Life's decisions

An old pond!
A frog jumps in-
Cllickkkk (The sound of water.)

This is a Japanese Haiku.What it means(or what I understood) is that the time we live in earth compared with age of the universe is nothing but the time taken by the frog to jump into the water.Say a matter of few seconds. When I think little deep,it is insignificant amount of time we live our life on earth. And why there is lot of clashes struggle stress making our life too complex.We literally forget to enjoy the moments we spend here and always worry about something else. Why do we need to live a life where we are struggling to make each day pass by.

Am I trying to be philosophical, may be I was trying to. Why the above questions were raised by me , just because I want to make my life happy and peaceful? Most of the times when I start a conversation with my friends ,they talk about their problems in life and complexities arising out of it.Why go to to my friends my alter ego always scolds me you are wasting your time,you shouldn't have done that,you are becoming worthless,if you continue be like this no one will respect you.This sometimes leads to frustration,anger and you start to hate being you.If we reach this state life becomes miserable.But I never allow my alter ego to dictate terms over me.Its my life and I make my decisions. Yea some decisions might be wrong have hurt my parents,friends and I have felt bad for them.But we cant reverse things in life.

I have started to write about life on earth and took it my decisions ,yea few decisions make or break our life.Should we allow others to make these decisions for us.I don't know whether I would allow others to make decisions for me but I wont interfere in others decisions.Sometimes it goes to such an extent that I stop my conversation with him until the person is clear with his decision.Whew people may call this escapism,yea what a person will do when has to take care of his book load of his problems :) .But it doesn't mean I care for them.

What point I m making here by writing this??? I don't know just another piece of junk added to blog :) .

Late to bed Late to rise...

For the past 1 month I am going to office late in noon and come back late night. In many ways I like this life style as it gives lots of free time in the morning where in which I planned to do something useful but eventually will do nothing.

There are lots of the advantage of going to office in noon shift(2-10)
--->can get up anytime you want
--->no morning blues
--->Direct lunch(that too with my own delicious recipes)
--->lesser time in office

what all I miss
--->eventual evenings
--->my night reading
--->blogging

Weekend :book read:SSC movie:JK

Almost all weekends I plan something to do rather than counting crows around our house.This weekend read a book by Robin Sharma The Saint, The Surfer, and the CEO. I think I had enough of reading these kinds personality development books.Plot is too similar a person who has been depressed,low in confidence,family in trouble,searching the real meaning for life,gets a chance to meet three people in life gets inspired,back to high levels confidence.Yea it changed the life of that person but it didnt inspire me nor change my way of life. Maybe I should put a small break for reading these kinds of books at least for an year or so.
Yesterday evening we went for a movie Jeyam kondan, one good thing about going for a movie in Cochin is,it just costs you 40Rs,so we dont mind however worse the movie is.Another good thing going for a movie with friends is whatever trash they show you on screen,some funny comments here and there will never make you forget the feel you are watching the movie.I wasnt surprised to see house full on a Sunday evening but for a movie which wasnt much hit in Tamil Nadu.As far as story there nothing to say same old masala movie,wont recommend unless you have some good company to watch along with.

Lehman Files for Bankruptcy; Merrill Is Sold

Getting a job in investment bank is a dream for most of the people who pursue MBA. It was shocking to read the news on Monday morning with the above title.Lehman Brothers and Merrill Lynch two pillars of wall street collapsed in matter of few days. Its estimated around 30000 people will lose their job directly or indirectly.
This is also bad news for Indian IT sector as both firms has outsourced most of their back office operations to them.
Since I follow the all business news and as I work in for a BFS client this news became a matter of concern.I was thinking about the hype to get a job in investment bank and in the end of day you were being thrown out just because of few bad decisions made by the management of the company.I have heard stories from my friends who used to slog 12 to 16 hours a day working for investment banks ,now I wonder is it really worth enough to do that job.
Lets wait and see the restructuring of Financial companies and the corresponding impact felt around the globe!

Onam once again

I m celerating third consecutive Onam at Cochin ,each year has been an unique experience. From the begining of this week festive mood was felt around.Tuesday we had Pookolam competition one of my favourties this year our team ended as one of the
top three teams.The pookolam below was done by our team.

My new campanion!!!

My mobile usage began when I was in final year of my college I got a Nokia 2300, one of the speacial feature it had that time was, it came with an FM connection.I was using that mobile for more than two years until my friends threw me in water at allepy beach, they didnt realise I had mobile in my pocket and it got completely drenched. After that it became a junk piece. It was time to get another mobile. That time my friends Raj and Ashwin took me to the mobile shop insisted to select a mobile not less than 10k.I choose Motorola K1 beacuse I liked the look.There were few issues with it like processing being slow ,getting struck sometimes but I adored my mobile. Then last month when a tree fell on our car on a rainy day ,I took my mobile to call up my dad little did I realise that some rain drops entered into my keypad.My mobile started behaving crazy,I gave the mobile to the service center to rectify it.I was using a old nokia 1100 for the mean time. Those people called me after a week and said it will cost around 6k to repair it as they had to change the mother board in it.Who will pay 6k to repair a mobile when they can get a new one at the same cost.



The process for selecting a new mobile got started on last thursday ,I asked my friends in office which is the best one to get, all were giving lots of opinion.
In below were the basic requirements needed in a mobile
-->Camera more than 2 megapixel
-->Memory Capacity more than 1 GB
-->Good speakers for songs
-->Good brand name
-->EDGE technology( This one I was hearing it for the first time from Jiju,he said never get your new mobile without edge technology ,first I thought he was mentioning phone edges later I realised EDGE is technology using which we can access net via internet)
-->No one should have it in our group(this would have been difficult some years back but now since the options are lot I thought I could still get a unique one)
In short be prepared to burn 15k from your pocket!!!

Friday evening the discussion became more intense that we narrowed down on choosing a sony ericsson mobile.Since I had a nokia and motorola before I thought I can go for Sony this time.Evening I took Saravanan with me to mobile store ,the models I saw in net were not there.But we got impressed with one of the model 910i.Since i haven't read any review about it ,I thought let me wait for a day before confirming my choice.Back home I read the review about that model I had choose,shocked to see most of the feedback were negative, saying that the model restarts itself every 10 minutes.I changed my mind not to get that,now trouble started to choose the other one. Again I went to mobile store,asked the shop keeper whether he is having a better model than 910i ,he said 760i is better one and added one more sentence that it come with a water proof outer cover. This is what I want,cant ask a better feature after having lost my previous two mobile phones to water.Without any second thoughts I choose to get it.



I made my first call to my mum,lucky to get her online.Then loaded few songs,checked for menus and stuff.Overall I started liking it!
Hope I will have a good time with it!

My Vinayaka Chaturthi Experiments

This Vinayaka Chaturthi I decided to make Kozhukattai s,as always my roomie Arvind was thrilled at this idea and was helping me in all ways possible to get it done. First I gave him the task of grating the coconut.In the mean time I was taking care rice flour mix to get boiled and in the same time not to get it burned by heat.Till then everything was going on course,then trouble started.



We were on to the difficult task of putting poornam inside the rice cups or rather wrap the rice mix around the pooram.Now we realised our rice mixture was not up to the mark,it was getting breaking into pieces.To make one kozhukattai we struggled a lot, when placed on the plate it was getting breaking into pieces again.With great difficulty we managed to make four kozhukattai s.I said to Arvind lets first test this then continue further.I kept 4 kozhukattai which are of different shapes and sizes into the cooker and allowed it stream it.When I opened my cooker I saw our kozhukattai were in pathetic state all were blasted apart and pooram spilling over it. I was about to taste it,abruptly stopped by Arvind he said without giving the so called kozhukattai to Vinayaka we shouldn't eat.He didnt stop here ,took the kozhukattais to the Vinayaka idol and started praying.Poor Vinayaka if at all he
had mouth he would have cried,would nt have expected to treat him like this that too on his birthday.Anyways we needed complete the rest of kozhukattai s and I know my using the traditional style we would never make it any better. So I started keeping kozhukattai s in burger style with poornam stuffed inside two flat rolls of rice dough.This time it also it no better than last time. But one good thing was it was eatable. Now Arvind too had lost patience and asked me find the way to get over the rest of the stuff. I mixed remaining pooram and rice and streamed it in the cooker. We got some messy stuff. We ate the same for lunch.

There were lots remaining ,I know if I kept in the home it will be wasted ,so I took it office.It was punishment for my friends working with me.They had to eat what I gave.There is one guy from UP named Anand ,he liked the dish very much and finished every bit of it.At last I was glad that there is somebody to appreciate whatever mess I made!

Weekend to be remembered

Last weekend I was in Manipal, meeting up few of my buddies who were working with me in Cochin. We were five people in the trip



Namratha(Nammi)- Our host took great care of us ,also the tour organizer planning the trip for a month.
Ashwin - Guy came from Australia for a vacation, was literally hitting house flies in Trichy ,so this trip was much needed break for him.
Avinash(HA)- Reached Manipal after a sleepless train journey from Bangalore, his long time prayer was finally answered as a good looking girl sat opposite to him.
Sandhya - Sacrified her weekend work in office for this trip, also saved Nammi from embarrassment by not making it an all guys trip to her home.
Yours truly- taking a break from my hectic schedule :P .

On Saturday morning I reached Udupi railway station around 6:15 ,I was looking out for this station from 5:30 afraid I might miss it ,Nammi and her dad picked me up and took to their home. Ashwin came after an hour found her house by himself ,was proud of his intelligence and common sense.HA and Sandhya reached 2 hours later. After finishing our breakfast we started our journey - roaming around Manipal.

Our first stop was MIT-Manipal institute of Technology, place were Nammi studied. It was so close to her house that when lecturer calls her name for attendance she could say present from her house itself. The main reason to visit the campus was to check the crowd there. Because just by looking at Nammi we shouldn’t come to conclusion about all other people studying there. College campus was looking green everywhere! Properly mowed lawns and trees all around. We went to the campus canteen and decided to have fresh juice ,I ordered chocoberry thinking it might be a mix of chocolate and strawberry but it tasted like cold bournvita.After taking few pics around the campus ,we walked to the hostel areas. After having enough of it, we were picked by Nammi s dad back to her home.

Thanks to Nammi s mum, we had delicious lunch - Aloo Capsicum,Cabbage curry,sambhar,rasam etc. We relaxed for a while then Nammi dad took us to their village some 15km nearby. There we visited Nammi s ancestral house ,Nammi was proudly saying the house is more than 100 years old. Nammi s aunt gave us fresh tender coconut juice. After that we took a walk into the fields ,it was a wonderful sight paddy fields all around till the sky meets the land. I tried getting into the field not know the fact it was full of mud. My foot was full of mud, Ashwin and HA were waiting for this moment to pull my legs. Thank God there was a canal at the side of the field, were I washed my legs and others were playing in the water. It was Nammi s turn to fall down in the canal and one side of her dress getting wet, it was looking like a new fashion. We came back to her old house ,Ashwin was trying to catch chicks but failed as usual, HA was trying to get a good pic with dogs around but they didn’t cooperate. Nammi s aunt gave us a cup of tea,choclate pastry and few snacks, when we were done with it we were late by 15 mins.This spoiled Nammi's dads perfect plan of reaching Kappu beach on time and he decided to take us to Malpe beach.

Malpe beach was looking calm and serene ,waves gently coming and washing our feet.HA suddenly got sea sickness and told he was not interested to come inside the beach and he sat on the sand taking care of slippers also doing bird watching. But after sometime he got bored of bird watching and plunged into the water. After that myself ,Ashwin and Sandhya had bhel puri and HA,Nammi and her dad wanted to have fish fry.HA wanted to try Sting ray whose meat was more or less looking like frog s but who can stop him from eating that.

From there we drove back to Nammi s home taking a shorter route in the end become some 5 kms longer. We reached home around 8.We planned to have dinner outside. From there we went to a temple a good architecture with a Christian cathedral, mosque s dome and Krishna idol residing inside it. Sandhya wanted book her tickets back to Bangalore after enquiring at KSRTC we went to restaurant which was damm crowded and I protested I m not going to eat there. So we went to Chinese nearby where HA cleverly managed to park the car in the little space we had almost kissing one of the cars. When we got settled and looked around ,almost all the tables had hukka except ours ,all people smoking were younger to us. We had American Chopsey and spl rice noodles ,for dessert each one had different variety of ice cream.

We reached home around 11:30,Nammi s dad told us wake up at 5:30 next day so that we can go to Endpoint a place which will be worth watching at early morning. When we are about to sleep Nammi said we are not sleeping without playing a game of Pictionary!
Myself and HA were in a team,Nammi,Sandhya and Ashwin formed another. Game was thrilling ,exciting made us to think in weird ways as possible. In the end it was more like a hare and tortoise race. Like we were one step away from the winning point and were waiting to get one in the dice. But here Nammi did a match fixing as she didn’t allow me to roll the dice and allowed poor HA to roll the dice that being a pitch hitter (cricketer) was hitting four s and sixers with the dice but not getting a single. In the mean Nammi s team used this opportunity very well and won the game. It was way past 1 when finished our game, wondering how to get up early morning next day.

At 5:30am Ashwin kicked me and woke me up ,one by one we got up had morning tea. Got ready by 6:15 ,it was some 10 minutes drive we reached Endpoint. Place was an absolute beauty made us to wonder whether we are in a hill station. Foggy weather made us impossible to look at whats ten feet in front of us. We walked 1 km in the footpath admiring the beauty of the place. It was a cliff facing the river. Nammi s dad suggested we trek down the hill and go to the river. We never seen a Sunday 7am for a long time, were jumping down the hill to reach the river, we visited the temple near the river. The boatman Francis who was supposed to take us on a ride across the river had gone to Church being a Sunday. Now I realized what is really meant by an uphill task. Nammi s dad said we will take the shorter way of climbing up, a path not much traversed. Pathway was full of bushes and steep stones making life difficult for us. I almost slipped, was about to fall into a 5 feet pit but caught by Sandhya at the right time,HA and Ashwin were rather disappointed as they were waiting for something to happen like that. After 20 minutes of huffing and puffing we reached the top. After this early morning trek we drove back home after having a view of Manipal lake.

Back home we had our breakfast puri and tasty channa Masala.After freshening ourselves we left for Udupi temple.Good temple was not crowded we had dharshan in 10 minutes.We had to look at Krishna by peeping in from window hole as Krishna idol in that temple was facing the opposite direction.After the dharshan we did some shopping HA got some CD s and Ashwin got Udupi Krishna idol. I was looking at hand fan made out of Sandal wood ,I tried opening but in the wrong way got it messed up. Asked the shopkeeper how much it was, he said 675 bucks. I asked him to open, he tried and said it’s a damaged piece.HA still believes I only did the damage. I wanted to have Udupi coffee but Nammi didn’t take me there .

We went back home, again to have a wonderful lunch prepared by aunty and we relished it as usual. After lunch Nammi,HA and Sandhya were preparing to go to Shimoga to attend Chadrika s(my another colleague) marriage. When we reached the bus stop and waiting for the bus ,HA found something is wrong with his T Shrit,he realized that he had worn it inside out. Then he went behind a lamp post and changed it back. After some time a dabba bus fully crowded came there ,I doubted whether it will cross Manipal. They left it to go and waited for the second one ,the next one was no different from the first but it was less crowded. To avoid further delay these people got in, we waved goodbye wondering whether these people would stand all the way to Shimoga. Once back home myself and Ashwin crashed and woke up around 5pm.Talked with aunty for some time and then left to Udupi station to catch the train which was at 6:15. Ashwin had a train from Mangalore at 9:30,so he thought he will come in my train and get down at Kankanadi(M'lore Jn) and from there go to M'lore cantonment station. As his luck turned out my train got delayed from 6:15 to 6:40 ,from 6:40 to 7:15 and at last reached station at 7:40. We reached Kankanadi at 9:20.He took a high speed auto and reached other station at 9:30.Like in the climax scenes of Indian movies our hero reached the platform to see the train moving, started running along the platform got into one of the compartments only to find the heroine missing :)

All in all happy and thrilling end to our weekend!!!