Its time for resolutions

With 2009 around the corner,its time for me to take few new year resolutions :)
1) Get up early in the morning(time not yet decided but it will be earlier than 9am which is my current raising time)
2)Reduce weight(let me put 5 kgs,I know its easier said than done)
3)Devote some more quality time for reading books(shd be quality books)
4)plans for future(MBA???)
5)Last but not the least continue blogging :)

Looking back @ 2008 blogs

When I started blogging this year ,I never thought I would complete 6 months blogging.Before this there were two more blog I started but it went no where.
I have selected 3 posts which I wrote in 2008.

1)Thrilling Experience of 2008

2)travel blog

3)best buy

Last day in my team!

For the past three years of my professional life I have been worked with three different teams.Tomorrow is my last day in my current team.
Moving out of a team will always have its own emotions,there will be people who care for you,people adore you,people depend on you.Its a difficult situation to say goodbye.But life has to move on there is one thing in this world which is permanent and that is change.
I have been in this team for the past 20 months ,what I learnt is some techie stuff but what I cherished was the relations I developed. I had trained 4 people in the team and many times I would have thought or introspected myself whether am I guiding them properly.I felt satisfied when each of the them requested me to think twice before leaving the team and how will they miss me.
Yea I too will miss my team!
Keeping my fingers crosses what next!!!

One i came accross

This is really good one
Just click on the Alphabetic letters

http://www.bemboszoo.com/Bembo.swf

Wonderful match indeed!

Last two days of Chennai test was absolutely mind blowing. Chasing a mamoth total of 386 our team got there with ease! Good start by Sehwag followed by brilliant innings by Sachin and Yuvaraj won the game for our country!
Kudos to our Indian Team!

Start to weekend

Nowdays my blogging is being restricted to Friday and weekend. Not that I am busy but I m lazy.
Last week went to a book fair ,nowdays I put a credit limit for buying books beacuse I have a bad habbit of chewing more than I can swallow. In the end got some 6 books.
So week went by trying to complete all thee books I bought.
Today found time to watch a movie The Ultimate Gift ,it was a good one to where a man discovers himself while trying attain the gift left over by his grandfather.
Emotional one, made me glued to the screen for two hours.

My visit to volvo race village

Cochin was gearing up to Vovlo race stop over for the past two months. Almost every where I turn there would be posters and banners about it.There was a stopover at Kochi from Dec 3rd to 10th.

Volvo race is not a one day affair ,the race goes on for 9 months covering different parts of the world.During the nine months of the 2008-09 Volvo, which starts in Alicante, Spain in October 2008 and concludes in St Petersburg, Russia, during late June 2009, the teams will sail over 37,000 nautical miles of the world’s most treacherous seas via Cape Town, Kochi, Singapore, Qingdao, around Cape Horn to Rio de Janeiro, Boston, Galway, Goteborg and Stockholm.It is undeniably the world’s premier global race and one of the most demanding team sporting events in the world.

I went to the race village where all the yatches were docked for maintainence,so in the mean time racers could relax a while and prepare for the next journey in the rough seas.There was a cultural festival week also happening with rock show going on every night.There was an exhibition where in lots information about boats and yatches were given.A motor boat costs around 95000 bucks,thought of getting one but there were lots of constraints should find a proper place to park,where to go in that,etc.

Had dinner in one of the stalls there ,listened to Rock music.Only regret was not able to get into simulated yatch as the queue for it was pretty long.All in all a good outing indeed.

My first Iranian film

Buddha Collapsed Out Of Shame is a movie taken in the backdrop bamyam buddha statues of Afganistan.Story is a simple one where a young girl has a desire to goto school and hinderences she get while doing so. How children are affected by war is wonderfully shown in the picture.Their behavior,games they play all are interelated with war.Another good thing in the movie is the photography ,wonderfully taken from the eyes of a small kid.

It makes us feel guilty of the pleasures we enjoy in the better half of the world,when there are people who are fighting everyday to earn their daily bread. This movie will touch your heart!

movie I watched today!

I saw the movie "Anger Management" just now , good one to watch on a friday night!
Jack Nicholson was at best his best! two quotes from him in the movie which I liked!

"temper is not one thing you can get rid of by losing it"

"sarcasism is anger s ugly cousin"

Not again in Mumbai!

Mumbai being attacked one more time!
Wednesday night I was browsing way past midnight when saw flash news gun fire sound heard near Taj I slept off thinking its some gang war. Morning my collegue woke me up with message to put on the TV,slowly I realized the magnitude of the incident.Atleast some 50 people would have been involved directly or indirectly for this incident.Its disturbing to know there are huge number of people whose main goal in their life is to destroy peace and harmony of our country.
Terrorism is one of major menance India is facing. We lack in mobilisation,security,manpower,technology etc to prevent such attacks.So what we can do to prevent such attacks? I think if we improve our intelligence cell we can atleast prevent attacks.We learn from our mistakes but this one is a blunder. Hope we pray nothing like this happens again!

When I messed ATM card(s)!

Today afternoon I was short of money ,so I decided to goto nearby ATM to fetch some. When i made a transaction I got a message the PIN I entered is invalid ,it happens sometimes so I carefully tried giving pin second time but I got the same message again.I was wondering I never changed my pin and why my card was behaving crazily.
Evening I thought I would give a last try and went to a local ATM near our house and tried a transaction and got a message the card was blocked.
I came home wondering what went wrong,my roomie said we can goto the bank s website and get the PIN reset ,I logged into the website and requested for PIN change and they said it will take a week s time to proces and PIN will be delivered to home.
Then I forgot about the incident and started my evening relaxation.
While preparing dinner I suddenly remembered my roomie giving his ATM card to me during the weekend. Everything became clear to me ,what I have done -used his ATM card (since we use same bank s card i didnt notice the name on the card) and entered my PIN and succesfully blocked his card.Also I requested a PIN change for my card which was not necessary and my card is also inactive until I get the pin. All in all in one day I messed two cards :)

My trip to naval base

Indian Navy was in news last week when our INS tabar successfully sank the pirates mother ship near the gulf of Aden.This weekend naval base in Cochin was open to public and I thought it would be informative to check whats happening there.

Started early morning from my house along with my friends Ashok and Prem ,I like the naval campus its clean calm and wonderful.All naval officers wearing those white uniforms walking around with pride on their face.
There was a naval exhibition where they were explanining all the instruments used in navy ranging from radar,diving equipments,missiles,anchors,signal systems etc. Most of it sounded greek and latin but assured the country has the latest technology.
We were allowed to enter into the war ships ,this was my first time to entering into a warship and it really felt good to be in there.There were around 4 ships which were open to public.India has a sail ship called as INS Tarangi one unique kind in the world.Other ships like INS krishna,tir,veera were also on display.

I salute the people working in navy who sacrifice their life to safeguard our country!

My joy in Laziness

Last weekend I saw a book titled 'Joy of Laziness'. Titles like this attract me a lot, so grabbed the book instantly. Started reading the book went around 40 pages then lost patience or got lazy to read up further.



One good thing I liked in the book is approving of whatever I do everyday. Sleep well ,get up late,eat well,do little exercise,dont work too hard.I felt my mum should have read this before my upbringing.All in all book say being lazy keeps healthy and wise!!
I have started to get lazier day by day :)

My weekend movie!

Its been a long time I have updated my blog,thought I would update with something I did today ,what else I saw a movie :)

Today morning I saw Varanam Ayiram. Different feelings went through my mind while seeing the movie,emotional nostalgic,romantic etc .Movie was well scripted, good one taken in tamil cinema after a long time. My friends said it was pretty long but I never felt it.Kudoos to Surya it was an all round performance from him. Music and photography was icing on the top for the movie.I would recommend it for anyone who wants to see a good movie.

friends first

Its been quite few days I have written something in this space ,its because of a new group of friends I have got here. Two are my room mates ,one my team mate and another my school mate.We meet on almost all nights after work chat till 12 o clock in the night and then crash. So I m not finding quality time to spend here. Anyways i m planning to blog atleast once a week lets see how it goes!

Congrats Arvind Adiga

It feels great to know one more Indian -Arvind Adiga has bagged the booker prize this time.



I think it was two months back I saw this book 'White Tiger' in our office coffee shop,I started reading the book ,never felt to keep the book back on shelf.At a stretch read more than 100 pages.It took two more visits to the coffee shop to finish that book. Coming back to the story it was about a simple Indian justifying whatever he does. It throws a new picture on Indian reality ,sarcastic at many places.I would recommend it read it if you come accross.

Feels good personally that I read this book before it got selected for booker prize :)

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!!!

When tree(s) fall down!

Saturday evening I went to Thanjavur along with Sailaja(Sailu-my neighbour and close buddy) and her dad.I took my car so that the journey would be smooth and pleasant.

Trichy-Tanjore road is one of my favourites ,the road which I have travelled for 4 years during my college life. Traffic comparitvely less and smooth roads with no bumps and holes.As usual I was zipping past 90 kmph in the highway,road expansion is going on and trees which were once giving wonderful shade thoughout the journey were cut off ruthlessly to make way for 4 lane.

Brahadeeswarar temple is one of my favourites I used to spend hours admiring the Chola architecture.We entered the temple admiring the beauty of the temple.We were finishing our prayers at all sanathi and uncle being genourous enough donated handful of money to the temple priests.So we were getting royal welcome at all places.When we were planning to leave it started raining ,rather pouring I pinched myself to make sure I m in Tamilnadu and not in Kerala.

When rain got reduced a little we started to move as Sailu s friend was waiting for us.I took my car outside the temple and slowly followed thier car. It was pretty dark out there. Here comes the event of that evening ,its a km away from the temple and I was driving as usual ,suddenly a big tree out of no where from my sight falls and bangs right on front part of the car.Our wind shield was cracked into 100 pieces and bannet crushed.It took some time to overcome this shock.By the mean time many people assembled around the place.I looked aside to Sailu and uncle thank God nothing had happened to them so to me.Some ten people lifted the tree and pushed the car back.We opened our jammed doors and came out and had a look at my vechicle no other words to describe it.




I called up my dad immediately without realising it was raining that time some drops water entered into my keypad and my mobile started to behave crazily.Dad said to get a FIR from police so that we could avail insurance.When asked ,people around said there is a police station just 100 metres away.We went and inquired there ,sub inpector(SI) in the station said we need to go and report this to road and transport dept which deals with accident cases which was some 4 kms away from that place.In the mean time Sailu s friend dad brought his camera and clicked few snaps of our pathetic car.SI asked whether i could drive the car to other station.I tried starting car it started and I tried move it moved perfectly.So it was decided to take our car to other station.

I slowly followed our friends car taking care not hit another vechicle as visibility was reduced much.We reached the other police station crossing all major junctions in the city and most of the people on the road were lookin at the strange junk piece that was moving around.
The inspector of the station came up with an wonderful explanation, accidents are categorised under three ways
-->Vehicle hitting a person
-->Two vehicle hitting each other
-->Vehicle hitting a wall or tree
Since a tree has fallen on our car they cant book a case against the tree it seems and they asked us to go back to the same station and get the report.When it comes make people roam here and there no one can beat our government agencies.

So same ordeal was repeated and we took the car back to first station.Finally we got our incident receipt at the place. Then we kept the car at friends house and caught a bus back to Trichy.

Thinking about the incident once again if at all the tree would had falled a second later it would have directly hit on us.What saved us on that evening?

My train journey

I left to Trichy on Thursday night for a long weekend.
I met two people during the journey

When I was on the platform I heard somebody calling my name ,I turned around and saw a familiar face. Ashok- He was my school class mate when I was in 2nd and 3rd grade. I had known he was in Cochin through other friends but this was the 1st time we were meeting. He is working in an investment bank.When we checked our ticket numbers it was adjacent to each other. We couldnt ask for more. Once we are on our seats in the train we started talking about our life jobs,school,college etc .

At the next station a decent looking middle aged man entered into our compartment and sat opposite to us. As soon as he got settled he questioned us whether we are IT guys(the way we dress makes us to look unique in the crowd) ,then we got introduced.He said he s MD a pharma company,which increased our respect towards him.His style of arrogance and dominance made me wonder from where he got these skills.I asked him what he was doing before,he said he was working as IPS officer in Delhi. We were discussing about governments politics finance and in all topics he was making his point heard and our arguments getting trashed to nothing.We were chatting past mid night lots of information transferred. KNOWLEDGE must be shared,
else it be buried unused!

All in all a wonderful journey to be remembered!

Ethinic Wear-

On Wednesday our HR came and annouced we need to come in ethinic wear the next day.I started thinking what should I be wearing.From kurtha s to dhoti s everything came to my mind.

Back home I searched for my wardrobes,since those arent the common one we wear, it had to searched in the hidden corners of our house.My room mates also joined me in choosing thier attire.We had found 3 kurtha s decided which would be the best fit for each of us. Then came the stuning idea from my room mate of wearing a dhoti in panchagajam style. When asked how to wear it he said he doesnt know and lets use our technology and find it out. He searched in youtube and bulleye! found a perfect video depicting on how to wear a dhoti in panchagajam style.We did a trial run , it was like a model practising her walk on the ramp, to make sure nothing goes wrong in main stage.
Next day my friend left early and I tried wearing the dhoti in panchagajam style but my dhoti was following me lika a tail rather covering me. So to save the day I wore dhoti in normal way.
Anyways the day was good and I enjoyed it !

PS:My room mate won the best the dressed man of the day!!!

Visit to Athirampalli

This weekend our team planned a outing to attirampalli falls.I like all places which has anything to do with water. There were 12 people in the team so some planning was required.I was given charge to buy snacks for team,the day before went to retail outlet and grabbed whatever items from where ever my eyes went to.




We started our journey an hour late and reached the destination around 1 o clock,after having some light lunch we headed straight to the falls.After taking few pics ,we(gang of four) walked half km from the falls to the river bed where we can have bath. Once reaching a serene place we decided to jump into river.This is the wonderful part of the trip sitting like water buffaloos in water ,making the water to flow over the body.Since it had rained the previous day ,water flow was pretty good. We relaxed ourselves there more than an hour.Since time was ticking away with no mood we got out from the water.
From there we left to another place called as vazhachal falls which is 5kms away. Beacuse of the good rains,pleasant sound of flow of the water was heard from the place we parked our van.We admired the beauty of nature for minutes taking rounds to pose ourselves with nature.Funny incident as happened one of my friend got into a dual with the security guard over there,when asked why ,he complained we were taking lots of photos of that place and we need to give chance to others but when turned around there wasnt a person to be seen apart from out noisy group.
We packed our stuffs and returned back to Cochin ,trips toll had taken on body as I slept most of the journey.We had dinner at Sea park a wonderful retaurant where we get some good sea foods and as usual my menu was few rotis with vegetable curry.

Tata Crucible

Last Tuesday went to see Tata crucible quiz,felt out of place when I saw people pretty sharp in answering.Felt how software life changed my life from ardent quizer to lazy goose.Anyways events like this will give some inspiration to get back world of quizing!

Sunday lunch-goodbye to my dieting

Sunday I planned to meet my cousin who had flown down from US . It was decided we will meet at another cousin s place for lunch. My mum who as usual had her own plans took me to shopping.

After getting her what she needed ,we started to my cousin s place.

When I looked at the lunch I remembered our corporte treats at TAJ but even those had less varieties for a vegetarian like me.

After eating all the stuffs I felt the dieting which I had taken for the past two months has become like a dust in sky.

To make the matter worse I checked my weight when I left to Cochin at railway station ,alas my weight has gone up by a kg!!!

My meeting with a tamil writer!

Last Saturday I was in Chennai to send off my roomie to Florida. It was a thrilling experience where we started all the purchased all the materials including checkin baggage just hours before the journey.
On the way back I went to another friend s house. Was talking with his dad.Conversation went around our life in cochin.Then it we talked about tamil.Came to he is writer and publisher of tamil literatary magazine. He is doing the work for the past twenty years . I should bow to his interest in tamil,which is very rare to been nowdays.It was amazing to note how he finds time to do this job inspite of his busy scehdule in his job.He said he also blogging his regularly @ http://navinavirutcham.blogspot.com/ .
It is a good blog where we can find some wonderful short stories in tamil

Airport Scenes

I have just returned back from airport sending my friend who is leaving to US. Most of her family members have come down to see her off. Apart from few tears in the end everything went well.
There have been lots of instances I have been to receive and send off people at airports. There will lots of emotional and funny moments in air
-->Grandparents waiting in the queue to see thier grand children for the first time
-->Foreigners who look lost having expected something better here.
-->parents n co sending off their child
-->wife s waiting for their husband whose workin in Arab land
-->traders who sneak out tonnes of luggages out very easily when we people get alarmed even when our luggage gets increased by a kg.
-->Some actor or actress(if you are lucky) travelling on the same day
-->people waiting with pluck cards ,despartely looking at everybody .
what I have not seen is the Indian movie climax where in which the heroin runs back to the visitor area to join back with hero.

Compared to Cena!

Its been more than a month going to GYM. So I was expecting people to ask me about my change in physique.But no one seemed to bother about that.There were few who used to mock that I have put on weight. Yesterday when I was working in office one of my collegue who has recently joined the team commented that you chest is like John Cena. By the way he told I know he was not mocking at me but I didnt know whom he was actually mentioning to.
Then I told this to my buddies(who are my GYM mates) ,they started laughing. One even said my collegue has insulted John Cena.Then I came to know that guy was wrestler. Heavens I dont know how my collegue had this wild imagination to compare like that.

Evening at Tea Pot

One of the best hangout places in Cochin in Fort Cochin and my favourite place is Tea Pot.
There are lots n lots of variety of tea avaiable from Darjeeling ,Assam Ceylon etc.Also we can add favours such as strawberry caradamom etc. Apart from that they have the home made cakes death by chocolate ,caramel custard are my favorites.

The ambience in the restaurant is too good which takes us to another world. Went to this restaurant along with Krishna today evening after seeing Hancock movie. Had a masala tea and my favourite pastry.When we returned back I forgot my cap in the restaurant ,my favourite cap as it was gifted to me by mum.I realised this we were around around 5 kms from the place. Considerate krishna turned the bike back to the restaurant and fetched my cap. Then we chilled out at the fort Cochin beach ,had dinner at gujarati bhojan and came back home.

Devotional songs in my childhood

Today morning I woke up at 4:30 am rather didnt get proper sleep and started browsing in my system.Ashwin(in aus) was surprised to see me online at an awkward time. He said the time is right to hear subrabatham and he gave me the link for the same. I forgot when I had actually listened to those songs, been ages and never I had voluntaryly heard those.
After subrabatham ,I played Kanda shasti Kavasam which brought back nostalgic moments of my childhood days. There was a time when I used to sit with my grandma everyday and recite the whole shasti kavasam. I even memorised the whole kavasa which I now feel is an herculian task. There would be sense of satisfaction when I finish my recitations and my grandma would be proud lady tellling everyone around the neighbourhood that his grandson knows top to bottom of the kavasam. But these recitations happened only when grandma was with me,when she left to her native my recitations also stopped.And when she returned next time I got bored to say the same slogas again and again. Thus my devotional recitations came to end.

Being Diplomatic good enough?

If you cant tell what you feel to others face to face ,thinking it might hurt others feelings. Or do avoid doing something just beacuse it people around you may misjudge you because of your actions can we say that you being too diplomatic. It sometimes help beacause it keeps the other person happy but in the long run it would neither help both of them.

Sunday Evening

Last weekend I was in Chennai ,Sunday I planned to meet up my cousins. We decided to meet up in Spencers (default place come to our mind in Chennai). Trouble of managing two girls is something which I havent experienced ,when we entered spencers they asked me the shop which we need to go in ,I said Landmark without thinking twice.They looked at me as though I have uttered something inauspicious.Then U left the choice to them.Where else people take you when we offer to treat them ,a costliest restaurant giving some peanuts and charge you in gold coins. When we entered the transit being a Sunday it was damm crowded and getting a seat was like getting a prize in lottery.I looked at the two people they were deeply engrossed in some conversation. Afterall poor me is always there to get a place for them, as said so I got a table for three in corner and we managed to get settled there.
My trouble didnt end here these people wanted a special receipe which wont be delivered to our table but we have to collect it from the outlet.As usual I took the responsibility of getting the stuffs for them.After standing in the queue for more than 10 minutes I returned back with delicacies only to find myself shocked. Those two people were still chating ALAS I asked them where is my chair they forgot that another person came with them was supposed to be seated in the chair next them.Now after finding a table my task was reduced to find a chair which was little easy but felt awkard to carry the chair to our table which was some 20 feets away.
While we are eating one girl gets a call from her mum that her insurance agent is waiting for her and her presence is immediately required at their house. So we left the place in hurry and we reached the outside gate. As I had only one bike I was in position to give lift to only one of them,the other one asked me to drop till the bus stop which was directly opposite of the road, I mentioned the difficulties of travelling 2 km take a U ,then reach the same place to drop her. Then it was decided to walk till the bus stop to give her a send off.When we reached the bus stop we realised that the required bus wont stop there and we had to walk 200m to reach a signal where we managed to find a bus stoping at signal after 15mins.
Then the trouble started the girl with me said she cant walk back since she has walked 200m and her legs are paining. What else we caught an auto to travel that 200m and then reached my parking space to fetch my vechicle. While taking the bike from the stand I gave my parking ticket to her and told her to give it the guard when we leave the gate dont know what she heard when we reached the gate the ticket was not in her hand.She said she throwed it somewhere ,I was a stage below becoming mad.Fortunately we found the ticket lying somewhere near the place. I dropped her home as soon as possible.
Good God has given me a lot of patience.

My journey and Prisoner of birth

Its been a long time I had time to read a big novel , thanks to Krishna I got this book 'Prisoner of birth' as a birthday gift . And should appriciate his timing to give the gift ! I had planned my weekend to goto Chennai and while dropping me at the station he handled over this gift. Its pleasent experience to read books on a train journey, I was so engrossed in the novel that I forgot to notice TTR had come to check tickets and worse he also missed me. He thought I hadnt turned up and allocated the berth to somebody else. It took some time of pleading and convincing to get my berth back.

Coming back to the novel Prisoner of birth deals with a criminal case where a innocent has been convicted for a murder he didnt do and how he fights back from it. Court cases and proceedings gave me thought its more like a John Grisham novel. But Archer touches are around the novel here and there.One thing I like in Archer s novel his comparisons of the incident with cricket.

Novel was more predictable but never feltboring throughout the read. All in all its a good time pass !!!

Why I m blogging

Its been quite sometime I scribbled something here, evenings at the GYM makes me tired and I sleep early
apart from that work in office takes other half of the time. But the most important thing is my laziness.
In net it will be interesting to chat or browse ,we can do that with having any concentration but blogging is a monotonous task ,one should have some concentration while doing that.
For more than two to three years I thought I should record my thoughts somewhere and creating the blog was one of those but most of the times what had happened is after three or four posts I would get ran out of ideas or my laziness creeps up. So I end up stopping blogging and after three and four months will start with a new one.This has been my routine.
Its surprising that I have continued posting more in this site for more than 2 months now. Think I can carry on with it.

trainings and certifications!

Being a software engineer taking certifications and trainings will become a part of life , whether you like it or not. Whenever companies policies and processes change poor employees have to hear whatever has been done. Its price we pay for getting paid! Every year a person has to take a security test whether we follow it or not.
When I started my career I was to eager and disiciplined in these matters but nowadays it has just become a burden in day to day life. Today I took java certification and cleared getting average score.Funny thing is total duration of the examination of 3 1/2 hours and I finished the exam in less than 40 minutes . Wondering how I was able to sit for 3 hours during my school and college days,surprised to feel that I cant sit in place for more than a hour. Should pacify myself saying its just because its been quite sometime sitting like this.

Dasavataram

Being in Cochin getting tickets to movies is simple and cheap, used to irritate my mates in Chennai n Bangalore how simple it is to get tickets here.



Today I watched Dasavataram , what a stunner it was ,no words to describe it.
I m still thinking how could a person imagine such a script...here I see it is executed to perfection. It was a good watch !!!

Internet-->my connection with the world

For the past few days there was some problem in my net connection ,I thought of spending killing time by watcing TV but after sometime I run out options as nothing I like was being telecasted.
Feeling how internet impacts my day to day life. Two days without net i felt being lonely which was not the case when i m hooked to net all the time. One thing about net is we can browse whatever we like or whatever we want and not forced to watch something which I dont like.
Another funny thing is I have been more close to my friends and relatives over the net.Been ages I met few people but still having touch with them all because of net.
I have been brought to a situation where in which I cant imagine a world without these features!

Hartal day!

I enjoy driving on a hartal day ,full road is ours, no lorries and buses which occupies 90% percent of the road.
But not all are lucky as me to have their own vehicle ,when I drove to office this morning saw lots of people walking to their office due unavailability of transport.
From my end what I could do was give lift a single person and reduce is misery.
Hartals seems meaningless affects only the common people when parties declare as if to protect the interest of the people.
It feels sad to many people lose their daily bread just because of this it.Shops hotels autodrivers road side vendors lose their day of making money.
Good this syndrome is only restricted to few parts of our country! hope its fully eradicated in future.

Oil becoming a luxury!!!

I am reading a book 'The Coming Economic Collapse: How You Can Thrive When Oil Costs $200 a Barrel'. An interesting fact about the this book was it was written some two years back when oil of hoggering in the range of 60$/barrel.


Frightening read,author has put forth the harsh upcoming future and how lazy we are in overcoming the crisis. In short oil rich nations will wipe of the economy of oil starved nations .Raising inflation ,poverty and put an end to the existing civilisation of these countries.
So what we can do best from our side is conserve oil and try to use as much as renewable energy as possible.

My Day at Gym

For the past few months my room mate got worried about few kgs he earned by living the life of a lazy software engineer. This month he started pressing the panic button and insisted on doing something to get extra kilos burned off.I suggested swimming I like that activity becuase most of the time i would be spending in the pool would be like a water buffaloo relaxing in the banks of koovam!!! But the trouble is my roomie saw picture of Surya in one of the tamil magazines and started day dreaming about 6 pack abs.In the end i know it would pointless to argue with him and I said ok lets go for work out.
Its been months I have never seen 6 am ,but today I got kicked up to getup. Remembered my school days when my mum gently tries to wake me up with a cup of tea.
Reached the place in 15 mintutes after finishing the formalities ,the trainer asked us to warm up in the tread mill ,I started running seems ages i ran like that ,I was gasping for breath after 2 mins . Next comes workout ,trainer was instructing us to do some stretch outs hands up stretch back bend down 1 2 3 4, remembered some beautiful ladies doing stuffs like these in sports channel but who had time to notice what they are doing.
At last after 1 hr I got completely drained and trainer seeing my face realised im dead for the day.As I packed my stuffs ,gulped two glasses of water and was ready to leave trainer said meet you tomorrow. Then only I realised that this gonna be my daily schedule!!!

IPL :ended at last!!

Feeling disappointed that Chennai didnt win the finals but what a match made me glued to the seat till the last minute . I was waiting for the unexpected to happen but it was Rajastan team deserved to win.
Good IPL got ended at last from now onwards there will be somechanges in my lifestyle
1)I will be shuttling accross channels after 9pm searching for something interesting to see.
2)Chances are there i will goto bed early
3)More time on the net
4)take 20 20 out of my mind for sometime!
5) Last,Will start supporting team India once again!!!

Its raining...Monsoon once again!!!

Yesterday it rained here for more than 2 hours in night and today while im writing this rain hasnt stopped yet ,I m glad to welcome monsoon. Makes life little bit difficult but I never mind.
Being in Kerala one good thing here is it rains or it pours . There were instances when I could nt see what s in 5 feet front of me , thrills me when i m driving in such a weather. When I left office today it was cloudy but i miscalculated my driving skills with nature and thought of dodging the rain.Just before a km from house it started pouring , funny thing is I had rain coat in my backpack but thought I could reach home quicker than stopping somewhere near to wear it.In the end when I reached home raincoat was safely protected from rain and myself completely drenched.
I dont mind getting drenched N number of times if we have a good monsoon this year which makes everyone happy and prosperous!!!!

Good news will be brought to you by mail!

This was my today's fortune in orkut , message like these keeps one in high spirits.
I m keeping my fingers crossed waiting for the good news!!!

What's in a teddy?

Last weekend I took my cousins for shopping. Being generous I gave them the freedom to choose whatever they want. To tell about them they were totally four in number ages varing between 8 to 16(4 young beauties). Once they entered the mall they barged into the toys section . Not to mention they were looking at soft toys esp grizzly bears(teddies). The youngest choose one which was double her size ,my heart stopped for a second ,it took sometime to convince her the problem of taking it back home. Others got settled with specific varieties as one choose her's because its tail was looking good and other settled with one because it had some curls on its head.(For me almost all looked the same) After finalising their stuffs it was time for me to finish the formalities. They carried them as if carrying a baby looked funny.

I was wondering what they going to do with those after going back home but they didnt let me to do that long. Seems they started the naming ceremony ,as i got it for them they gave the pleasure of choosing it. HUH it was the most difficult part its easier to buy one than doin these formalties. My names where rejected because teddies belonged to a different gender or it was quite common name. At last I blabbered something what came to my mouth and they liked it ! but trouble started there as I had to name two more . Thank God one my cousins asked me whether a name was nice and I approved at that instance!Back home those teddies became a member of our family as these people started their converations with it. Like you looking soooo cuteee...will you sleep now , I will talk tou after having lunch?? etc . I was left wondering whats in a teddy.

But anyways if feels good when you make someone happy!!!

Flexitime

Being a software engineer gives me the advantage of going to office anytime and return back whenever you like. I hated the days when my mum woked me early in the morning worse to make me study ,getting good sleep was luxury that time. Things changed when I got a job ,the first thing I took out my of life is an alarm clock(my mum used to gift new ones every year) .Sleep as long as you like became my motto . Feels great when there is no one to question you. This is one reason like being in IT.

Ways to reduce Inflation..

When Bush can advise Indian s to change the way we eat ,why not we can suggest some to them
--->Eat corns rather than use it for biofuel
--->Use public transport rather having individual cars
--->Try to spend on the money you earn ,not on credit
--->Last but not the least stop waging any more wars.

My 1st day of my first project!!!

Dec 22rd 2005 I never imagined i would sittin(working) in a government office in my wildest dreams , there I was 1st person to be thrown out of Cochin just two days after i reported in Cochin office,people said it was onsite project but who knows that word has lots of hidden meanings. What a place what an atmosphere the security guard saluting me as if i am a royal prince visiting the premises(I was dressed in full formals as mentioned by company s dress code ).When I entered inside all people staring at me as if I m an alien interfering their privacy. Then went to meet my lead ,after all formalities he told us he will show us the place where we would be working. Following him with lots of anticipation ,he took us upstairs to terrace there was a room rather call it a shed with asbestos roofing on the top, inside which there were three computers .He handed over the keys to me and said lock the door everyday you go out(huge responsibility given on 1st day of my job). Here I was destained to be IT professional sitting at the government office starting at the ceiling oops asbestos wondering what am I doing here!!

Restarted!!

This is the fifth time i have restarted my blogging :)) , lets c how long it goes!!!