarded so far in my career has been to be put my best efforts to accomplish my task and get it before the deadline.I have more or less succeeded in this goal. I am fortunate to work under Great managers (Mahidher, Julie, Mohit) who have helped me shape my decisions and have given critical but constructive feedback whenever I was at fault.

The last year at Satyam if there was one constant that constantly pushed me to excel and relearn has been e-Pulse. It pushed my thinking and writing abilities. Every edition has been challenging right from getting the articles, writing editorials, tea interviews, editing and finally publishing them. It did come to a stage where I severely let down my manager. Though the message of my under performance and lack of dedication to the project came from other source and not directly from him, I felt truly guilty and vowed to respect the project rules. I continued to deliver things on time and fine quality.

Times have changed. It no longer feels satisfied to be content with the work delivered. The rate at which people are moving ahead with careers be it moving up the ladder (Chitti), winning accolades (Sindu, Ananya) , publishing papers (Joyda, hats off man, George) or jumping to make the most of themselves (Srinu, Hari) has shook me out of my stupor. There is a constant need to excel and one needs to do it whole heartedly. We cannot afford to be stable and satiated. Seeing my dad or my aunt who have this tremendous zeal and outlook towards life, its high time I sincerely acknowledge my lackadaisical attitude whiling away all the precious time in office. I wish people at Accenture would add google reader to its blocked sites, or nytimes, or imdb. The whole first half of the day gets wasted in non-stop surfing around bloggers, tech websites and news. What is more wasteful is I am not able to remember most of what I felt awed about or read. The satisfaction, the joy and the knowledge that I gain by reading so much is just wasted for nothing.

To top that the time to perform is literally ticking. It is that time of the year where anxious and frenetic movements by other peers need to be doubly analyzed and kept guard. It's no bloody coincidence such heartfelt post is being written by me. Folks, its appraisal time. Back at Satyam, it was easy to fill those 6 P's and 5 R's and keep your fingers crossed on the outcome. Promotion was as hazy a term as say 'malnutrition'. It's a thing nobody gives a second thought. At least I didn't. You see its an unwritten rule that says 'No matter what you do, how you do, how fast you do, your fate is pre-determined'. Thankfully things here are different at least in terms of things that need to be showcased. Let me start off by saying in minds of people the unwritten rule persists and I am neither denying or accepting it. But the way it is showcased differs and you know exactly where you lack and where you stand in comparison.

First, in every weekly meetings, our TL never fails to mention what lies ahead and what we need to achieve to raise above the bar. Terms like 'action items', 'asset creation', 'knowledge sharing' are grilled and suddenly you have the feeling you have done absolutely nothing at all. Such discussions around the very folks against whom you are to be judged brings sweat down the spine. To top that the appraisal system forces you to label your own targets under three categories, People Developer, Value Creation and Business Operator. If you are good at what you do, namely anything with respect to the project, you have done your BO right. The problem is everyone gets this part right with full marks. It's what we achieve in other two metrics that creates a differentiating factor. People then become more secretive, more recluse and more competing. Though I dislike such atmosphere, there is nothing I can do but become one like them. The heat is on big time. I see all of them doing something or the other like white paper, test automation, submission of tech articles on kx. Just to satiate myself and partly because it's the truth I would like to say they got lucky. Lucky because some of the things they wrote came about because they faced troublesome issues in solving their bugs for performance. This inturn led to some knowledge enhancement which then became asset. Not groundbreaking asset but an asset nonetheless. I am not trying to berate them but it is just that some of the issues we faced had more to do with getting the product right and not much on performance front. So, I don't have any to showcase.

Coming to researching on various aspects of SSIS, it is still in the making. I am not finding noteworthy things to write about. Time is running out. Pressure is mounting. It's no coincidence that I am writing this at a time like this just to set the ball rolling. I completely agree with Deepak, when he says now is the time when we need to spend more time , day and night to up the ante and prove to others that there is more to us than just the job.

And yes CAMS, how in the world can I forget that. Unlike Satyam , here you get paid quite substantially a bonus for the unique skill set collectively called 'Hot Skill'. Every year an interview is taken by someone at highest level of skill (called P4 or SME). They guage you at various aspects of it and assign a grade. It is incumbent on one's part to better it lest you find yourself poorer by almost 6k every month. I was completely bowled over the first time I heard about it. I respect the company more for such endeavorer which is a win-win situation for both company and the employee.

I think I should be looking at the whole thing in different perspective. Putting aside the appraisal, the HSB, the peer pressure, isn't it high time, as I stated somewhere above, that I realize I need to better my career? Why do I not have the same zeal of a tireless programmer constantly looking to learn new things and become a expert? In the long run, aren't these what sets you apart from million others? Knowledge is divine and the day one doesn't reinvent and prepare for the future, is the day when one should accept you are no longer fit to fight for the top place. One should definitely possess a passion and goal. I pray I don't fall the victim and become a worthy individual.

Last Day at Madhapur

2010-12-31T07:56:00.001+05:30

Last Day at Madhapur. So many memories of the past one year are flashing by - late night walks just for the heck of it, dining at MRCB, hangouts with Nikmo or Murali at KVKD, binge weekends mixed with philosophical discussions overseen by special guests Niks, Raja Vardhan, late night movie/marathons with Nikmo. The first half of the year has been even more memorable where every week whisked by filled with so many activities - a compulsory movie followed by running around malls eating at new places trying different outlets, every morning breakfast meetings like the hit squad from 'Thank You For Smoking', partial gymming. I will miss all of these.

Though my dad feels I have been spending exorbitant amount staying at 3rd floor, I feel I have had one of the best times of my life with best people around. I loved keeping the music on everyday before I finish my bath, cooking late and most importantly it was big enough to hold at least 7 people when it matters especially during binging. Given a chance I would like to come back again and stay at this place.

The last few months though with everyone having parted ways to explore their avenues, the fun and fizzle hasn't been the same. I never thought I would be going to watch movies at theaters all alone but it happened.

Before it gets too senty, let me just say the bottomline is - Life is not same with friends around. Though there are comforts, if there are no people to share or hangout life is a like camping in a deserted island. That's how its been for the last few months.

Let's see how it turns out say 6 or 8 months from now.

Au Revoir - Madhapur

86 and Counting!

2010-12-28T22:04:00.003+05:30

It's official now - I am full blown 86 Kilo weight dumb headed, fat and obstinate pig. Having checked my weight at the Office gym showing the needle dangerously oscillating between 85 and 87, I felt very depressed to say the least.

It all started in the evening going to have tea with Anup walking beside and casually telling me "kya dude, bahut fat ban rahe ho". Now, had it been say a month back I would have just replied back with a "Chal na yaar..". This wasn't so. It's been only a week since I heard the same comment from none less than Kishor, the guy whom I interact with at least three times a day. I had just laughed it off and made up silly excuse like "Naa..its because of the shirt man". Just to reassure myself I had secretly confided it to Joe and sought a second but firm opinion. He shook his head, smiled a little and said "No dude. Frankly I don't see much change. You are just like before. In fact I don't think you are fat at all, you are just perfect".

Okay, the last sentence I made up. But the point is he totally convinced me and rested my fears of not validating my weight on measuring scale. I also left it at that, until now. Anup told the exact same thing today and Deja Vu. It stuck on me and in full ferociousness I made up my mind to find the truth. It was the most painful thing ever to witness. I am both glad, sad and mad about myself for succumbing to such a gallantly stupid act of seeing the weight.

Oh God! What have I done. Is this what they called 'End Of the Days'? Is the sky really falling on my head? Is 2012 a reality? Am I destined to die Obese? So many thoughts are clinging on my mind. Having been with two roomies who adored daru and dum like their second skin, who gave a rat's ass about their being fat, the determination to limit food or contain health was yanked out of my feet leading to acts of obsessive eating disorder. This is without doubt one of the worst days of my life. Period.

Compounding the problem is my pea sized brain thoughts like "As I am going to Paris, As I am not going to get anything to eat, As I am not going to eat Biryani, Chicken Noodles, Rice, Sambar, As I am not going to have burgers as and when I wish" etc. I have binged non-stop the last week and a half starting from Rajhmundry Biryani, Chicken Curries with full plate rice, Vada, Masala Dosa glistening with Oil, Curd with Sugar - all these and much more are happily settled at both sides of my bulged tummy.

A small confession -

I knew I was 86 much before this day when I had checked my weight at Nikhil's place on December the 10th - Sindu's Wedding day! That's like 17 days ago. Thanks to the morons Hari and Nikhil, who both agreed and reassured me with false statements yet again after checking their individual weights that the machine indeed was showing 2Kg's more. I was actually content being 84, you see.

Chrome Gets a App store!

2010-12-08T10:43:00.002+05:30

Woah...I come to office, logon to Reader and what do I see? Google Chrome store is up and running. Yeah! This is just so freaking awesome. This might be just a teaser to the real thing that Google have been up to since this February's announcement of Chrome OS.

My first impressions -

Not many apps
Can't browse through apps on first page of the sections like 'Featured', 'Popular' without using 'All'. Again this probably is due to not many apps being there
No Categories under the Themes! That's ridiculous and absolutely unacceptable. I mean, at least they should be bear minimum - Most downloaded, Top Rated, Editor's pick etc should be there under each one.

That's about it for now. What I fail to understand is why is it that Google never seem to reach the level of sophistication and the richness of look and feel that Apple does. Be it the Android marketplace or this one, it feels as if this is akin to comparison of Linux vs Windows (or again Apple :)). With such great capabilities of utilising Adobe Flash/Flex Google should be going great but instead what we see are sub-standard apps and not much variety as Apple does.

Android, the so-called greatest competitor to Apple, sadly hasn't caught on any great feelings as I have for apple. Neither do I see any major websites poublishing the best apps for Android week on week or Day to Day. Every major company I look either in books, mags, or newspaper proudly claim to be part of Apple. Only few are on Android.

I really hope days from now this scenario would change and let this competetion benefit all rather than one community.

Again coming back to Chrome apps, New York Times has just blown me away with their app..Here is the look and feel of it - Just mind blowing!

How many of these have you Read?

2010-12-06T10:04:00.005+05:30

I have come across this snippet from browsing some of my favorite blogs and couldn't resist making a post of it. BBC apparently has believes most people have read at least 6 out of these 100 books. Let me see how I score up -

Taking a cue from other sites, here is what I think can be done if you are going to post it and move it along -

Instructions:

Look at the list and bold the ones you love.
Add a '+' to the ones you LOVE.
Star (*) those you plan on reading

1 Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen *

2 The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien

3 Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte

4 Harry Potter series - JK Rowling

5 To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee

6 The Bible

7 Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte*

8 Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell*

9 His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman

10 Great Expectations - Charles Dickens*

11 Little Women - Louisa M Alcott

12 Tess of the D’Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy

13 Catch 22 - Joseph Heller

14 Complete Works of Shakespeare - read some, but not others...

15 Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier

16 The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien

17 Birdsong - Sebastian Faulk

18 Catcher in the Rye - JD Salinger

19 The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger

20 Middlemarch - George Eliot

21 Gone With The Wind - Margaret Mitchell

22 The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald

23 Bleak House - Charles Dickens

24 War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy

25 The Hitch Hiker’s Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams

26 Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh

27 Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky

28 Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck

29 Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll

30 The Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame

31 Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy

32 David Copperfield - Charles Dickens

33 Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis

34 Emma - Jane Austen

35 Persuasion - Jane Austen

36 The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe

37 The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini

38 Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres

39 Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden

40 Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne

41 Animal Farm - George Orwell *

42 The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown

43 One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez

44 A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving

45 The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins

46 Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery

47 Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy.

48 The Handmaid’s Tale - Margaret Atwood

49 Lord of the Flies - William Golding*

50 Atonement - Ian McEwan

51 Life of Pi - Yann Martel

52 Dune - Frank Herbert

53 Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons

54 Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen

55 A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth.*

56 The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon

57 A Tale Of Two Cities - Charles Dickens

58 Brave New World - Aldous Huxley

59 The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon

60 Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez*

61 Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck*

62 Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov

63 The Secret History - Donna Tartt

64 The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold

65 Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas

66 On The Road - Jack Kerouac

67 Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy

68 Bridget Jones’s Diary - Helen Fielding

69 Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie*

70 Moby Dick - Herman Melville

71 Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens

72 Dracula - Bram Stoker

73 The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett

74 Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson

75 Ulysses - James Joyce

76 The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath

77 Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome

78 Germinal - Emile Zola

79 Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray

80 Possession - AS Byatt.

81 A Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens

82 Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell

83 The Color Purple - Alice Walker

84 The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro

85 Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert

86 A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry

87 Charlotte’s Web - EB White

88 The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom*

89 Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Sir Arthur Conan Doyle

90 The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton

91 Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad

92 The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery

93 The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks

94 Watership Down - Richard Adams

95 A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole

96 A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute

97 The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas

98 Hamlet - William Shakespeare

99 Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl

100 Les Miserables - Victor Hugo

That makes my count as 17. Great, I passed the test. Now, let's see the ones I want to read -

Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen *
Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell*
Great Expectations - Charles Dickens*
Animal Farm - George Orwell *
Lord of the Flies - William Golding*
A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth.*
Love In The Time Of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez*
Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck*
Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie*
The Five People You Meet In Heaven - Mitch Albom*

Total books planning to read - 10.

To be honest, there are good number of books among the list for which I have seen the film versions but I guess it doesn't count. Going back to the list again, though there are so many I have missed out, there are some I definitely would not want to read for sheer abstractness of the contents in the novel. Here it goes -

Anna Karanina - Leo Tolstoy
Gone with the Wind - Margaret Mitchell (I couldn't sit through the movie and I am not sure how long I will stand with the book)
War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy ( Have read it 3 times, haven't gone past 10 pages)
Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky (Have read it 5 times. Maximum pages reached -35 pages. Have also been challenged by Adi that he would give anything if I can complete the book. I certainly bow down to his word.)
Then there are Children's books like - Narnia, Winnie the Pooh, Alice in Wonderland,Charlie and the Chocolate Factory etc. (These books are past my age and I know I won't enjoy them. As simple as that.)

Writing this post has rekindled the spirit in me to pick up the reading habit again. It's such a great feeling just thinking about it.

Let me know your score folks either here or in FB. :)

Reminiscing the movies and the task ahead

2010-10-03T20:15:00.005+05:30

This month seems to be one hellava month for movies this year. Here goes the list ( in order of my preference of watching them, high to low) -

Aakrosh
Rakta Charitra
Khaleja
Jhoota hi Sahi
Alla Ke Bandein (for Naseerudhin Shah)
Anjaana Anjaani
Robot

Unfortunately I get to see Robot tomorrow, the least preferred one. That's quite a sizable list of movies to cover. Then there is matter of backlog that I need to cover - Aisha, Udaan, Peepli Live, Phiraaq. That's not all. I have this constant nagging in back of my mind to cover all the unseen movies of my movie database. I am pretty much sure every movie collector must be going through this. You see , it quite happens we download movies based on all the good talk, reviews, critical acclaim etc etc. and then we rest it. It's as if the task of downloading is seen as watching the movie itself. It wasn't always like this.

I remember the initial times, when speeds were of the range 30Kbps, I used to wait anxiously for the movie to complete and immediately watch it. With greater speeds the onus is more on making effective utilisation of the money spent and doing justice. Anyways, now with Mote gone and Sindu out of circulation, the movie watching interest isn't the same anymore.

At such times I really miss him and the gang quite a bit. Sundays and Saturday's have definitely dried up. I now see movies mostly by myself and each has been a disastrous one - Gaayam 2, Dabaang, Subhapradam. Almost all my time is taken up by selecting some random movie from HD and watching it thereby severely affecting my book reading habit, blogging, pursuing other interests like watching plays etc. Putting my heart out in post like this does help me time to time to realize that change should be within and that no one is responsible for how we go ahead from now on.

I need to pull my socks up and plan my weekends from now on before I go completely crazy. First and foremost change is to get out of my wrecking home. Anyways I have 5 more days to find out how it goes.

Coming back to movies, hopefully the ones I await, especially Rakta Charitra and Aakrosh would live upto my expectations. Its been quite a while since I have seen real hardcore action movies in Hindi/Telugu.

A Random Recurring Thought put into practise

2010-09-10T03:15:00.004+05:30

3'0 clock in the night. That should be enough to learn about my desperation to blog. Nikmo starts blogging, Pavi fires on blogging and then I come across Zohra's blog along with present-not-present Nikhil's blog. That's the limit, do I need any other bigger kick than that?.As I keep subscribing to bloggers and rearranging my Google Reader Settings, I am just forgetting the basic objective - bringing back my true self. Why the hell can't I just blog?

First I wanted to blog on the unbridgeable age gap between parents and the GenY (or is it Z now?). I had such a tough time going through so many multitudes of emotions in trying to convince both the parties my bro and my parents what is cool and what is uncool! Every time it inevitably landed with heated arguments spoiling the whole day. The whole marriage shopping experience is an exercise I wish to forget but am glad I faced it. It just upped my biological senses to handle unreasonable arguments.

Then the whole marriage saga- never ending adventurous bus journey before the marriage , the euphoric family dances (reminiscent of Arvi's Sangeet Marriage), my dazzling Sherwani, the sumptuous dinner. THE marriage can just take up at least 2 full posts.

What was next to be followed was a post on my promotion to SSE (Senior Software Engineer). Its been a highly rewarding 9 months journey into Accenture so far with equal shares of ups and downs. The entire culture, the atmosphere, the people around are so different and the feeling get to back to Bangalore among known people again, does linger time to time. I think that's how life is.

After all these, a post about why for the life of me am I getting addicted to watching movies day in and day out? Laptop has just become sort of a T.V. with my hard disk as the remote! Do the movies have power to suck your mind out of books, blogs, and recreational activities? Jeez..

So, here I am surmising all the posts that should really have been POSTS. The only non stop activity that goes round the clock in my blog though, which in no way am happy about, is a deluge of Spam comments flooding my mail box for two posts namely -

Folks, could you please help me how can I control the spam and disable only for these two posts of mine? I would remain eternally greatful. I strongly believe its because of the title themselves. So, apart from the absolute genious replies like 'change the titles', do let me know what to do? :)

Practise what you Preach..

2010-08-11T07:14:00.002+05:30

Of late I really started enjoying kosmic column of Economic Times. The 5 minutes of reading it puts me into a state of nirvana and I can feel the abundant positive energy flowing within. The column is mainly about 'you' and what 'you' can accomplish. In various ways it stresses the point that one should be in control of themselves, be it emotionally, physically or metaphysicaly. Then there is the fact that one should stop cribbing and start acting. The list goes on.

Apart from all this there is one essential thing that actually hooked me to it was, on one of the days, it explained about the persons who, even after finding the time they need, the resourses they crave for, are not willing to act upon simply because they do not want to. This ,it goes on to reason, is simply because those people actually are clueless when they realise suddenly they are not having anything to blame on. Its like one of those monster.com ads where a chef suddenly finds himself in a barber shop - a complete mismatch of reality and the dream.

Today, I can say I am one such unlucky guy who have succumbed to it. The last few weeks or perhaps months, I have had opportunities in plenty to act up on simple basic rule of reading one hour per day. I didn't. I just whiled away time watching movies, surfing net, reading blogs, what not. On the other hand the amount of advices I give and try to impress upon others like me is nothing short of sermon. I am nothing but a pathetic hypocrite and a loser who does not have any right to judge others until and unless I clean my dirty linen myself.

Until then I will not PREACH while I don't PRACTISE...

06-Jul-2010 - The Beginning

2010-07-05T23:53:00.004+05:30

I mark this day as the beginning of series of blog posts something akin to diary entry of the new life that's about to begin. A life where all the thoughts are going to be put into action (hopefully).

Goals -
1. Learning Analysis Services
2. Practising on LINQ for C#
3. Gymming in the morning
4. Less Surfing, more working
5. Clean up the damn room
6. No oil, no chicken,no rice

That's good enough. Will update the score in the night... :)

Update - (4), (6)
Score - 2

Tit For Tat...

2010-07-02T20:11:00.002+05:30

Talking to Nikhil today after he kept on repeatedly 'item' after every sentence it reminded me yet again of how something you do/say effects you in reverse. Its a very good lesson really. Quite long ago I had a similar experience with Nikmo.

We were coming from Lakdika pul to Madhapur and as sometimes I do very irritating to others, I hit him on the thigh. Just like that. And that's when he hit me back doubly hard just to get the point straight across - its not funny. He was actually in a very bad mood that day, and top of that, we had a argument about this too and was decided i would do no more. Anyways he won't be there for long to repeat it. Strangely that's what my heart thinks and nothing more about me not repeating it.

I guess time has come for another change in me i.e. not to call 'item' to anyone repeatedly that is. Its really really irritating..

Thanks Niks..- I dedicate this post to you..

Not so happy moments-in memory of my lappie..

2010-04-15T23:05:00.004+05:30

When you have the power it shows, When you are happy it shows, When you are sad it shows, but what about when you are really really sad, what then? I am not sure but I just don't know how to show.

Today marks the zenith of depths to my abnormal life. In an utterly bizarre manner I found out that my laptop battery has drained out completely and again it has come to a time where I might have to replace the battery altogether. That would mean shelling out of another 5000 bucks. There are so many things running in my mind and first and foremost thing is "Why me?". Was I duped? Was it how the HP batteries are meant to be. Last exactly a year before it goes pfff. I wouldn't mind using the laptop with the power plugged in. It is just that it starts getting heated up so unbearably hot, one can as well use it fry omelets.

Every thing I have touched upon have turned to dust. Not glorious kinda way but literally my choices of things have started hurting me big time. Right from my annual specs (spent 12k in 4 years), a worthless bike, a wonderful lost camera, a non stop pressure cooker laptop to my worthless job. Yes, I just don't get tired saying it - a worthless job. I guess I can proudly I am one of those wierdos working for a company which pays less than the formal company. What kind of incentive is that?

In all these aspects there is always the longing of better one, never satisfied with the one I have. IF only I could have tested and bought Unicorn, If only I didn't lose my camera, If only I could have regained my specs, If only I could have bought any damn laptop like Dell, Lenovo or anything other than HP, if only I could have stuck a little longer at Satyam, IF...IF..

The only two good remaining assets for me are my two precious hard disks and one lovely pristine IPod running its glorious 4th year. Hope they don't meet any bad fate. Fingers crossed.

Actually Just as I read this , i am feeling good. Some damn post for otherwise useless life with no goddamn goal to look at or the zeal to work at it..Depressing really..Time for DORK.

Regaining my senses - I

2010-02-22T00:33:00.004+05:30

Taking off from where I started off, I have successfully been able to steer clear from my distractions for one whole week without

Watching movies
Transferring movies
Downloading movies (I confess I dettered a little by downloading 'Kerala Cafe' for Nikmo. I still achieved my major objective though of not spending enormous amount of time digging for the next movie to download.)
All of the above intermixed.

It hasn't given me satisfaction yet, as my objective of spending quality time with books or blogs hasn't been truly realized. My work at office too was partly the reason as of late I have been coming back home late in the night. That also explains the 'Part I' of this post.

Watch out for part -II.

Vrooming on the wrong roads

2010-02-21T22:22:00.002+05:30

Right from the time I have come to Hyderabad I have had a very bad feeling about so many aspects - the job, the room, the cafeteria, the Axis bank and ego clashes with my peers. It took over a month to get over it and my focus on weight loss contributed significantly in shifting my forgivings.

Of all things that sucked the most was the time when I had to pay my HSBC bills. It so happens all of a sudden all top banks or maybe all banks in general have decided to remove the service of paying credit card bills online excepting their own. Finding a guy with HSBC savings account would be like finding fish in air. I know comparison sucks big time, so was my experience. I phoned at least 10 of the people I know to find some way, even if it involves extra 100 bucks payment. Tough luck.

With 1 day left for payment, I set off from work all the way from Hi-Tech city to Raj Bhavan road. That's almost 45 minutes journey in the hot scorching sun bearing the chaotic traffic. This has been the case for the last 3 months. Thats a productive loss of 4 and a half man hours for the company. ( not that I care so much to the detail) but the exhaustion, tiredness, helplessness and most importantly the frustration of not being able to doing things really hit me hard.

Of course, there are better ways of handling things-through cheques, friends or your own. For me though that was like giving up my way of life and moving on to entirely new territory. It might sound silly but its true. I hate change or adapting to change. Life had been so much simple for almost three years with ICICI or Citi and suddenly its just been snatched. Sadly the option of opting for Axis bank card necissitates a wait of 1 year. Screw Axis!

This is the 4th month running and I am quite comfortably placed to pay the bill. I have about 12 days in hand to implement one of the most easieset payment options of door to door cheque delivery (a service provided to few niche cities, Hyerabad being one such.) I am all gung ho for it and literally waiting to write my cheque off.

Well that was about my lousy journey to pay the lousy bill. What did prompt me though to write this up was my today's unneccesary adventure to Prasads for selling the unncessarily booked tickets for unnecassarily hasty oversite of my decision that anything would be possible. Its a long story, ain't got all night to write that. To cut it short, I wasted another 3 hours in my painful journeying ordeal.

In conclusion-
Total time wasted - 7 1/2 hours
Total Unnecessary Distance Covered- 110 Kms
Total Fuel - 2 Lts
Amount of frustration endured - Priceless.

There are definitely somethings money can't buy and no mastercard is not there every time either! I fervently hope better sense prevail and get me vroooming on the right roads.

What's wrong with me?

2010-02-15T03:26:00.003+05:30

I guess I am losing it. I couldn't even type my blogsite write for three times straight causing a slight panic attack, wondering if maybe, I mean may-be, I might have accidentally deleted my blog. Luckily I didn't. Just having finished watching one of the best House episodes of all time, I just for the life of me can't understand the way my life is turning out to be.

My addiction to movies is taking such a heavy toll that I am not able to concentrate or give in anything more than 0% to my life's priorities be it my work (the topmost), my aim (MS In US part) or my hobbies. The real ones, the ones that transport me to an imaginary world and make me feel to hug myself with joy. Books and blogs truly have always been my forte, something I did so naturally that I didn't need such rude awakening at times like 3:30 A.M. in the morning! Actually, I am really angry at myself and the only thing I can lay a finger on are movies and nothing but the movies.

Ever since I am done with completing at least 4 of my applications I started falling back on to movies as if the world is going to end if I don't complete my stack of unseen (which by the way are aplenty) movies. This process involves searching my goddamn hard disk, checking for the movies, only realizing that the last downloaded movies were somehow have been just for the record which pissess me off to no end. What do I do? I download the new ones which again are following the same pattern. Adding more heat to my already burnt up backside, I have bought a new hard disk (a real cutie) and every minute from my lappie on time to lappie off time, there are gazillion permutations and combinations of things that my darn mind calculates by itself to get things straightened up.

For staters, should I move the animation ones from old to new? Should I segregate the movies again in the same way as the old pattern? Should I not search each movie from IMDB, get the genres, create the appropriate folder and rearrange? When should I make an inventory of the movies-snapshot, program (exe), manual? How best can I share and achive the glory ("Oh-my-god do you really have all these movies? What are you? Why don't you open a library man?") ? Trust me folks, you find a guy/girl with over 750 gig of movies and stuff, the last thing I mentioned here, goes right in his brain all the time and you just don't know the kicks we get with such awe.

The last question I want throw up to the house - How can some of you guys be so disorganized and stupid to keep dumping the movies in folders and files in whatever shape they are in (American.Beauty.DVDRip.Xvid-Tornado[WT], 17 Again (2009) [DvdRip] [Xvid] {1337x}-Noir- WTH?). Anyways such stupididty puts extra work on me and that little extra means a lot in my mind. Today for instance I got a hard disk from Murali (nikmo's friend) and I spent almost half an hour renaming, reorganizing, rechecking, relabeling and finally dumping onto my hard disk. Not good, not good at all!

Oh God! Someone please help me. Save me from this addiciton, I want my life back. I want some quality time, not some stupid praises. Okay, here is the time the big oath comes out - I on this blog on this very post promise I will not watch any movie till this weekend on my laptop, nor involve myself in downloading or organizing or talking anything about a movie at all! Period.

Phew, That feels good. I hope I succeed. Adios.

'KAMINEY' - Utterly ruthless, beware

2009-09-04T09:22:00.006+05:30

Dhan ta naaaaaaa...ta na nana...Naa, it aint' the movie folks. 'KAMINEY' is the name I have given for my cricket team part of the EPL (Elsevier Premier League) contest. There were 4 teams in all and we bagged the 3rd place. An entirely different matter altogether. :)

As part of the team some of the things demanded were dress code, anthem and a team logo. In purusit of which I have touched upon one of the most toughest and highest form of creative form of writing, the one which demands hell of a patience and most imaginative minds. This in no way is a self-trumpet of my achievement (might be partly) but I sincerely feel writing poems is the most difficult task and with this small piece I hope I might try it again...Without much ado, here it goes -

The Anthem/Threat (You Decide) -

They call us the brutes...
Not Having an iota of a clue...
Tortured and tethered...
Rugged and haggard...
Eternally restless and dying with thirst...
Winning with Vengence...the only salvation!
Naam hai KAMINEY...
Dhan ta naaaaaaaaaaaaa....

And I proudly present our team Logo -

P.S. - Have already received good number of flak for using heavy words. So apart from that any general comments, I highly welcome it. And yeah, the lack of rhyming is done too

Namo-namaha

2009-09-03T10:19:00.003+05:30

2 months back, Hari had called me up and he said "Dude, suggest some team names for cricket" and then I was like "Ok, give me sometime.". That time went on from 10 minutes to an hour to the whole day and the next day and went on over months. By that time these guys finished their game and the team had already bagged 6th place out of 84 teams.

The point is it's becoming so hard to come out with jazzy names. Be it for your signin name for forums, social websites, team names, siggies, so many. Personally there are only two that I could muster - aquinn_21, yossarain(ya I know, it's yossarian and not yossarain). The former stuck with me for long time and was a bit popular too among folks at my college. Popular as in people know who the Quinn is kind. It's also my yahoo ID and goes without saying the period when it became popular and subsequently vanished into oblivion with G coming up. It sounded funky, looks cool and that's it.

Blog came along right at the end of 4-1 or beginning, not sure. Fresh out of Catch-22, one of the most profound books giving an insight into what a war really is about, gave rise to my next psuedo-name yossarain - a perfectly safe and unique name. I used it for all the sites to login from then on. Days went by and it was some article I read I realized the fad of having such names is a passe and it is high time we start valuing our own names. So true, indeed. That's our identity and it is YOU after all. No wonder Facebook looks so professional than Orkut with what some names like #~~@#$% or such kind just for the heck of it.

Yet, the need of a pseudo identity which means something, a creative YOU persisted. I confess I am still on the tryouts for good ones. So going back to the team names, I was literally stuck for sometime zeroing on one. I googled for names, got a list and it wasn't really what I was looking for. The taste of Indianness is missing. I called ahem ahem Hari and asked for it. Surprisingly he had a huge list of team names in alphabets and almost all of them were trite and expressionless. Doesn't have that aggressiveness and machoism I was looking at when you are naming a team for Cricket nonetheless.

Used my own brain and here are what I came out with. -
Crickit
Kaminey
Mean Machines
The Angels
Avengers
The Dark Knights (My favorite)
Phoenecians

I know excepting for Kaminey and Crickit, everything were again the bunch of tried and tested team names. MY team on the other hand liked none of these and they didn't have any suggestions either. 'Kaminey' was unanimously voted the best by 3 different third-party candidates and that clinched the deal. It was just the right word I was looking for and I damn well knew the mystique, the roughness et all that it creates.

What followed next was an anthem and a team logo (the next post). Well, I would just like to know all ya guys/gals out there do drop in any funky cool names you can think of be it a individual or as a team and do share your experiences in naming a 'name'.

Worst Poem...No Mood

2009-08-25T00:41:00.003+05:30

Life is strange
Have heck of things to do
Write SOP
No Mood
Write Sharepoint Intro
No Mood
Write Maghadeera review
No Mood
Search for Universities Financial status
No Mood
The 8 hours at office
No Mood

This is one of the most stupidest attempt at poetry and I suck at it. I don't care. I am having absolutely no mood to do anything at all! what the heck is wrong with me..seriously I am getting sick. I gotta be serious. No time left at all and I don't even know what LOR's my prof's or the PM's need to help me with. Hopefully tomorrow morning 6'0 clock, things should be clear

Fight the Fat - Abrupt Conclusion

2009-08-01T08:49:00.004+05:30

So much time has passed since the first day, 10 days to be exact. I regret to say the same kind of enthusiasm that I have shown i couldn't continue for the other days . I would have loved to though. All in all there has been no change at all excepting 1 to 1.5 Kg difference. I did as was prescribed to the dot with absolutely no cheating at all.

From whatever I read the 4th day is supposed to be the decider- the day when you see at least 3 Kg's off but nothing has happened to me. I don't know why and I don't want to know. So this is how it stands..

I Lost the bet.. 1 Mexchicken pizza with coke (around 100 bucks!) but most importantly I gained self-control and I feel mighty proud about it. A foodie like me abstaining from chicken, egg, junk whatever you want to call it for 7 whole days - a feat few of my folks are refusing to believe when I told them of the episode.

In all I would like to say if you guys/gals do follow this and if you get the same results as I did don't be disheartened.. remember you have gained the power to control yourself and that's the best anyone could ever ask for...Enjoy Maadi...

The Incredible era of Social Networking…II

2009-07-30T15:38:00.005+05:30

When this happened I got some sound suggestions asking me to get on the network bandwagon. A lot many things can happen and the traditional you-apply-i-select approach is past gone. One has to get in touch with the folks there, the community guys. Raise a few questions, get some insight into the developments going on. Talk to prof, find out about the R&D going on. In simple words “DUDE Grow UP, you just can’t afford to live alone…”

First and foremost I joined orkut, then brushed up all my contacts on Facebook which I had joined to keep up with my lieterary itinerary. And I am yet to begin any of those I have initially planned to do. A really sad irony, ain’t it? I know. Time is one of the reasons I can site but heck 24 hours is way too much time. Frankly I am not at all happy with the progress that’s happening and to be absolute frank again I digressed quite a bit...

This is about my findings. And here are some of the best ones I have come across after literally trying out and testing almost all the ones there. Believe me the list doesn’t end just yet. There are way too more and I will test them later. I do wonder though who in the world are going to use so many but I just hope these would fascinate you as much as it did to me….

Let’s start with

Kosmix - An incredible search site which brings news from almost all the major sites out there in whatever format you want - video, news, pictures, tweets. A little high on bandwidth but visually it’s mind blowing. Have been using it for quite sometime now. It just bloody rocks!!!

Del.ic.ous – hmmmm…yummmyyy…mouth watering eh? Ya I know it’s one of the biggies out there. But that was the first time I got the slice of the power in it.

Sphinn – In the same lines of digg, propeller, furl, etc it just sounds cool…AIn’t used it much though but time pass guaranteed.

Mixx – Your blend of the web says the tagline and it’s one heck of a site. No wonder CNN, Reuters, USA Today are some of it’s partners. All standard social rules apply. This is a must visit site.

Current – You see you don’t have to look far away for innovation. It’s there in everyday lives. This is one of the prime examples for it. Go for it…

Just to get the feel of how many there are I am going to list out ‘few’ of hundreds out there – BallHype, Blogmarks, Blinklist,Diigo, Furl, Fark, Faves, Hatena, Kaboodle, kirsty, Link-A-Gogo, Mister Wong, Multiply,Propeller, Simpy, Tip’d, Tumblr,Xanga,

Here are some of the major players – twitter, Facebook, Digg, LinkedIn, Technorati, FriendFeed, WordPress, Blogger, Add to BX, Google Bookmarks,

Then there are all sorts of innovation in search too that are trying to get at least 1% of market share of google. I have discovered there is also a site for these search engines too to search – AltSearchEngines. Through this I have found one of the coolest search engines ever - KallOut.

KallOut

is a application that needs to be downloaded and installed. With this you don’t need that search bar again. It’s the most unobstructive way to browse or search in the web. All one needs to do is highlight a word you want to search. You get a small icon like this. Hover the mouse over it and watch the magic unfold as you click on it and are welcomed by an open palette where your results will be displayed. This is just one part of the story though. The absolute essential feature that I have fell in love with this is it’s ability to integrate with IMDB. I faced this problem countless number of times especially, when I want to download movies – I copy a movie name, open up a tab, search the movie and then come back. That little extra effort always bugs. With Kallout all that is history.

Sadly though I am not getting the panels and all my results are getting displayed in a seperate IE window :( ... if any of you folks get this working as is shown in the window, please do let me know in the comments. I also mailed them twice, once through direct e-mail and once through the feedback form. Didn't get any response so far. Currently CoolPreview of Firefox is doing some wonders in my ways of browsing the net, but I would still love to have kallout.

In the mean time to get some cool special effects to make my blog much more jazzier I cought up on Zamenta which promises to do so much but I just couldn't get the whiff of it. I mean through firefox extension I tried beautifying it, but it just didn't work. Luckyily RWW came to my rescue and provided me with this beautiful thingy (software/web 2.0/widget/extension/call it whatever) Apture

which makes your linking life so easier and it certainly does wonders which I think you folks must have definitely been awed by now!

Just to be on the same tech side through these umpteen lazy hours here are some of the best sites about the Web technology, news and analysis. Mind you, not a day goes by without me reading through all these sites. Let me rephrase it all 90% of my day is spent reading all the articles being posted- a real tough job you know – so much information to assimilate and comments to go through. Anyways here goes the list…

Read Write Web – My current favorite. A pro-twitter, pro-apple, ambi-Microsoft website with tons of information with whatever is happening throughout the web world.

TechCrunch – Will let them do the talking – “as a weblog dedicated to obsessively profiling and reviewing new Internet products and companies.”

LifeHacker - Again Won't do much talk talk talk...coz this just hacks into your life with so much gyan vyan, it's just too incredible a site to let go..

Well, folks there ends my 2.0 journey...see you soon.. adios..amigos...

The Incredible era of Social Networking… I

2009-07-30T14:27:00.003+05:30

Very recently, almost a week now, I have become a relentless pursuer of the new upcoming sites/wikis/blogs/mashups – call it whatever you feel like. It all started with checking out few comments posted on one of the articles in Counter Currents. After I closed the window I clicked on the ‘Share This’ button and it was the first time I really paid close attention to all those tiny things listed out there. Then it was like -Common… gimme a break!..When does this stop? It’s like these things keep mushrooming and the end is no where in sight.

It’s quite interesting to go back in history and start from what actually was missing for someone to go onto networking. I mean first and foremost it started with chat. Every guy/gal you knew had Yahoo! . The fun of chatting was just too good to resist. Going into chatrooms with psuedonames, looking for a specific kind of people and ending up with ASL constantly. And then you may/may not realize that all the rooms are filled with these kinds. Some go in for the kill and might have been successful, that’s another story. Mails too played the integral part of communication. We so much needed it in exchanging notes, ppts, photos, etc. err, they still do? Ain’t it?

Well unknowingly my first brush with networking started with Orkut. You know back in those good old you-scrap-i-scrap-what-a-crap days , it was so much fun. Things started to simmer down, came out of the s’crap’s. Then my blog happened which again wasn’t serious networking per se. Still with few comments here and there, getting some readers (follower’s concept wasn’t there back then) kept me active. There was something missing still – the interactions were not fast enough, the blogs weren’t small enough and certainly the frequency was just not long enough to keep anyone hooked. But the immense happiness I get looking back at my old blogs or the times when I post new ones or the times I get comments (got it? Comments? ) is something I can’t express. It keeps my spirits alive the whole day.

Anyways, in middle of this there was again unknowingly I was part of another network StumbleUpon – one of the coolest add-ons ever I have ever installed on Firefox. This was a must every time I installed Firefox (and that happened heck of a lot times). The idea of just getting the sites of your interest on just the click of the mouse is a nirvana to all those lazy bums who have no clue what to spend the time on the net for. Gosh! I was one heck of a stumbler, some of my finds have been just amazing and my main interests included – U.S. Imperialism, Anti-war, Internet, Athiests, and so on.
Well things moved on and here in brief this is how it happened..

Came to Bangalore

Part of great company, great project

Project ended, next project.

Project 2 lots and lots of free time and I mean a lot!!!!

Blogs, blogs, blogs… didn’t really post comments/feedbacks and all but heck discovered hell lot of blogs. Still wasn’t part of the networking ‘wave’ as such.

So as it stands these three –stumble, blog, mails kept me on. Then things started changing/rather about to change… Next part …

Fight the Fat - Day 1

2009-07-29T19:52:00.005+05:30

Have you heard of the saying "If you can't beat them, Join them" ? Have you? hmmm...Just asking..Nothing related though.

First of all I would like to nominate 'yesterday' i.e. 29:07:09 05:25:04 +/- few seconds here and there as a the lead contender for the second prize in the category "Groundbreaking life decisions" (here is the first-Link). That was the exact moment I strongly decided to follow the GE/GM - Weight Loss Diet Plan after hearing few miraculous things from Linda about it's outcome. The name confusion is because it's not abundantly clear who actually started this. It's popular by the name of GE but most of them list it as GM. Whatever it is, there is one common thing - John Hopkins University findings.

After the snacks coming straight back to the office, I heavily researched on this and no surprise. Google had 131,000 results. Its a one week course aimed at reducing 5-6 Kgs per week. Ok, I think you don't get it. It's 5-6 Kgs per week. Almost too good to be just another "eat less, run 30 minutes daily, bam, 5 gone" kind of treatment. Filtering through the filth, it was not until I checked some real life experiences by the people who have followed this and have shown some tremendous results (some lost almost as much as 8Kgs!), did I put my heart on it. I have started reading through all the comments, collecting some of the common doubts and have taken a print out too. Well here is the gist of things one must do if he/she is planning to shed some excess weight over a span of one week (or) in simple words - Arre saale itna to kar ...dek wo tummy teri...

Day One
All fruits except bananas. Your first day will consists of all fruits you want. It is suggested you consume lots of watermelon and cantaloupe.

Day Two
All vegetables. You are encouraged to eat until you are stuffed with all the new and cooked vegetables of your choice. There is no limit on the account or type. Avoid oil and coconut while cooking vegetables. Have large boiled potato for breakfast.

Day Three
Any mixture of fruits and vegetables of your choice. Any amount, any quantity. No bananas yet and no potatoes today.

Day Four
Bananas and milk. Today you will eat as many as eight bananas and drink three glasses of milk. You can also have one bowl of vegetables soup.

Day Five
Today is a feast day. You will eat 1 (one) cup of rice. You also have to eat 6 (six) whole tomatoes and drink 12 (twelve) glasses of water today to cleanse your system of the excess uric acid you will be producing.

Day Six
Today is another all vegetables day. You must eat 1 cup of rice today and eat all the vegetables you want cooked and uncooked to your heart's content.

Day Seven
Today your food intake will consist of 1 cup rice, fruit juice and all the vegetables you care to consume. Tomorrow morning you will be five to eight kilograms lighter than 1 week ago.

If you desire further weight loss, repeat the program again. Repeat the program as often as you like, however, it is suggested that you rest for three days before every repetition. You can find much more over here - Link.

Friends, well-wishers, and those-would-be jealous folks this is my day 1. Seeing the routine I definitely knew I can do till day 4 comfortably. I was not wrong and here I am blogging away my successful first day's report*.

Fruits Day -

9:30 A.M. - 1 Apple, 2 Oranges
12:00 P.M. - Cut fruits - mixture of watermelon, musk melon, papaya, grapes and pineapple. Everything was perfect except for the musk melon - some were sour
12:20 P.M. - 1 Ltr Water
1:30 P.M - 5:00 P.M - 1 Ltr Water
5:00 P.M. - Cut fruits - only water melon this time
6:00 P.M - 9:30 P.M. - 1 Ltr Water
9:30 P.M. - Cut fruits - mix of water melon and musk melon
10:40 P.M - 12:00 A.M. - 1 Ltr Water

Investment so far -

2 Oranges - Rs.30
1 Apple - Rs.15
Cut Fruits - 45
Water - Free
Total - 30+15+45 = Rs. 90/-

That ended the day 1's investment.

Experience so far -

Felt little hungry just before snacks and thanks to few calls to mom and dad it subsided. From then on I didn't haev any hunger pans. Water helps a lot for that if you didn't figure out by now. Mind is the key here, it's very important to be pre-occupied and not think about foody-foody thoughts. This you can by you know working, attending meetings, coding and if you ain't got no work - blogging!

...* - Day hasn't ended yet though, hence the star.. More to come

P.S. - If you read through again you would find I said this day as being 'nominated' - the reason being I just can't figure out how in the world this is going to work. So life changing/ not there is too much to prove.

P.P.S - Krishna Hari Kalluri and I have already wagered over it and I owe a Mexchicken pizza with coke if I don't make the 79 mark by next wednesday. So my ardent readers, cheer me on, you defnititely don't want to see him win...would you?

Fight the Fat - Day 0

2009-07-29T18:36:00.007+05:30

Just to borrow the words of the latest Terminator series "It's the beginning of the end" ...

Weight hasn't ever been an issue for me. I for one always belonged to it's-good-to-do-exercise gang but never the oh-my-god-look-i-am-so-fat gang. Throughout my almost 3 years stay, roomies paired me up with Srinu in comparing the tummies and judging the fattest guy and having a laugh about it. It never really bothered me though. I always felt, there were only few extra pounds that I had to shed which, I was confident with few weeks of gym I can just get that extra digits after 8 (usually either 1 or 2). In the course of time I was able to comfortably do that and hover around 78-79. And ya, like I said before these numbers were immaterail to me. I knew I was little overweight and also pretty much sure even with this I was like the normal dude like-lean, tall, good-build and in my case handsome.

Then something happened. The first time I observed this strange feature was when I was going through some snaps taken at Barbaque Nation for Srinu's farewell (his first UK Trip...). Below is the preview!

Taking advice from none other than my buddy, roommate, classmate and sort-of well wisher who occasionally speaks his rightful mind, I wore that in-shirt. And damn just have a one more clean look at the pic above before you continue reading. Yes, I know, I should have seen the signs then but I didn't. Guess what? 4 months later or am not sure at least 8-10 months later I end up looking the same if not more awkward as seen below (that's the recent birthday snap which I will be blogging very shortly...).

!!!Concentrate on the guy on the extreme right..especially the T-u-m-m-y!!!

Added to all this was not so regular daily remarks from the most unexpcted sources - Bunty (my cousin, just couldn't believe, he could say that!), Bhargavi ( his wife), Uniques batch folks (almost all of them), Joy (this guy is sure turning out to be a one crackpot jackass manager kind with his oh-so-diplomatic remarks) - "you are great dude but you need to you know just workout on getting a V shape than a H shape" apart from the regulars - mom, dad, Indarni atha, Laxman Bhai, Swati so on and so forth. Fact is what he said struck me full force when I was narrating it to someone else, the incredulous sarcasm. The guts I tell ya?.. All these started hitting slowly, like the way heavy rain starts pouring down with few drops as a teaser. To complete the analogy the heavy rain that befell was after seeing Srinu (after his second trip!). Blistering Barnacles!

Is he a human/half-breed or what? How in the goddamn world did he lose 5Kg I ain't got no idea. But one thing for sure it just didn't feel right. The whole eat-nothing-but-chicken-at-lunch routine just got smashed to bits. I have become the butt of the jokes now and surprisingly it started to pinch me. When I am about to dress or come out of bath, crossing RevT on my path to my room, if there is one thing they don't miss it's the huge semi-spherical dome with a nice smooth curvature and you know what happens right? ga ga ga ga like small kids with knickers who have just seen someone missing catching a pen...so funny eh?

There are so much more to report but to cut the long boring-mindless-senselsess-stupid story short, Srinu was the last straw. As you all know for any right-minded person who is in his right -frame with this almost-right bunch of guys in a room, it's jsut impossible to stick to a resolution. Its as impossible as Hari getting up at 6 in the morning all by himself for playing crickent on Saturday. I mean, hello, just give it try? Then there are always excuses, not today, not tomorrow, slept late, from monday, from thursday,from my bonda day- what the heck and ya now the mother-of-all-excuses- TOEFL!

Is there anyway to come out of this mess? As astounding as it might sound there is ...Read on...

Life Changing Conversation...Seriously...

2009-07-28T15:10:00.005+05:30

“Hi ra…ఏంటి be ? ఇది నిజమేనా?”
“Yes… ఈ రోజు apply చేశా..ఇంకో 15 days టైం పడుతుందంట దాని తర్వాత I will be in VPP”
“Oh..సరే ..so e company?”
“Company ఏంటి రా ?”
“saale… quit చేసి… చెప్పూ బె ఎ company?”
“Company ఏమి లేదు రా బాబు. నేను ఒకటి చెప్తే నువ్వు shock అవుతావ్ .”
“ఏంటి?”
“Me and nikmo have decided to quit and pursue HobbiesnYou passionately.”
“eh?”
“విను…next year fall ki నేను వాడు MBAకు పోతున్నాం . So ... అంట వరకు దీని పైన full time work spend chesi. Finance చెయ్యడం, marketing చెయ్యడం, ఇక్కడికి అక్కడికి పోవడం… ఇవ్వన్ని చెయ్యాలి . అంత వరుకు దీని పైన concentrate చేసి magazine మర్చి కళ్ళ రోల్లౌట్ చెయ్యాలని plan. Success ఐతే అద్బుతం aక్కద్నుంచి కూడా దీని ముందుకు తీసుకేల్లచు. లేదా try చేసామన్న ఫీలింగ్ అన్నా వుంటుంది. అది matteru …”
“baap re…really great ra…I mean hats off…”
“thanks ra”
“seriously I mean I am really proud of you mate…” (Incidentally that’s the first time I have ever said to anyone and it was the first for him to hear… ok cutting out the parents though… they are always proud you see and it’s a great feeling being told)

This was the conversation I had with Nikhil when I first heard that he applied for VPP. Not verbatim but the essence of it. Then we went on to talk little more about how things are going to be coming ahead, encouraged him further. This indeed was a bold step and with my recent trip I can see his intentions are pretty much nailed to the wall (literally). And I wish him all the very best.

That’s how my first step for the beginning of my end of IT career as I see it began. I am eternally thankful to both Nik duos. Right until then I haven’t even thought quite clearly what I want in my life. The call for change had long begun, ever since the first round of mass exodus under the guise of most humane policy for whatever control from our erstwhile esteemed company Satyam. The sad part of it all is it still exists as can be seen by Nik’s case as a “policy” people can avail. Then I started registered at N&M , sent out resume, waited for the non-existent calls. For the ones I did, they didn’t call back again. My parents too had high hopes on my MBA and I got weekly “dream” reminder. So many things were going on in my mind. Seeing your friends making grand plans and here I was stuck up in this hole with growth neither vertical nor horizontal, MS was slightly ringing in my mind. I was hesitant though. How would the future be? Can I pull it off? Is there a value in MS?

Few days of confusion prevailed. My mind kept on wavering, can I or can I not? I had almost given up once and then again passionately boasted all around. At last Laxman Bhai came to my rescue. Through her thoughtful advices and guidance I got the confidence I need to zero in on my decision for MS. God, it felt great.

So on a bright Saturday afternoon I called my mom. I didn’t want to break the news fast and I wanted to have the right cinematic touches. I was certain that this decision of mine is going to shake them up pretty good and I could just visualize the most proud expression on my mom’s face. So I took things slowly. I talked a while about my current day to day activities, Saturday lunch etc. and all that. I was little sad knowing dad wasn’t there at home as I wanted this to be a super bonanza news and blow them away with this news at same time rather than individually. Anyways I saw no point in holding back and told them with full heart that “Mom, I have decided to do MS. Haven’t decided the course yet but I am going to do”.

I started my hunt for Universities big time and the course selection was the toughest part. This time it was Chitti* who paved the way. Talking to one of his friends who would be going for his studies in coming month I have come to realize MS in CS is not a good option. He asked to me to have a look at one of the most hot and happening courses there namely MIS. I stuck with google and some good old sites like i20fever for my help and realized well the sites were really ‘old’ and everything else was useless.

A solid 100 odd hours I wasted in choosing some crass universities thanks to orkut which lead me to edulix. That’s where it stands. Have 11 more days ticking and have heck of a things to do starting with SOP’s to LOR’s to ahem University choosing itself.

Just hoping to get the best. Wish me luck folks… This blog is gonna rock from now….

!!!!Heeeee haaawwwwwwwwwwwwww!!!!!

Nexxt is whattt - Cricket is Hott??

2009-04-11T09:44:00.008+05:30

Just yesterday surfing through the channels I came across this bizarre ad ever. No...not the LG..Don't be misled by the title..they suck anyway. 'welcome to the touch generation' - oh yeah?? in comparision to the killer i-Phone (don't even get started with me on features, price, blah blah blah..i-Phone rocks..Hands down...) even with so much Aamir doing various acrobatic dances, nothing comes closer to the pure beauty of touch that i-Phone offers...

Anyways it's the latest Pepsi's "First Ball ka Captain" commercial featuring Dhoni and the same guy from Aircel commercial, you know the one who fears his chances and Dhoni magically assures him after few clicks of button logs on to cricinfo and all that. Talking of which what the heck was that whole ad about? - Hello?? 3-G ain't there boss.. it's still raining GPRS here..Whom are they trying to fool - music downloads, ticket booking, net browsing..all this with only Aircel?? I just don't get the funda behind this campaign..

Again..coming back to the Pepsiiiiiiiiiiiii.. well..as the name implies you drink drink drink Pepsi, see the lid, nothing written? ..no prob..drink drink drink, something written? ..Hurrah!!!!! You just won yourself tickets to ICC T-20 world cup at England.. This, in the words of Punita Lal, Executive Director - Marketing, Pepsi Co India, " which we are introducing to spice up this year’s tournament to add even more excitement to the matches and give our cricket crazy consumers the cricket experience of a lifetime." That set me into thinking for what might be next just to set already mindless craziest and well ..let's just stick to those two.. fans..

Getting to Bat the first ball..obvious..ain't it? When you start with bowling..then the batting..
First Ball wicket-keeping
First Ball fielding
Or matter of fact just to keep the pulse even more racing why not have it at the last ? Say Last ball captain, Getting to bat the last ball, Getting to field the last ball
Still not enough? Hmm..let's say ..commentating for the first 5 minutes..This just doesn't sound that exciting. I know. But hey we are crazy after all..
Bringing drinks during the breaks- this was already there if I remember well.
Chance to participate in the first five minutes of team discussion. Wow..irresistable..ain't it? The drinks would go sky-rocketing if this comes up..
Chance to give the prizes to the winning captain..that might just mess things up..you know in case India lose but conditions always apply..right?
Chance to appear the first 1 minute in the ad commercial? hmm..that might be too lonely if this started with Coke--they just got Gambhir now who is desperate to sell friends..
Man..how did I miss the most pivotal of ..Umpring?? Woah!!!!!!!!! Umpring for the first ball, first minute..In the ranks of 10 this might be just be 6..But still it's appetising enough..And actually this might turn out to be a advantage.. Just keep saying no-ball, no-ball and you get to be there more and more..I know with so many camera's analysing things it just can't happen that way..but let's say it can..how aweshomeee...

As crazy as those things might sound I still feel at least some of it might become reality. Ok, just to keep the things straight this particular campaign is only to bowl against greats like Dilip Vengserkar, Jonty Rodes etc and not a live match. It wouldn't be surprising at all just to pulp the already crazy cricket fan, they might just do anything .

The first time I felt something seriously wrong was during the last IPL . Commentators talking to the players while on the dressing room is understandable, but talking directly with the guy who is batting or with a person who is fielding and with the guy who is bowling..You gotta be kidding me..It was annoying and irritating.. What's your strategy? How are you going to bowl now? How are your chances?? - my foot...And then the technology improvement is just fascinating to say the least - hawk eye, aerial view of all the balls with the trajectories, ball-by ball motion within an over, extending the same thing further ..all the balls bowled by the bowler, lbw through third umpire, noice meter to check for an edge, and the most recent to hit the screens - heat analysis..just to see where the ball strikes.

This isn't all. In one of the articles from Dataquest I read during the last IPL the live images clicked by King Khan through his cell were sent automatically to all the guys who subscribed to it. I don't know how they did it as there was no such publicitiy at all but take it from me it did happen. In either ways these things keep getting more and more --technology and marketing...all for one cause--to cash in on the crazy customers...If you have any more crazy ideas do put it in or if you think I missed any..just put it in your comments...Until then...you youngstupistaaansss... see ya...

Slumdog Millionaire - Rags to Richest?

2009-04-01T15:14:00.008+05:30

It' funny how you get stuck and just can't come out of it (Just checked the log history there were two drafts with the same title... damn..isn't there anything like Primary key here?? hello?? Google?? you listening buddy? ) ... Long long ago in one our usual maa-beta converssations involving food, movies and books we chanced upon this film. Of course the whole world was buzzing with the 'OSCAR' 'OSCAR' and naturally it piques anyone's curiosity. And my mom wanted to know how I felt about the movie, did it really justify all the hype, how much of it stays true to the book, wasn't Big B right in airing his views about the demeaning way in which India is potrayed, on and on it went. It was then I made biggest mistake of my life ... I told her... I mean...I just told her... I would blog about it....And the rest they say is History.

Well almost would have been history...So maa...ab meri bari aa gaya hai aapko diya vaada nibane ka aur ye blog aapko dedicate kar raha hoon...

Friends and folks...as promised here I present you the most un-anticipated review of the most beloved /hated (depends on which you belong) movie of our times - "Slumdog Millionaire".

Review-

Plot -

Set in the backdrop of Dharavi, Mumbai the biggest Asian slum, this is the story of Jamal and his rags to riches story literally and becoming the first person to win the contest "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" contest. But Jamal is not Harshavardan Nawathe or any genious jackpot..he is just ordinary person selling tea in a call center. The movie begins with this basic premise as one of the charecters in the movie says "What can a Slumdog Possibly know?"..

Beaten, tortured and electrocuted (in that order) the police officers who arrest Jamal can extract no information at all and they just refuse to believe his side of innoncence that he didn't cheat, or have any nexus etc.. They hike up the fuse and electrocute him once more till he almost dies, and that's when he coughs up with blood saying he knew all the answers before. What follows is a series of flip flops from present to past swtiching between the questions and answers as every answer he knew was some part/incident of his life right from his childhood if you can call that..

Interestingly as I read in one of the IMDB's reviewer, his life is reconstructed through the questions as everything fits right from the start to finish..Very Very rare indeed..One in Million Chance that anything like this can ever happen. But that's the beauty of fiction, anything and everything is possible.

Music -

This definitely is not the Rehman's best but it's definitely the best of anything non-Rehman that has come out of this year and yes that means the very own Masakali-6..Background plays a pivotal role in this movie and the maestro has seen to it nothing, absolutely nothing goes astray. Too bad I couldnt' see in theater but if a 13' inch laptop with a low cost Creative speakers is enough to thump my heart with every beat of Ooooohhh Saaaayaaaaa yeeee ohhhhh Saaaamaa as the camera zooms through lanes and by lanes of Dharavi, I just can imagine the exiliratign adrenaline that gushes through someon watching it in the huge PVR cinemas..My god..one of the best opening sequences I have seen for a long long time - the lazy fat cop chasing the dusty children and teh way camera moves and the single shot from the top as it ends showing you exactly how big the whole canvas really is - speechless. Paper Planes, Gangsta Blues are exact contrasting beats with teh same theme that is played when we see Jamal's transformation from a very angry young man to 'the' man as he comes to take the big fat kill.

Frankly for me 'Jai Ho' was jai ho...maybe because I didn't hear between the sounds so to speak. And partly due to at the end of the movie I was more disappointed and the supposedly reviving of faith in humanity kinda feeling was totally amiss..It was just another song...An oscar worthy song? - Definitely think not..

Best Parts -

As already mentioned first and foremost is the opeining song and the sequence after the titles rollover.
Amazing picturisation- the entire sequence of the Jamal and his brother running away from the riots, the kids escaping the gang before they are maimed through the train, stealing the food from the top a moving train with rope tied around eachother, when Jamal (the second adult) gets supposedly thrown off the building, the colt- revolver sequence and that's alllll.
Rehman's music- ya I have already told that. But I would just like to add the songs grow on you as you listen and I mean all of them excepting the wildly club song - ring ringa ringa..it just so nauseates but aptly suited for the film though.

Groans -

I felt this movie completely disjointed for one thing between the episodes/answers/flashbacks. The characters were very shallow, eerily sketched and little more story would have given the depth they were looking for. I mean the hunt for latika, surviving like nomads by living swindling, hoodwinking people, acting like a quack to the point of reaching the t.v. show. There is absolutely no emotional attachment.
Anil Kapoor-that's it. Not his fault really if that's the director's choice. Making fun of the contestants in a reality show and making poor jokes and making audiences jeer at him. Common I don't think anyone would tolerate that - certainly not regular Indians who are some of the ones who work so hard to be in contests like this. Channels like NDTV, TIMES NOW would go ga-ga and run whole week with that kind of stuff.
Wading through shit literally to get an autograph?? -that's the sickest thing I have ever seen in a movie ever. That's taking liberties too far. And shockingly when I was seeing the movie on lappie one of my roomies proudly said when the shot came - isn't it awesome?? wow the kid did excellent job... God, maybe Boyle was catering to people like this..IT's just plain disgusting if you ask me.
3 different persons each play the role of Jamal and his brother along with Latika. After seeing movies like City of God, Legends of the Fall, etc where the central characters grow as the movie progresses there is a certain chemistry between the characters in them but here it just ain't there. It feels completely new like a re-hash of things.

Overall -

Frankly I enjoyed the book "Q & A" -- Vikas Swarup, immensely and had a huge expectations on the film with all the gung-ho sorrounding the movie. The book had such a gripping narrative. However far fetched from the reality the events might sound maybe it still had a way to connect with us through each story. The film on other hand staying 50% true to the book just couldn't deliver the goods. Getting down to the hard realities, common guys face it. We just never want to see anything bad about us and feeling repulsive is justifiable but why is it that we have to make such a hue and cry over it? It's just a movie. Isn't it? I just don't see any difference between the reactions of the people for a movie like 'The Da Vince Code' and a movie like this. Don't same rules apply- it's just a movie by a noted American Director based on a book that deals with the same issues and a lot more. No, it absolutely does not deserve so many nominations and teh accolades it has received. It just goes to show how easy it is to emotinally manipulate people overseas. Final verdict - 2/5...Watch it if you like..well..watch it..

the importance of being clueless

2008-12-23T00:10:00.002+05:30

Believe it or not it's really important to be clueless, you know that's when people do lot of things. I mean it's a vicious circle to start with and once decided you can never go forward.

I mean it's as they say have goals, have targets, have this, have that- yes have something, don't have nothing, that ain't too good you know. And try to work on it for a while till you get tired and then stop it. And well you postpone it and before you know it you never even wanted to start it.

This was me and you and everyone out there who thinks in the same manner. Now it would definitely blow your brains out if I say I am not going to do this anymore and would stick to my plans - first and foremost complete my sql certification by month end i.e. year end..one at the same..i know , you know? ...

Then GMAT for crying out loud... and then mail all the folks that I know, and some that I don't know, get knowing the, what course to pursue, US or Europe or Australia or India. Then well, that's all for now..

Phew...well hope this really acts as a wake up call every time i see it which am afraid might be long enough as the kind of laziness that creeps in a blogger's mind is ..forget it am tooo lazy to even write it...

That's what this post is all about now.. being clueless and wild and lively...

See you soon amigos..coming up next is a movie review of... wait and watch...

Naaaaa.....Naaaaaa..

2008-12-16T23:23:00.002+05:30

Naaaaaaa... no way.........hmmmmm.....oh ya??? no need.........hmmm...naaaa...naaaaaa...naa..naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaan ... na

nopes.........won't.......will not..........phew.........hmmmmmmmm...naaaaaa...naaa na na ..nananana.. naaaaa naaa naaaaaa naaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa ... na na na......

hmmmmmmmmmmm.............hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm......phew...that does it.... sick of writing comeback blogs...

Am back again.......Yippieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee :)

Happy whattheheck is it day?

2008-08-05T20:08:00.003+05:30

Ok, first things first you all know what I am talking about right? No?? Jeez, I don't even feel like saying it but will say it : Friendship Day.

The mere mention of the supposedely perfectly common thing to say just gives me jitters. I mean I feel my whole body freezing up with yuckiness just thinking about phoning a friend and saying : "Hi... Happy Friendship Day mamma/yaar/whatever" or even in the chat. Am I normal in my thinking? How in the goddamn world does one can say that with a straight face and looking into your friends eyes? I mean this ain't a birthday to cheer him up or a festival to wish him good luck and prosperity. WTH is the day supposed to signify?

No , I don't want some damn google link that takes me to a page giving me some stupid reason and convincing me that one such day occurs on first sunday of every goddamn year. Do I really need a day to remember to phone all my friends and tell them "Hey..am still here buddy...see i phoned you.. will do the same next year...bye" ? What's the point in doing somethign that you don't really mean it? Like you know for sure you ain't gonna call him/her again in the coming fortnights for one thing, so taking this as a excuse makes it much more demeaning. If this is a means to rekindle a relationship then no thanks ... I have my own normal ways to do that.

I mean as is relationships in this world and age are detiorating as fast as bengal tigers population. At least from the people I know of IT world are all the same.Lost in touch with old pals, happy with the present colleagues, golden college days forgotten, hesitant to be the one to start off where things were left. So this artificial kindling of such things just suck.

Now coming to the actual point of the post, I got 5 sms's that day and excepting for one I haven't replied to any. And ya even in that one I never really wrote those 3 dreaded words but instead just told her how much she means to me as a friend (that was for Laxman bhai..she ain't read my blogs yet as predicted :) ). Girls...they have their own sentis you know..so...Anyways I don't know what the other 4 must be thinking but I sure do know they think I am a jerk or a high-brow or snobbish or whatever which is what really puts me off with expereincing it with just one guy...

Like Ranjit who next day when he asked about the sms, I told him "Ya, I got it around 12 in the night"....and the next thing he said pissed me off to no end... "Well..I would have said the same if I were you". Goddamn him. He thought I was trying to bloody make up an excuse??? I felt like thrwoing him off the cafetria top floor for good. Eventually I let him know I don't care these things and for the love of god am sorry if you were expecting it from me...

That was from my best pal and I don't even want to second guess what other think. Well just wanted to let off my steam onto this blog and now I feel very relieved I have done so.Personally I want this view of mine drilled firmly like the way they are told "bad things are actually bad" from childhoood to all my friends....please guys/girls....Don't wish anyone such days...it just is plain sick....

An Essay - III

2008-07-25T15:23:00.004+05:30

And finally ladies and gentlemen I present you with the essay...

Hi Mom,

I love you because...

You are simply the best. Everything that you do be it the food you prepare, or the dress you buy for me, or the gifts you buy me have so much love and warmth bundled within, it just overwhelms me and I don’t know if I can ever repay you. I still remember the time when you sat with me and shared my grief when I just couldn’t stop crying for not getting placed in the campus selections. You gave me so much reassurance and hope telling me failures are part of life and we should always focus on doing our best. It eased my pain and I got successfully recruited in the next company. It is all thanks to your encouragement that I inculcated some good habits like book-reading, actively participating in games and literary events. Also it is with great pride I can say I can say I share all my personal troubles and fears with you and not once feel uncomfortable unlike many of my other friends. Thank you mom for everything and you are the most wonderful person in my life.

!!!!Me and My mom...!!!!!

I am not at all satisified with what I wrote but content and happy and thanks to it I have written a series not one blog but three....Awsome!!!!

An Essay - Part II

2008-07-24T15:59:00.003+05:30

(Note:Please read this first for a better clarity. Sometimes I wonder is it necessay to post such things, isn't it obvious, when there is something titled II , there gotta be I and that one with minimum common sense would read that first and then come here? Well naah... I doubt it.)

"Jee...tried really hard. That's the best I could come up with. Could you review it and send me your comments" - I smsed her before I slept after sending her my unfinished tome.

Woke up the next day around 12 with a missed call and a message from Aditi madam wishing me luck and to continue. Lucky enough I was as Eswar was out and I had the whole net to myself, only me, yeah... Finishing my morning chores I opened up lappie and ping, ping sounds were up and running. It seemed it wasn't so lucky after all for everyone. Laxmanji had forgotten her e-support password and for hours she was trying to get it back. And god was she not frustrated and hence couldn't really give her thoughtful comments on my essay leaving "me" much more dampened. Anyways I thought if not mine let her's get through, so I was on the chat trying to know the updates and also told her that I was dropping out due to lack of ideas, that can't go through this anymore as I felt as I was being forced to write and all that. But she was adamant and gave me hints on what I could write about : first gift, food, support, joyous moments, caring moments etc. That sounded reasonable enough but I gave up in my mind and told her I would continue after lunch.

Srinu had brought me Meghna Biryani. It was the second one of the week. I was still feeling groggy and sleepy but the fresh aroma of the delecious dish just woke my spirits up and had a bellyfull lunch. Went back in the room and saw laxman bhai was offline. So she must have finally completed it, good for her. I called her up to congratulate before I went back to sleep. Her voice sounded low and I knew something was up. I got the biggest kick of the day. It's like this. It seems she got her password and that there was no copy paste. Bollocks, that's total crap. Who is gonna type it all over?? Okay, that apart as she was typing she realized she wasn't able to fit in more than one paragraph...

Woah..what was going on? Were we late? Is the D-Day over? Are all our efforts going down the drain? Apparently not. No, it is just that we were too dumb to read the rules. Real dumb. We had a limit of 1000 characters not words. 1000 c-h-a-r-a-c-t-e-r-s - characters. And that was what was bothering her and as for me I just couldn't take it anymore and burst out laughing incredulously. Holy Crap!!! I mean part of the blame has gotta be on me too for I was the one who had told her much before 1000 words means 1 and a half page and that it's really huge task. So she didn't bother to recheck. But now, I felt real sorry for her. Frankly I couldn't believe when she said she had her essay of 1000 words ready about her dad and I congratulated her wholeheartedly for her achivement. It seemed all waste now. Anyways she said she was trying hard to cut down the sentences and make reperations.

But one good thing out of all this was I still had a bit of hope. I could see a more realistic goal now. I talked with her little while longer profusely empathising with her and thanking her the same to finish what I have completed - one of the most difficult tasks of my life.Phew....DAMN...Gotta Essay to write... With a huge smile on my face and with immense happiness I set out to Hrithik's place. I was like a zombie there half-listening half-thinking of the essay and not at all interested to stay there further. As soon as the "things" finished rushed back home and shut myself inside the room. It was around 6:30 my second innings began...

A great excitement was building within as I waited the com to power up. 1000 characters. yippie. But like a moth struck by lightning by the time I had the cursor ready with the first letter I was clueless again. But then I realized if I can't do this I would never be able to forgive myself for all the efforts that I had put in for the last few days. With the help of my last writeup and after a large amount of editing, I finally completed it around 9:30. 3 full hours. My, my...horrendous by any standards and a wake up call to my thinking and writing abilities too...

An Essay - Part I

2008-07-21T16:40:00.008+05:30

And that's all it took to tear me apart to pieces. Something like this happens, you know there is something seriously wrong with you...

It's like this. We had an essay competetion titled "Dear Dad & Mom". You gotta write a essay of 1000 characters. It need not necessarily be for both. You could chose either of them and write. Well, first thing I did was to forward to some of my friends including certain Laxman Bhai (actual name Vaishali Laxman, henceforth will be known only as Laxman Bhai till she foresakes/resents/protest/raise a voice/ whatever which I "highly" doubt because she is never gonna see this blog ..trust me .. :) ).

As it happens I somehow didn't feel like writing till the D-Day was in horizon which for me is either 24 hrs or 48hrs. In the meantime like a pupil, I was checking up daily with her progress on the essay, goading her, encouraging her. Kept reminding her how bad her dad would feel if she won't write now that she has already told him. As for me I somehow was confident I could complete it.

"Hey, How is your essay going on? I am done with mine.." - Aditi madam reports. Oooh..Done? Well that's ...that sucks..I haven't even staretd mine, I mean did start, wrote one para. I replied back saying I will also complete it pucca by tomorrow for 8th time I believe in the last 8 days :) . Had dinner, opened my laptop and determined to complete itstarted thinking. For a long time nothing happened. Then panic struck. 1000 words about why I love my mom??? Holy crap, I don't have 1000 words, have only 150 and that too it was about my placement and how my mom helped me go through that difficult phase when I couldn't stop crying after getting rejected from TCS. Well, after writing that I was stuck. Had no clue whatsoever what should I go with. My thoughts were blocked and the words 1000 kept ringing in my ear. I felt very constricted, unable to have fluent thoughts and hence it seemed very herculean to me. Or maybe I have forgotten how to write about something static in the sense something like what's your inspiration? Who is your Role Model? Write something about your job?

Common I can blog about my trip, my daily activities, Hari's driving , Chitti's musings, Hrithik's (Roshan) cooking habits, but reminiscing good ole days, trying to capture some time, reviewing a person and when that person is THE most important persons of your life I just couldn't get it out. Given a chance I can think of some nice things to write in a greeting, or a mail to her but to really bring an essay of 1000 words - i was not up for it.

But I had a promise to keep and save my face too (as i said i was literallly badgering her daily with this...) so I stayed on with my laptop on my lap in front of t.v. with Srinu and Mr.Revanth Wipro. It was 12' O clock in the night. I was just reeling from the day's activities, saw 'Kung Fu' Panda in the morning, went to a play in the evening, did some roaming in the middle and needless to say I was tired. And all my focus was on completing the essay. Kept chanting to myself : focus, focus...

I start typing something, then look at T.V. Some random 2 year old hits were being played in Geimini in the progarm "latest hits". Half an hour goes by. Damn...Gotta Essay to Write

Some thoughts did gather in that passing time but nothing I could pen down elegantly. Again the temptation of checking out the reviews of "The Dark Knight" reigns in. I log on to imdb, check the rating. Holy molly cow!!! It is number #1. So I check out all the external reviews: Roger Ebert's, Variety, CineFan, Rotten Tomatoes, - The verdict is clear, it's a winner and my heart was thumping hard , i wanted to desperately see it. Reality came crashing hard. Damn...Gotta Essay to Write...

Focus..Focus...nothing..no..wait..yup.. why not write about her taste in Chinese, her aversion to lizards, her favorite Choclate ice-cream, the overflowing lunch box that she packs and chides you that I eat less when in fact that lunch box is sufficient for two?...how can I fit these with the essay? ...you also like all those things...so?...hmmm...I click on Gtalk and see familiar faces online at that point of hour ( 2:45 a.m.) Jash bhai and Venkat (heceforth only venkat..no Swaminaidu..). Somehow didn't feel like pinging Jash but Venkat..I had to...

I hear the same from him "Mindblowing action movie dude...for the heck of your goddamn life don't miss it..just don't..superb movie" ... so i chat for a while... 20 minutes pass..Damn...Gotta Essay to Write...

Around 4, Eswar comes out, poor thing... a stomach upset and he goes vomiting outside, drinks up some water, looks at me ,says nothing, goes back to the room. An hour had passed by, still I was the same where I was, with two paras and nothing more, nothing less, neither the thoughts nor the inclination. I could feel some pain in my arms, legs and in my eyes too... Well took a face wash, did some warm up exercies, felt as if i was fresh..slept on teh floor with laptop in front of the pillowand started typing, typed whole lot of random things, broken sentences, strange thougths, whatever I had to do with the topic, then gave up. Saw some parts of 'My Neighbour Totoro' scrolling by and slept with one thought on my mind : Damn...Gotta Essay to Write... It was 5:15.

More to follow...not over yet...

Me and my bike

2008-07-05T20:40:00.001+05:30

Let the pictures talk...

Does Swimming Help in Losing Weight?

2008-07-01T15:22:00.002+05:30

Watch this space for the next two weeks to find out.

Finally I have woken myself up at 6'o clock today in the morning, washed my face and set out NGV with the Gladiator at my steed. By the time I reached it was around 6:15. I rushed myself into the office to get the formalities done as quickly as possible. But the folks there really wrecked my enthu , I gotta tell ya. Early in the morning finding yourself in mercy of a someone who takes his own time doing things relaxedly, casually, lazily as if he has just been granted a month's holiday and he being in middle of arranging his items for the vacation and no care in the world, is one of the sickest experience you can come across.I felt like smashing that thin glass that seperated us both and stuff the money in his pocket and just leave, but good sense prevailed and after what seemed like an hour with my payment I started off towards the pool.

Water was lukewarm, not too cold and there were about 6-8 people in the pond. On enquiry when I have come to know that depth of the pool is same throughout and it's only about 5 ft, I laughed my ass off hearing that. I mean that seemed so kiddish. What about PRO's eh? 5 ft?? Where the hell can I dive? you know as they say, if you wannna win some you gotta lose some, diving in this case. Not that I can dive excellent and all that but I thought finally I have a chance to refine it. Anyways the depth too I thought was okay, not really silly but still compared to the last two pools I have been to, this seems well small to be sure and also like some private pool of a hotel, not exactly rectangular, bushes all around, and a guest house like chaging room.

All in all once inside I started my laps and then something struck me. I realized how much stamina I had lost. I was puffing, panting at the end of my first lap. I mean that's just horrendous. I remember the time I was in OU where I used to do continous 5 laps and it was much bigger than this. Jeez, man that just scared the hell out of me for a while. I pushed myself without a break and could just about do 1 complete lap. Almost..

There was something else going on in my mind as I was going from one end to the other - How many days it will take to lose my weight??? In this age where instant results are of the highest importance I just couldn't take that question off my mind. And after reading this and this I think if I can stick to this for one month at least, I might as well be the bride with highest no. of hits at Shaadi.com ?? Well...only time will tell...

So, ladies and gentlemen, please pray that I stick with swimming for some time to come at least...please... :)

Originial Joke of the Day

2008-06-19T18:44:00.004+05:30

pure 100% original unintended unintentional joke...a mail to my rm from my teammate whose name is withheld for all practical purposes...

Hi xxxx,

After deployment is all the changes that we have made are working fine which we have included in yesterdays RFC.

Regards,

yyyy

and that's all...who so ever understood the meaning can drop in the comments section...I know it's a tough thing but take your time...my rm has given me plenty of time to make it out..Hint: RFC means Request for change (as if that's going to help...)

Opera 9.5 - Lightning fast and more

2008-06-19T06:25:00.005+05:30

It was with a huge frustration that I made a post saying I would not touch this browser again but right from that post till date I haven't let go of this as the speed is just ubelievably fast and also some of the things I mentioned about stumble, imdb, I am not using them much now, so no reason to complain. I do have alternatives for it like OperaStumbler which does the same job albeit a bit differently. I wonder why folks at Stumble made one such yet...

So what's the point in posting now you might ask me. What irked me off with opera was it's inability to handle blogs. For sometime while editing everything runs smooth and then all of a sudden the scroll bar that appears on the right vanishes and the letters start going out of the screen. As it is blog for me is such a painful activity, now with a thing like that it just puts me off, so all the while I used to blog either in firefox or in IE. It wasn't until yesterday while making certain edits for my Dasavtharam post I discovered one amazing thing ability of Opera 9.5 - IT WORKS!!!!

I am blogging this with 9.5. Yipppie!!!!!!Apart from the interface looks stylish topped with black contours with glassy interface it is one amazing upgrade. It is faster than ever before, just try checking your mails in Opera and IE and notice the difference, Speed Dial, and the best thing I discovered (it's been there for long though...) is the abilitiy to navigate with the mouse. Right-Click your mouse and move the scroll button in the middle up or down, didn't you notice something like the one show on the right. For someone who has say 10 - 12 tabs open this is a very very handy interface. And how in the world can I not mention about Sessions. IT's like this. Suppose you are searching on something and start opening up multiple tabs and browsers. You got what you want but are unsure from which set of links you have obtained or you want to do something else now and at the same time don't want to delete all the tabs that you painstakingly have combed the web and brought up. What do you do then ? Simple go to File-> Sessions->Save this Session and give any name you want. Close all the present ones and start your slate clean. I use this a lot of all the things that Opera offers. I know it's comes with some add-ons in firefox but it just can't beat this , upon start you can even SELECT which session you want to open the browser with. And last if not the least it's paste and go...go..go..go.... no more explanation on that...

All in all I am mightily impressed with the folks at Opera who have done a marvelous job in redesigning the browser with all the little tweaks still intact.

Watch out for some more tech reviews and tips coming from Yossarain stable...