My splitpersonalities

Dollar Rupee game...

2009-12-28T03:01:00.003-05:00

Sriram headed out with his wife on a Sunday evening to shop things randomly. He had wishes and plans to purchase a new digital camera and probably upgrade his cellphone. The dailies were flooded with advertisements on holiday sales that nobody could resist. Sriram reached to an electronic store that displayed digital cameras with special prices for the festive and holiday season. When he picked the camera in hand, his mind calculated and converted the price on the tag to its US dollars and realized it was still 50% higher than the prices he had seen on US retail websites like amazon. He quickly decided to give up buying it and instead ask his colleague, Ashwin, who was returning home from the United States to buy the same model from there.

Ashwin was living his final month of his deputation in the United States of America. He somehow managed the five months with the Indian spices and the cereals he had brought from his home. One day, he wanted to eat nice Indian food at a restaurant. On a weekend, with so much eager and admiration that he had ever had, he visited one such Indian restaurant and walked in to have his meal. He looked slowly at the menu one by one and looked at the prices against each. He calculated and converted the prices to its Indian equivalent that ended up at a number that is about ten times, if it had bought the same in his home. He decide to pursue the dinner but, wait until reaching home to have his desirous Indian food.

Four (or more ) years back and now...

2009-12-21T07:01:00.002-05:00

As a college boy, I stepped out of the university, watched several city buses go as I waited for that single bus that connects my college and home. There were days I used to stand for an hour or more ! Apart from typical reasons for college guy to have a bike, I used to think how much time I would be saving if I had a bike for commute. Well, after few months, I did buy one.

Couple of years later, the bike I had, as well as ,I aged. After losing couple of "knowns" and friends to fatal road accidents, I slowly refrained myself from using bike. No need to mention the weekend parking woos in Bangalore. Then, I started to look at (pluses of) cars and think how good it would be to take the family and ladies in it. I would not say, I enjoyed driving bike much then.

When it was the time, I got hold of an entry level hatchback and immediately, I started feeling I was finally there. After a year fighting for space on roads, avoiding roads during peak hours, thinking and planning for parking space everywhere I went, car became an overhead most of the times. I gave up taking car most of the times and have started using city buses and trains during week days and weekends. I know it is subjective. My house and office were nearby to bus stations.

I wait several minutes for the bus and forget the pressure to handle road space or parking space. I look at cars and the lonely commuter in them. Sometimes I watch few cars "hanging around" to park somewhere. I walk past happily towards the bus station.

Well, have several years passed by ?

How many lacs is crores in INR !

2009-03-02T05:33:00.005-05:00

This is rather an evidence of what used to be a funny liner in Tamil - 'oru Kodi/laksham kku evlo zero theriyuma?'

Oscar(s) for AR Rahman !

2009-02-23T00:41:00.006-05:00

This is going to be one of those million posts that come from Rahman fans across the country and the world. Many have been expressing their joy and pride on FM and television channels already. I just want to take a moment and praise this genius for the honor he has brought to our Country and its music.

I will restrain from writing how big a Rahman fan I have been. I wanted to write a post since last two months after a string of musical hits he has delivered in the last couple of years. Jodha Akbar, Jaane Tu, Yuvraaj, Ghajini, Delhi -6, Sakkarakatti and this world known Slumdog Millionaire - all gave him a versatile scope for music. Rahman in an interview said, they (SDM crew) wanted to keep Slumdog millionaire music or movie under wraps until oscars are announced. I am sure they had known the destiny of the film themselves.

I and many other million fans of Rahman out there feel great pride and joy on this occasion.

Stone abutment on Roads..

2008-05-24T00:08:00.002-04:00

This is sure peril for motorists and in cases for even passenger cars. There are crucial roads where one can easily find such misplaced bricks lying on the road, making already arduous "city drive" a dangerous one too. Observing a little more, I realised these stones were put just to shift the traffic hotspot to a farther spot.

Taking wrong side drive for a shorter distance or driving through one way is common for our country men, one can not be surprised to see such behaviour these days especially at the record high gas prices and scorching subcontinent summer. Concrete bricks that are small enough to be moved by just limbs of a two wheeler rider, forms the mode of abutment between lanes.

Will the concerned department take care to atleast put steel barricades instead of such dangerous stones, despite the increase in steel price (Start believing life is costlier than some cheap steal) ? Even the traffic officials who redirect or stop such violating vehicles are disdained by drivers. What is holding officials to charge a ticket to these violators when they could catch helmet defaulters so vigorously. Can one wearing helmet being hurled by such a violating vehicle overcome life danger ?

It would have been applaudable if choosing flyover/overbridge spots happened effectively - in terms of time and place. Also, with about almost 20,000 individuals commuting per day on average to various software companies on the IT highway/OMR, it would be wiser to have some sort of mass transportation like Metro or express highways/busses.

I could hear the reader uttering when I would stop fretting about pandemic traffic woes.

Ridiculous, Mr. President !

2008-05-05T23:46:00.002-04:00

Certainly, the comment of US President Mr. Bush over raising food prices, has kindled controversy - in the Asia, in particular . Earlier, US President reasoned increasing prosperity of the Asian countries viz., China and India, has caused in soaring food prices in the world. In detail, he explains it as the increasing demand of the "quality food" from the India and China as the leading cause for the global inflation.

Supporting facts of this argument could be : 1) More airline users in India since the last decade, leading to increase in demand for turbine gas 2) More cars on roads, there are still many nations believing Indians ride on bullock carts 3) Increase in education level, leading to nutrition awareness.

This is infact an unnecessary comment in a situation of US Economy recession that had resulted due to millions of US $ spent on Wars and measures to check and fight terrorism. States is still one of the leading nations using bio gas and hosting leading manufactures of cars that use bio gas. It is surprising how Mr. President has not taken into consideration, the increase in bio gas utilization. There is an unpredictable change in local weather conditions due to reasons like Global warming that had affected in the food production globally. Considering the age and importance, still agricultural industry is growing at a much lesser pace compared to technology or communications industries that it is fighting to meet the ends up, which is proven by the UN food reserves.

BMC (Vendor) Backup for DB2

2007-12-04T09:21:00.000-05:00

IBM delivers Imagecopy(Backup) feature with utilities suite. But, there are some amazing innovations and obvious "should have done" features are covered in BMC Imagecopy. Some of the features (I might have really missed any, in my study) that is going to make the buyers happy for this BMC Copy Plus are:

1) Inline statistics - This is an important functionality IBM missed to cover. BMC collects/updates the information pertinent to tablespace. Sure this is going to be a rocking feature in partitioned tablespaces.

2) Copying index (Defined with COPY NO) - BMC overrides the IBM's protocol and manages to create imagecopy of index that are not copyable as per IBM/definition. Though index could be recovered by REBUILD against using naive RECOVERY, during disaster of huge objects,this is going to fasten the recovery, provided table, index copies are intact.

3) Dynamic syscopy choice - This feature is going to be loved by DBAs. By OUTSIZE and BIGDDN/BIGDSN, BMC lets the choice of syscopy file to be made dynamically at the execution time considering the size of the file to be copied. This could help DBAs to put bigger tables on Tapes and smaller ones on DASD. Think of the case when table grows in size where you do not realise a huge table being copied on DASD later. Isn't this sweet ?

4) Syscopy files according to IC Type - Are you running CHANGELIMIT (m,n) ICTYPE AUTO ? Not sure how to name incremental and full image copies differently ? With IBM, all the copies (whatever type !) gets created in similar files. FULLDDN/FULLDSN and COPYDDN/RECOVERYDDN could be used together wherein full IC (if chosen) goes to FULLDDN while incremental IC (if chosen) goes to COPYDDN.

5) Incremental copy, still changed pages intact - RESETMOD yes/no is going to tell BMC program whether DBA likes to reset the modified pages flag on taking incremental copies. In case incremental IC is corrupted/lost, he could just rerun to create another incremental one. Also, BMC lets an option (MAXINCRs) to escalate a incremental IC to Full IC if a certain number of incremental ones are done after a full IC. This would sum up the backup strategy for a week.

Twenty Rupees (INR)

2007-11-28T01:04:00.000-05:00

Paying utilities online, purchasing through credit card, fuelling once a week and with hardly any time to step out on a working day - Life has got simple in many ways and monotonous in few ways. And, people who purchase food coupons (sodexho pass, Ticket restaurant) would run their lunches without Currency Notes. So, I never check my wallet everyday or often to see well I am running.

It was a working day. Unusually, I didn't carry a lunch to office. Food coupons left at desk itself, I was shocked to see just twenty (20) rupees in my wallet. Lunch Meal starts at Rs 40 and uncompromising peep for a Dosa shocked me. Dosas start at 25 Rs. A south indian Filter coffee is Rs 20. I,surely,can not run the rest of the day with just coffee. I nostalgically thought of the college days (1998-2002) where I bought Dosa for Rs 4 and coffe for Rs 1.75. I felt twenty has become such a denomination that a software engineer (by profession, designation varies. So, dont read between lines here) could not get a meal for lunch.

End of the day - Evening, I had to go Cathedral Road for a quick shopping - I can do that plenty with my mentioned wallet condition. I did a circumstantial traffic signal violation, to be rightly spotted by the traffic policeman stood by the signal. He held no papers to give me notice. He sidelined me to be looked down by on goers. Embarrassed by the happenings, I willed to clear the fine and move on. Started demanding Rs 200 for violation, they ended getting Rs 20 (Twenty) from me, because of the fact they could not hand over notice paper to me. I had to go through the usual police crap enquiries about my living, parents and their occupation.

When I hit bed, I was little happy twenty rupees is still a denomination when it comes to bribery.

Inflation is the one form of taxation that can be imposed without legislation

2007-11-25T03:34:00.000-05:00

There was a family head/man who had great love on his lady/wife. They showered love on each other and by law of nature/science, they got a baby. Parents took care of the baby and persistantly, the baby received everything it would need, to have a happy childhood. But, the couple's love for each other increased and got a half dozen kids after few years. Parents had no way but, split the love and facilities among the half dozen kids. Now, the older kid could see the difference in love and facilities,it reeived. On the other hand, parents had no idea of the proceedings while the kid have no control to stop his parents making love or making its own life/money. Woman was happy seeing his man to show persistent love for her. Man was happy as his lady made love everytime he wanted.

There was a state government which got in love with multinational investors. Multinationals loved the government for its subsidiaries. Their love for each other resulted in jobs and hence migration of people towards jobs. People were happy with the growth in lifestyle, increase in economy. Persistent love of Government and MNCs for each other increased the number of jobs to an extent,there were so many jobs and hence a much greater population dependant on them. Now, the older generation job holders could start sensing the fall in facilities and convenience/care from the government.Neither they could make correction to investment policies of the government nor could they make their own way earning/living.

Chinese Proverb : "If you are planning for a year, sow rice if you are planning for a decade, plant trees if you are planning for a lifetime, educate people. "

Diwali - A Well packaged Day :-)

2007-11-09T22:49:00.000-05:00

Diwali had been a dull, "its all special programs on TV" day for me so far. Oflate, EMI lifestyles bored me to a have lavish celeberations... But,I could call Diwali '07 as the best Diwali in my life. I had all that I could wish for....My sister and in-laws coming home, some nice time with my special friend and last but not least first day show of my most awaited Tamil/Indian movie of the year... I had good emotional spectrum

That was a pretty long day spanning for almost 23 hours and those moments are sure to cherish in my life. I hope many would have had a very nice time on this Indian Festival.

I am happened to see lots of lightworks this time instead of "sound"works. This is much better way to enjoy a Diwali as it is a festival of light. This reduced noise pollution and gave a lot better ambience for my telephonic conversation especially.

After about a year...

2007-10-25T08:51:00.000-04:00

More than a year, since I spent blogging. Really wanted to break monotony, blogging same same shits cribbing living conditions or how imperfect my part of world or the countrymen around me was. Now that I restarted writing, doesn't mean, things have changed. I wanted to break monotony now too. For a change, I thought I might well blog. People who have read Joseph Heller's Catch 22 would understand it better.

This one year had been great. Lots of travelling, learning, work, photography, music,girls. Well, I had to add few to break my complex. So, depending upon readers, pick few of them and this would be safe for me to defend when I speak to you next time.

I certainly promise I won't write music, society in near future. I swear.

So, welcome me back. :-)

Useless Myths

2006-09-29T04:11:00.000-04:00

A Little bouncer in my page ......

A too much talked of matter in my gym recently. Number of women who dump their boys outnumber the boys who dump their gals. Gym is flanked with guys who suffer in their love relationship or who are dumped so badly. Two obvious reasons that show up this is from the choice of songs they flip-in and the amount of time (in evening) they spend in gym. Young lads had chosen the gym to shed off their anger and frustration with their bad taste in love.

Common theories that circulated on a sunday morning...

1) People coming to gym of two categories... Married men with little too big belly who want to escape from their "better-halves" and, obviously the final year college studs who want to impress their gfriends.

2) Anybody in relationship, the duration of it is ideally 3 years and it had not gone beyond it. It applies to even people who dont visit gym.

3) One should work out as much as possible and equally grab rest to the bones and muscles. Both of them are important equally to have a healthier body.

4) A gal or boy who is in first love with their partner finds it comparitively harder to leave the other !

5) People who come to gym in morning are of "weight loss" category and who come in evening are of "weight gaining" category.

6) Always, first few days of month has crowded gym with new enrollments and after 10 days, the crowd die down to have only regular visitors.

& Many more which I forgot !!!

How to Dismantle an Atomic Bomb ???

2006-09-29T03:24:00.000-04:00

Ofcourse, only solution is Love & Peace ! This is what Bono(U2) has got to say. Happenned to see the Rock show of U2 a week back on a Friday night on Vh1. Offlate, I pay more attention to lyrics than voice or music that I am scrapping off Tamil musics mostly.

If there is one song I like to hear everyday while I brush is (not the Suprabatham) the Beautiful Day. "All that You can't Leave Behind" is an awesome album and that made me to hear more of U2's earlier works. This has all the values to defeat Eminem's super hit album (Eminem Show) in Grammys then !

New pictures

2006-09-29T02:52:00.000-04:00

It's my long weekend with surprisingly no weekend official commitments and unsurprisingly no plans with girlfriend. I've grabbed some time and updated my flickr with few of my favourite captures. I just realised, when it comes next to my job, I love photography ! Unfortunately, this part of world doesn't offer much to be shot and with a great memory which even forgets to carry mobile phone , can't carry camera everyday.

So, guys who come here..have a visit to my flickr and what else, have a happy viewing !!!

DB2 & UDB ????!!!????

2006-09-29T02:33:00.000-04:00

Recently happenned to come across a really valuable blog site . Many might have known Craig Mullins and his expertise on database, DB2. I felt it is late I knew of this site.

Iam grabbing time then n there to go through all the possible posts he has made. One of which I read recently is on nomenclature on DB2. My mailbox is flooded with job notifications from consultants & HR professionals saying "both DB2 & UDB mandatory skills". I would like to stress DB2 or UDB is one and same. DB2 expands to DataBase 2 and UDB expands to Universal DataBase. So, DB2 & UDB are always together. IBM named its database as "DB2 UDB". But, there are variants of DB2 depending upon operating systems.

OF the DB2 family, DB2 base code (that are database functionalities) is one and same for all these variants (just like Lx or Lxi or Vxi of Maruti Cars, they all have same engine specs). The OS interface layer is customized depending on the OS and to leverage OS features. But, even among professionals, it is common to refer DB2 on Windows or Linux or Unix as "UDB" which really frustrates me , at times. Even on IBM's Zseries machines (S/390 too), the DB2 is UDB !

So, it is either DB2 UDB for LUW or DB2 UDB for Z/oS !!

Rather a Late wake up !

2006-09-14T02:38:00.000-04:00

International Business Machines (IBM) , Accenture IT consulting and Electronic Data Systems (EDS) are direct competetitors in american IT consulting market and on global basis too, apart from facing competetition from Indian Cos on outsourcing. In the BPO war, Accenture is the late one to enter cheaper destination - India but, I would say it is the one who captivated on this earlier and faster ! As IBM saw Accenture growing in sub-continent, it too pulled up the sleeves. IBM has grown from mere 6,000 employees in 2001 to 43,000 employees now in 2006 which includes their bought out companies in the last two years (like Daksh).

EDS which is the one who started IT outsourcing much earlier than other two bigges, in the days when it was not even called outsourcing. Almost a decade now since EDS been in Indian soil and the employee headcount stand 2,500 at the beginning of 2006. What a difference ? Continuously posting lossess in revenue due to few wrong judgements with the contracts pushed EDS to a shell that it didn’t captivate on the offshoring benefit.

Now resurrecting slowly, EDS too jumped into increasing the headcount in India. But, indian IT market is more volatile (now !) than the melting ice or burning camphor that it couldn’t balance between hiring and attrition. And, to match up with fellow bigges who have mammoth difference in headcounts, definitely hiring over the weekedays + weekends not going to help.
Mphasis !!

EDS purchased 62% stake in the Indian Outsourcing company which has about 15,000 employees and initiated a merger involving EDS and Mphasis. Anything more on this deal or whats in store for employees of mphasis or EDS or what changes on corporate world… Wait for corporate release from EDS's Jeff Heller or Mike Jordan from the Plano (Texsas).

Such stuffs easily pick my eyes

2006-09-12T07:47:00.000-04:00

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1982473.cms

In crisp :

UNEASY TRUTH

Average yearly salary of Dalit students is Rs 2 lakh less than general category students. These students have lesser work experience, are slowtrack and usually take three years to complete the two-year course IIMs have not carried out any path-breaking research despite the kind of money that is pumped into them

Vettaiyaadu Vilaiyaadu - A Kamal Movie ????????

2006-09-11T03:07:00.000-04:00

Now that the TV channels have played all the key scenes and the songs of the movie, I dont find myself guilty to write review because, I am going to reveal story and suspense of the movie - vettaiyadu vilaiyadu. The movie's main attractions are the lead male actor Kamal hassan and the music which were chartbusters already. Kamal,as a cop nabbing psycho killers, has a "stupidest" mass hero punch dialogue entry which he has not done in the past 10 years or so but, the song showing a typical 'Gautham Menon's stylish cop' relieves the fans. Probably, this is the kamal film that has commercially super duper hit songs in the last 10 years or so. So, one could expect kamal songs on TV more often this year.

Kamal goes on, hunting for the psycho killers, with too feeble evidences and soon, director realises it is better to show off the killers in an unexpected bumpy scene just before Intermission. Soon after the interval, the cops reach to the killers and director felt he has to run the movie for one more hour. So, he lets the guys escape and intrude into India from Newyork, to save on few production cost too! Can't the NYPD freeze suspects' bank accounts or atleast trace it ? When NYPD could get immigration details of Indians, they could have atleast asked to watch for passports and that way, could have stopped suspects to leave a nation !

Screenplay of the movie is so pathetic that songs come to irritate on a supposed to be a thriller movie. Kamal's flashback sequences could have been placed somewhere when he narrates to Jyothika instead of where it is now. Investigation of a murder in NY is just same as what in Indian Village Keernoor and fails to get any interest for me. Kamal talks of confidential investigation details from a payphone on street. NYPD cops enter house without search warrant and one cop get killed and there seems to be no investigation on it at all to spare our Indian police hero back home ! That Kamal-jyothika episodes in second half drags so much to test viewer's patience. I was expecting a song when the duo hold hand and walk just befor climax. That lousy song 'Uyirilae' and a beach song (think, it was outsourced to Hindi Film Industry !) could have just been on audio. Jyothika is (emotionally) sick in this movie and doesnt fail to impart it on viewers whenever she appears !

Director again realises that the police finding out killers again would take another episode and makes the killer just hit with police to end the film. The cast, character names, crew all are almost same from Gautham's previous movie and it could have been avoided. Slick photography on NY landscapes and the music (though it reminds one of Backstreet Boys, Fat Boy Slim and his own ) receives accolades.

My eyes are my camera !

2006-08-29T07:45:00.000-04:00

Rehman's come back ???

2006-08-10T03:56:00.000-04:00

jillendru oru kaadhal (T)

There has been quite lot of expectation and hype for both the movie & the music. After long time, CD covers carried Rehman's stills and obviously the seemingly love story relied a great deal on music. AR Rehman has been typical in his album again. His songs are noises in beginning and on repeated listening, the music grows on you. I have certainly been patient & iterated the songs many a times before concluding on opinion.

This album shows Rehaman's mastery over choice of voice needed for the song to make it better. Especially Tanvi's Title track, Shanker Mahadevan in 'Machakaari', Jr SPB in 'Majaa Majaa' and his own in 'Newyork Nagaram'.

The opening note for the album is disappointing, which is unbelievable & unfortunate. May be the song goes good with the video or the script. Rock & roll title song seems no better than his own 'Hello mister' in Iruvar. 'Spiderman' from New, 'thazhuvudhu nazuvudhu' from A Ah are far better than his 'Majaa Majaa' here. The tunes have been very mediocre for Rehman's standards and one gets a feeling that Rehman himself had done better songs of this genre already.

'Munbae vaa' and 'New york nagaram' are the only two songs that draw attention on first few hearings and this album certainly has n't put rehman or his fans on top.

How interesting is LOAD ?

2006-07-21T08:20:00.000-04:00

How to put a record into a table ? SQL INSERT !
How to put 10 records into a table ? SQL INSERT 10 Times !! But, what if the record/table has tediously long list of fields/columns ?
How to put 100, 1000, million rows into a table ? IBM came up with LOAD utility (but, ofcourse they would have thought of LOAD even before attempting to insert 100 or 1000 rows *gag* ). It is their wise decision to isolate privilege for LOAD from other authorities and helped programmers and DBAs to delegate testing related LOAD tasks to development team.

LOAD can add/append data to non-empty table or replace the data as well. RESUME is the keyword against the much anticipated one APPEND and consiously RESUME YES stands to be the default. REPLACE is the keyword to flip data. It is allowed to use REPLACE keyword on an empty table. But, the interesting thing is: RESUME YES can work on an empty table as well But,the RESUME NO will not work on a non-empty table. Logical understanding of these constraints made me think, there is some sensible brains behind IBM Software Labs.

LOADing Partitioned tablespace would throw more interesting things that the REPLACE or RESUME keywords can be used in tablespace level or at partition level. A Partition is nothing but a part of tablespace (tablespace is divided into 'n' parts) and mainly aimed at increasing parallelism. Because, most of the operations on any Partition can be done independant of other partitions. For example, each partition could be defined to have similar data for different departments and any data engineering could be done concurrently for each departments.

A REPLACE on the tablespace level, deletes all the data from all the partitiones of the tablespace, before loading. The LOAD statement could be loading particularly for just one or few of the Partitions alone. Unfortunately and unexepectedly, remaining data would be lost. A REPLACE keyword on the partition level just deletes the data from the partition alone.

LOADing the partitions concurrently is absolutely doable but, on conditions. The LOAD involves the building of Non-partioning indexes(NPI) too and parallel loading of partitions will not work if the paritions are loaded from different MVS jobs. Some used to drop such NPIs to do parallel LOAD and then recreate the dropped ones. However DB2 in its V7 brought in feature to LOAD partitions of a tablespace in parallel, if they are done in a single MVS Job step. The Keys for PI & NPIs are collected in parallel LOADs and later build.

Improve performance of the LOAD by building index in parallel during the RELOAD itself. SORTKEYS would tell DB2 to do it. An optional keyword in V7, IBM made it default in V8 that, anywhere the process of LOAD fails during the RELOAD phase, the process starts from the top. Its pity that its good when its good and very bad when its in bad state. In a way, parallel build and the default SORTKEYS give a sigh of relief when the data is loaded in RESUME YES mode. Since the reloaded records are rolled back, the database is not corrupt or inconsistent. If it is in V7 LOAD RESUME YES, the table goes corrupt and it becomes a complicated scenario to set it right.

Is LOAD = crude LOAD + REBUILD + CHECK DATA + IMAGECOPY + RUNSTATS ?? Yes, it is. There are times, when I had done LOAD in bits N pieces.

PS: The author of this post is a
IBM Certified Specialist - DB2 v6.1/7.1 User
IBM Certified Solutions Expert - DB2 UDB V7.1 Database Administration for Os/390
IBM Certified Solutions Expert - DB2 UDB V7.1 Applications Development
IBM Certified Database Administrator - DB2 UDB V8.1 on Linux, Unix & Windows
&
A Fucked up confused bachelor with lots of distasteful thoughts and lives on profanity.

A Ride through IT CITY

2006-07-04T01:05:00.000-04:00

Fidelity Business Services India.

Goldman Sachs

DELL
Microsoft I
IBM GSI
Microsoft II

Undeniably, Bangalore is the Silicon Valley of Asia :-) On the otherside of this Embassy Golf Links (EGL) was Yahoo!,Covansys, ANZ IT, Conexant, Bharti IT and so many. The life was so *colorful* for last 2.5 years !

Think they would allow only food !

2006-07-03T09:20:00.000-04:00

This is a restaurant in Indira Nagar, Bangalore.

Although I had not gone here, had to pass through it everyday while I go to work. I like bold people.. I like Perverts...

Death of Democracy...

2006-06-23T05:16:00.000-04:00

He is one of the most respected politician of this country, India. He is one of the Chief Minister who was a politician even before his film career. He is greatly appreciated for his literature and scripts through out his life. One of the pillars of the Dravidian society & political party, he has written and spoken so much against age-old practices which are potentially superstitous. He has publicly condemned the Hindu Religious practices followed in the State. There is a case where he called such a practise as "inhumane" even when his party M.L.A has been reported doing them. No need to say his name, South Indians should have hit the name by now.

Of course, religious/food practices are one such individual thing that a citizen can follow as per wish. I had the belief India is the biggest Democracy in this world and with so many diversities, democracy is framed so well that Indians are integrated. There are laws and regulations in place that minority population of the country is secured in a 'Hindu'stan.

Hundreds are the works that were written by this political & literary legend on condemning Hindu faiths and religious practices. TamilNadu is known to be conservative & which such contrary works are released, they are for the abolishment of caste system (crazy !). I wonder it should be erase a particular caste from the system. There is a fictional movie (Da Vinci Code) which supposed to have controversial theme affecting the faith of a religion/community which has been cleared by the Supreme Court and the Indian Film Censor Board with few conditions. The political Leader in discussion had "banned" the movie in his ruling State calling it as "Affecting people's faiths". Do human brains fade out coz of ageing ???? May be he doesnt want to risk his "vote bank" ( a learning from the mistake done by opposition!)

Enga Area ullae varradhae !!!!

2006-06-23T04:54:00.000-04:00

A Movie worth watching.. This is not a drama, in first place. Doesnt show a gangster in first-half and then, tries to justify his action with a family drama in flashback. Cinematography & Music direction are at its best in recent times. I don't know if the climax which I saw was the "actual one". But, that is fact and I appreciate this finish.

I loved the scenes where Dhanush gives "respect with thaamboolam" to his gang-leader, dhanush's mentor trains him on maiden episode, A scene following Sonia Agarwal's marriage where Dhanush talks to Sonia's family, Sonia's first night scene, Dhanush's bathroom discussion scene with Sonia, Dhanush's description of newly found family life in his "office",Dhanush escaping in court on sentimental grounds, Make-up for Sneha in her introduction scene & when Dhanush fakely ask Sneha for a cigaratte. I just wonder if there are any other scenes in the movie :-)

Selvaraghavan is intelligent where he implicitly narrated the "making of gangster" as Dhanush brings back his family just to take over the regime. There is no conventional cinema in it. Blood gore is just normal for a gangster movie.

Dhanush's best undeniably ! HE impresses you right away with "uggggh, thondaiyila operrrrshhhion!"

Iam a die-hard Yuvan's fan and loved the songs.. I would undoubtedly call this flick a "musical". Sad that people aren't able to relate to the characters here. Iam surprised to see no vulgarity in a Selvaraghavan's film though it is about gangster and prostitutes. Mind of politicians & gansters are depicted so well, this is a benchmark in Tamil Cinema.

Varumaiyin Niram Sigappu - If it is made in 2005!

2006-05-31T00:20:00.000-04:00

Varumaiyin Niram Sigappu - K.Balachander's movie starring Kamalhassan and Sridevi in lead, S.Ve.Sekar and Dilip being introductions, had been made in sometime in 1980. The movie has a situational theme which is very much beaten in those days novels and movies. How an educated youth finds hard to live with unemployment rate being very high.

The movie is etched with all scenes which draw sympathy from the viewers. The lead artistes is seen in just couple of clothes throughout the movie. I had to pull this off my CD library to beat the boredom on a weekday. As I watched the movie, my mom uttered :"Where is unemployment now? Ppl say BPO, MNC everywhere and all gals & guys are employed @ 20 yrs!!"..

The movie had very strong dialogues/scenes which condemn the society, Indian Government, The way Democracy was made. I wondered what if the movie is made in 2005. What scenes could be censored !!!

1) Kamal - Dilip - S.Ve.Sekar trio,after discussing their poverty, ends the scene shouting - Congress(I) zindabad ! Congress (J) Zindabad !! Congress(K) Zindabad!!! Congress (H) Zindabad !! Democracy Zindabad !!

2) Kamal mistakenly beats the dumb artist and asks if he is Hindi, Tamil since he didnt reply him for long. The artists nods yes when asked if he is Indian. Then ends the scene saying :"Oomaiyaaa ? Adhaan endha mozhiyaiyum sondhamnu sollikkama Indian'nnu sonniya ?"
This could be condemned claiming "Kamal is acting against Tamil and conveying he is Indian"

3) Kamal asks S.Ve.Sekar in the first scene :"unakku cigarette pidikkara pazhakkam irukka?". "Illae!" tells later. Kamal laughs and says "appadinna pazhagikkoo.. yaenna, ingae naanga pala naal adhathaan sappiduvoom !!" - This scene would be condemned to be removed because its misleading youngsters that cigarette is eatable and would spoil them.

4) A Contractor "sub-contracts" his wife to government official for a tenure to get hold of a 10-lakh contract. Many women association would ban the movie because it mars the female community.

Finally, the movie would be a box office disaster coz the songs are Bharathiyar's and no kuthu song and half the dialogues are from Bharathiyar kavidhaigal.

Microsoft... .hehehe..too funny

2006-05-24T09:49:00.000-04:00

Microsoft tells contractors to take 7 days off

SEATTLE: Microsoft Corp has told about 1,000 technology contract workers in the US, India and elsewhere to take seven days off the job, without Microsoft pay, in a cost-saving move that came as the company unveiled a series of new perks for its internal staff. Microsoft spokesman Lou Gellos said yesterday that Microsoft told vendors who supply the contractors that about 1,000 workers globally would not be needed this week. The vendors, whose workers do software development for Microsoft, also were told to schedule two other days off, Gellos said. Gellos said this was one of the first times that Microsoft has scheduled a short period of time off for its contractors. He said the company made the decision because it was running over budget in some areas as it headed toward the end of its fiscal year on June 30. He stressed that the contractors' work was being delayed, not cancelled. "We want to be fiscally responsible here," Gellos said. The vendors were informed of the decision at the beginning of the month. It affects workers in Redmond, Washington state, India and elsewhere, he said. Gellos also said the decision was unrelated to a move, announced late last week, to offer new perks to its Redmond employees such as enhanced child-care benefits, access to dry cleaning and grocery delivery services, and better cafeteria food. "I can understand why people might think that there is a connection, but there is not," Gellos said.

Azhagai Irukkirai....

2006-05-06T00:17:00.000-04:00

Azhagai Irukkirai. Bayamai Irukkiradhu - The title is impressive (As I felt) even at the first time I heard it Shyam utter so close to Jyo in 12B. As the name, as the movie. AIBI is sweet and decent presentation of a love story which targets youth crowd this summer.

Couldn't resist the chennai summer heat & more importantly the stupid political heat on TV channels I decided to take the Noon show. Movies in south india draw big crowd whatever weather is ! After a lot of consideration between AIBI and Pattiyal, I decided to get in for AIBI. Both had Bharath and Yuvan - for which I decided to watch the movie.

This film mainly revolves around four character Bharath, Arun kumar and couple of lead-females. A love story involving two couples is penned interestingly and most importanly innovatively youth. The animations and sarcasm in scenes are interesting and raised my expectation two-fold. Second half had unpredicted twist in the story and unavoidably the last few minutes turns to be an usual film.

There are two heroes in this movie. No.. not Bharath and Arunkumar. Its Yuvan and Bharath in same order. I am already becoming a die-hard Yuvan fan that I loved the songs already. The songs are presented and choreographed youthfully that I loved them more after watching.
There are few minuses in the movie like considerably long flash-back and too silly comedies with Bharath's mom characterization, first half all shot on the beach restaurant and so on.

But, there are few points which made me like this flick. The movie is so youthful and had two lead pairs - But, know what ??? There is not a single Duet song !! And, especially no masala / folk songs.. Nobody speaks punch dialogue.. These are great reliefs from recent movie trend. The heroine (though looks like an alien to films of south india) has done very good job especially with expressions. Director had seen to these-days issues like ego as key in love break-up, thats onething appreciable.

Yuvan's music had all in it ! Nice fusion with "ooram poo naina", story-oriented "Tuzkhan", and his typical Pathos "Kanave kalaigiradhae" (my favourite in the movie). Bharath's movement and Director's own Cinematography are great plusses to both songs and movies !

Iam sorry I can't avoid blogging biased review, in case readers need an unbiased reviews, give it a shot on web (http://www.indiaglitz.com/channels/tamil/review/7689.html)

Azhagai Irukkirai Bayamai Irukkiradhu - (Padam) Azhagai Irukkirai (but, ooduma?) Bayamai Irukkiradhu!!! (Just to sound like Sun TV Review) hehe

Vote - Dont neglect it!

2006-05-05T03:15:00.000-04:00

Biggest strength of Indian Democracy is Voting. We have the choice of opting who should rule us, who should spend our taxes, who has the vison of Future India, who has the qualities that make our state/country pround in its economy and infrastructure.

It is very common thought of normal Indian Citizen is that politicians are corrupt and nobody could do better. May be this is truth and I accept it but, neglecting to vote is no good when we claim for benefits when we dont exercise our basic rights. This is just a process of selecting good one among the whole lot of bad ones. We should atleast consider voting for the reason these people come forward to take on politics when we all stay back at home living the way we used to.

Sitting in home, watching TV and avoiding this summer sun is not the way we should live this date May 8. Lets realise our rights and spend sometime for our nation & its development on this one day that comes once in 5 years.

Please refer to the link for the list of parties /candidates contesting.

http://www.indian-elections.com/assembly-elections/tamil-nadu/candidate-list-tamil-nadu-election.html

Hope we have safe elections and avoid any riots. happy voting

Isolation...Interesting !

2006-04-28T03:58:00.000-04:00

This is from the other side of brain, Iam writing this blog .... So, nobody has to panic if blogger.com has messed up blogs by any chance ! Concurrency - Concurrency is the ability of a database management system to allow multiple users to access data at the same time while maintaining the integrity and consistency of the data. How much should I "isolate" my application from others ??? Few interesting stuffs that I feel so.

1) Am I okay to get any ..any..any data from database whether its not really appropriate or need not be accurate ? - Do an "Uncommitted Read" .. U tell DB to read data even thats not being committed to be complete. Then, why should we query database if we are not bothered of accuracy. Yes, you might do that in real life,but have not noticed. Railway enquiry... Price list for online auction/purchase sites .. you just need to get details but, not accurate at the time.

2) Should I be including ALL available information @ a particular time even it is okay that no new information could be appended ?? - Do a "Repeated Read"..... When I am accumulating information at a time and at the end of it I can say when I did nothing has been left. If I dont say "Repeatable Read", there is possibility that new info could be added to database apart from what I accumulate.

3) Be safe as I could be ! - If I need to be noting touching extremes ... Just ensure I am getting consistent data when I am fetching ?? Juse Cursor Stability... Although a lot of table rows are qualified, you allow other application/users to modify data unless you really fetch them.

So, what strategy should I follow ? Each has its own pros/con. Thinking of concurrency needed, performance, availability of data, volume of data..the isolation should be chosen and not a generalizable one !

Cooking - Whose business is this ????!!!???

2006-04-21T22:22:00.000-04:00

These are scenes that put me on thought for a while ..... In every day life, my mom...my aunts...my in-laws (sister-in-laws) all take up kitchen role. And, apart from occassional "take-over" by my dad I do not see many males doing the cooking job on regular lifestyle.

But, when it comes to cook job...be it from people shown above or in any marriage halls... you get to see almost all men team .... "Ungalukku palaghat mani iyer theriyumaaa ? " If "theriyadhu" is what your mind murmurs... "Avar oru cook'anum... ingae oru periyavar vethalai petti kaanum'nu thaedindirundhaar illaeyaa..avar thaan!" Be it Mani Iyer or Kameswaran.. I had thought why men take this cook role when it comes to big sizes ???

A normal instance to show chauvinism in society - that male think cooking is no proud thing if it is not getting money in returns ???? *** Raised eyebrows ***

Well said !

2006-04-19T07:40:00.000-04:00

http://www.hindu.com/thehindu/holnus/001200604191662.htm

This is following to scenes developing in this democratic, secular country !!! Last year, I witnessed stone-throwings (where else ????) in the hi-tech city of the country. Demand is - "All IT companies should have reservation towards localites !!!" I ask, what the hell is the politicians or the social activitsts organizations thinking of IT companies. Or, the so-called-outsiders (are they really outsiders ? foreigners ?? are they stealing your job ?? Haven't you run to Bombay or chennai decades back to get jobs ???) !!!! The public demand is that IT companies should not bring people from "outside" when they find labour in their own state ! Fine, IT comapnies are n't government bodies they can put any policies to woo voters !!

I wouldn't be surprised when a day arise where the community of people would demand entry pass to their state in this country !

Thambi - Paarka vaendiya Thiraipadam

2006-04-01T08:23:00.000-05:00

Today is one of the risky days. Before you wander your minds thinking what it is, I tell you... I wished to take my mom & sis take out for a movie. So what, why is it risky ? Was it coz of summer ?? Nope ! This is high time risk to attempt a tamil movie in theater with the ladies in home. Recent trends - All songs "pakka kuthu" songs including the romantic duets, perverted dialogues for inducing humour..its going highly bad.

I'd been to Thambi ! Movie is just good for my mindset and recent time attitude. It is not from an ace director so, I never had high expectations. R Madhavan is one of very few actors I like on-screen/off-screen. I know the music already..I was already fan of jaggamma, kaadhalithu paar songs. The movie is somewhat usual and age-old vengence story but, with a message and difference. Madhavan has made few changes in his looks. Long hair, kurta tops..costume that repeat in a movie. Be it lover boy or angry youth or gangster or a-father-for-two, he excels ! He has done it again. Thayir saadham has its taste always ! :-)

Whether he has a big tummy
and..made his gal mummy..he is now a daddy
But, always he is same old maddy !

Movie's plusses are Dialogues, Madhavan, Music ! Three of the major songs although them come hindrance to flow of the movie, are enjoyable and melodies. Few scenes are highly predictable and dragging..after all this is a mass movie with madhavan. So, gals would be lil disappointed. A typical flash-back where the hero loses his loved ones drags the viewers a big time. But, sarcasm on the tree-cutting-episode is interesting. The director proves in few scenes like heroine's token of love, climax where the bad-guy's ploy backfiring himself, maddy's counter attacks on blazing busses, hero knows karate so he could hit powerful and could handle guys, intermission scene where maddy claims he could be that single match to ignite the whole nation, restaurant scene where maddy comforts the heroine.

Of course, movie lacked so logics and impractical but, he never deviated from the theme.. no comedies although Vadivelu was there ! Hereoine is glamour factor, hardly makes any sense with expresssions..falling in love with couple of encounters with hero. But, I would say this is powerful presention than a costly Anniyan which eventually made people remember what REMO did and forgot what Anniyan said !

Keep coming movies like this and keep reminding people to care human/society/country. I had a nice movie.

Spitting.... Peeing....Shitting.......

2006-03-30T20:45:00.000-05:00

If you feel this title is yucky, i would tell u that Indian roads are as yucky ! Yes, its an outburst of my thoughts as I walk, ride or look along the roads of some of the best cities in our nation. It was a fine wee hour when I enter chennai city and about to cross over the road. It must be 4.30 Am and my instinct never let me take animal-like running across roads when sub-way or flyover is there. After all, these basic infrastructure are built from our taxes and we should make use of ! Many a times, sub-ways are closed until 6 AM ! This is one such morning !!

As I cross the road, there is small gust pass thru me .. I shocked and stopped my early morning gait. I could see it is a fluid and it was too dark to see the color or ingredient !! As i turn left, i see it orginated from a human walking jus a feet before me. He is playing that titanic game but, missed a girl to accompany. I continued walking.

I got a window seat in chennai local bus. I had to put my bag, jerkin, two forelimbs all on my lap. I could see all "paaan" spitted all over the window. Though the bus was half empty I went around to see a "good seat". I think in other countries, a good seat could mean differently. In Indian cities, its different. I should be lucky to see where there is no chewed gum sticken, no pan being spitted, seats are not torn and your bum not being pricked by nails.

Its as early as people take nature's call and it was Saidapet Iam crossing now. Where do these guys go ?? nowhere, jus to streets !! After an hour, there is going to be population moving around..is it ok to take a shit here.. "never mind!" says their instinct and they take the relief.

So, will you spit in your living hall ? Will you pee in your bedroom ? will you shit in your kitchen ?? Will you do these inside a temple /mosque / church ? If you are slapped morally.. look back.. Indians you are doing it !!!! India is home and roads are living place.. now tell me, aren't you doing ??? No, Im not preaching you living manners. I just have a simple question. I am software professional with engineering degree and feel India is not a bad place to LIVE ! This year my tax liability is 62,000 INR, don't you feel with such a feeling and so much money contributed towards country... I do not deserve an environment/lifestyle/society that is better than this shit piling, shocking gust of salivas, salted yellowing urine ? Just think this society is super mix of variants and Just keep in mind some people shouldn't be offended as well !

PS: I've been living in bangalore and chennai and my thoughts are based on my experience.

My new love !

2006-03-23T23:50:00.000-05:00

Its when i am in my second year of my graduation, I had my first love for my bike. Those were the days when the bike models were very conservative and I could see only Yamaha (with its RX series), Suzuki (Samurai) and Hero Honda (Splendor) on market. My thinking was so typical, as I purchased bike with my piggy bank made out of my scholarship. I looked for bike with decent looks having good mileage. That was the time, yamaha withdrew RX-100 and Suzuki withdrew Shogun. So, I were to take Splendor unconditionally. Nothing to feel sad, it is a good bike still. These days i hardly drive my splendor and yday a ride to office proved real pleasant and nostalgic.

My bike purchase is the beginning of launch of various bike models. Passion, CBZ were the ones launched during 1Q of 2001 and thereon, almost more than a dozen bikes been launched. I started fuming a little bit and it was in 3Q 2002 when I started working and see my big money flowing in ! Much hyped Thunderbird were priced 87K INR at the launch and in my calculation it took about 5 months salary then !

After 4 years of working, now I am contemplating on impressive car models, this thunderbird is putting me in dilemma. Whether its a Maruti Swift or a Thunderbird, when I relocate chennai is my million-dollar question right now !!!

Results May Vary !

2006-03-21T02:02:00.000-05:00

Yes, an apt title to a Limp Bizkit album. That was the time when I was so sunk in Eminem and his rap works. As always, Prakash suggested me this album. This definitely is not his first purchase on Limp bizkit. He had listened to "significant other" and not suggested me that one. This is one reason, I always blindly go try Prakash's suggestions. He never diluted his references and kept his stand on suggesting good music to me !

This was not my first Limp bizkit listening certainly, I had watched "Keep Rolling" , "MI-2 OST" and had thought him as pain-in-ears shout !! But, Results May Vary is definitely a soft rock of his standards. Most of the music had appealed to me because, I got to hear that apt point of time. Likewise, RMV is a God's gift when I was searching a music that I was unconsciously searching for. This is one among the few albums, I had bght twice as the first one had worn-out :-)
Opening track "Eat you alive" just made me feel this is a way, one could ever fall in love with gal. I never believe anger and love could be interwoven like this. The video wasn't that impressive.. but, song is !
"Underneath the gun" is perfect to bring out what I felt with my career. Being managed to crack into Anna university and living a life for 3 years with no future thoughts, the blow happenned in Sep-11 is a sever blow in IT aspirants down in this sub-continent.
I Jus loved the "I keep saying goodbye ...saying goodbye .....keep saying goodbye.... She's always coming back.. She keeps coming back...She keeps coming back" I wished I had a gfriend I dumped!!
I loved "Almost over" for the words "my life is one big dream... i'm lost in what it means.... dont't wake me up 'cuz its almost over....these voices in my mind.... keep telling me its time....to wake me up cuz its almost over". I realised my life is growing monotonous and I should "move on". His little modulated voice was impressive when he swaps btw little boy and older man verses.
I wasn't much impressed with Snoop Dogg's duet with LB in the song red light-green light !
"The only one " is my answer to women in my life who were pissed off with me and felt what really is wrong with him, "as a guy" !
"Let me down" - Was one track I wish I wanted to hear when I was dumped first. Fullstop !
"Lonely world" - Perfect track for my bangalore life now, it made me to buy this album for the second time.
"Creamer" - Is the masterpiece of this album. I jus love it still.
"Behind blue eyes" & "Drown" are his perfect blues to end the album with a desire to re-play for sure !
It's absolutely so late to review an album that is 3 years old but, if there is pain, suffering, feel blue.. I would still feel this is a perfect album. I just loved it for its lyrics than for the voice or the metals !

Limp bizkit , I love you for this wonderful album !!!!

Are we getting the best Service ?

2006-03-13T01:23:00.000-05:00

On continuing tariff reduction war among cellular service providers in India ........

There were days when incoming calls were charged and outgoing calls / SMS were unreachable high for middle-class Indian population. Thanks to the Reliance who brought a revolution in the mobile tariff. Airtel / Hutch / Aircel who used to charge a lot were forced to bring down tariff to withstand the competetion. This is an old story.

Even after 3 years, the same trend continue. BSNL India's government telecom provider who had infrastructure already in place was a monopoly for long time. But, only the lazy people employed in it and the lacking competetion seemed to be the reasons for the havocs prevailed with land-line connections then. It had taken 6 to 8 months to get a new land-line connection and upto 6 months to transfer a land-line connection in case of relocation. When the private players entered land-line market, BSNL are FORCED to roll up their sleeves and give better service with value added features.

BSNL has now been smart enough to realise, they should continue to be a monopoly and rendered Re 1/min plan to any calls on mobile phone within India(http://www.bsnl.co.in/newsdetailed.php?news_id=280) . Since I had been living out of my home state (and in a pathetic state), I always look for any changes in STD / roaming rates among the service providers. I definitely know, this is alwas affordable for BSNL if they had the attitude to make technology/mobile phones feasible for every common man in India. But, never tried it until they had the pain in the ass to live up to the competition.

I, for sure, was expecting everyday's newspaper for airtel to announce a similar plan to catch up the competition. And, there come's the news from Airtel ! http://www.hindu.com/2006/03/09/stories/2006030907850600.htm

Why can't the "Service Providers" make the service at the "best" to start with and get customer satisfaction right away. Should some one pork them consistently to make them better and better ??? As the World is getting "Service oriented" by every day, why can't this attitude be carved into "Service Providers' mind " ???? will it be ?

Life outside Tamilnadu :-(

2006-03-11T21:05:00.000-05:00

It has been two years now our hero is living outside chennai/tamilnadu. Though, he feels it a great achievement on his part, he had been going chennai atleast once a month for first year and atleast once a week for the past few months. Err did I mess up the frequency ???? People tend to visit home often during initial days ... get used to new life and then bring down the frequency of visits. But, his case has been different.

First couple of months outside chennai had not been in Bangalore, so the hero really can't think of visiting home. He was travelling out of India on a business trip and hardly got the feeling of looking back @ home. :-D When he moved to bangalore, he had no contacts there except his IBM HR who arranged his accomadation and initial living. As few months passed, his closest ally moved from trichy to bangalore and his "Gopura Vaasalilae" days started. The lonely guy joined up with him to live and then, it has always been acquisition for him. The count went up to 5 living in a house in Indira Nagar. Our hero is always muti-talented in his own ways and when he is not coding, he is cooking. His cooking mentor is his own mom, sweet mom.

There are times, when our hero had felt more satisfaction (through the happy stomachs of his roomies) in cooking than coding ;-). I don't know if there were guys in bangalore who in their bangalore life, hadn't visited a pub / hadn't partied for a night / hadn't heard Radio City FM for a while / hadn't flirted with a female / hadn't dated anyone / hadn't been to a Cinema theater - but, in bangalore during weekends. A reader might stamp these guys are conservative bums or pyschopaths-on-the-making ! But, there were not a single day we regretted or we felt we should return Chennai.

Physics reassured !! An unstability assured after a short period of stable situation. The fire inside all of us started blustering and the stability bubble bursted eventually. Guys started moving back chennai except the hero! What hold our hero back to bangalore is an unquestionable truth known only to him. December 2005 - the end of an eventful year was "the curtain call" to this lovely life in bangalore and beginning of lonely life in bangalore.

our hero moved into a lonely home to continue the saga of life in bangalore. His life thereon, his weekends, his passtimes are all well chartered out and his life had been a simple formula : "In a week, four nights in bangalore, one night in Chennai, two nights in Bangalore/Chennai Mail Upper Berths!". Unknown persons could call it a sign of "having a girlfriend up there in chennai", "he is terribly homesick to go home all weekends", "his manager is in danger,anytime he could quit his bangalore job" but, again only our hero knows what his mind thinks !!!

(Thanks to Limp bizkit and Eminem for rendering their final album names - "The unquestionable truth" & "The curtain call" respectively for the author of this blog !")

Marshal Mathers a.k.a Eminem

2006-03-09T01:48:00.000-05:00

It's high time, I did not write about my favourite - Eminem ! Originally called as Marshal Mathers hailed from Detroit and then moved to California to work closely with his Hip Hop Mentor Dr Dre. It was sometime in 2000 and I was in my second year of my graduation, I was told of this Rap Artist by my friend Prakash. My first hearing on a Rap songs… album named "Marshal Mathers LP". For some reason or so, I was pissed off with the way my life had been. We were living so monotonous taking up internal assessments tests almost every week and only good thing to happen was I moved out of Anna university hostels to my flat in Velachery with my mom and sister. I started visualizing Eminem as a person who is my split personality gushing out thoughts/feelings from my mind so freely. He, to me,was like Brad Pitt to Edward Norton in Fight Club.

I was naturally fed up could not put with monotonous life and way the people around me behave. I was naturally using F word so much, putting unnaturally more weights in my gym, hearing really loud music at mid nights, hated whenever a female talked to me in college and badly wanted to start earning for the way I want to live my life. Then, eminem was my God's gift and still, I owe a great thanks to my friend who referred me to Eminem's Works. I now stand to feel, eminem has got more versataile and matured in his lyrics or beats than he was in year 2K. His track "Stan" was the only great piece , as I feel now in that album. But, I was happy to hear songs like "Kill you", "The Way I am" , "Criminal", "Bitch please ". That was a great transition for me who was a die-hard Bryan Adams, U2 fan those days. I started realising how yuckily Bryan Adams words on Love were compared to U2's Love songs.

Then, followed albums like "The Eminem show" which made him a super selling, right-on-top rap artist. His songs started having contents on Mr. Bush, America, Elvis, Britney Spears, Spice Girls against his all time topic - Kim , his ex-wife then and wife now. His hollywood debut and more close to his real life story "8 Mile" put him stronger again with his "Lose Yourself". Final album before his all hits compilation (The Curtain Call), Encore is his another masterpiece and sadly, it didn’t repeast history as "The Eminem Show" did. His final video as of now - "When Im gone" disappointingly expressed a feeling that his rap career messed up his personal life. I got to know his life through his songs as any other fan and I accepted his thoughts in "When Im gone". But, the track is a masterpiece to end his single-career. Hope to hear him more with D-12 in future.

Thanks to his Detroit side brought up, his rap-speed and modulation on words are phenomenal in Rap history and he is a history for sure !

Numero Uno - My Hero

2006-03-08T06:13:00.000-05:00

I hardly give time to speak of films - be it Tamil or English.. But, certainly Kamal Hassan (shortly as Kamal hereon) is one person I always talk in favour of in any conversation. I remember I have watched more Rajini movies in my childhood than any heroes - a typical child of a Tamil Nadu. I remember it is Devar Magan which made me to like this film Hero. His ideology had been different always and writing a blog on how he is, at this time would only prove how obsolete I am !

He used to be an actor who never compromised on scripts for box office sake. Never had scenes that are just commercial value and had always strived hard to take Tamil Movies to international standards. Oflate, I feel he is diluting a bit among the tamil masala films of recent years. His MBBS remake film would tell he "had" given space to have "commercial items" in his films too. May be he felt he should do an "actor job" for a film. I can never accept Anbe Sivam a film having no directional interference from Kamal. so is Devar Magan. Bharathan - the director of Devar Magan has commented Kamal took over direction of most of the scenes in the second half of that film.

If anybody thinks style is "Rajini's copyrighted word", I would suggest them to watch Kamal's looks in every movie and I can hardly forget the long "Funk hair" that he sported in Devar Magan. As I write this material, I am hearing songs of his next venture - Vettaiyadu Vilaiyadu and hoping that the movie would be a neat presentation that goes well with Box Office as well and put a 'full stop' to the so-called commercial movies that make the tamil film industry yucky recently !

From an die hard AR Rehman Fan

2006-03-01T02:23:00.000-05:00

I remember my school days when I felt Rehman's music really refreshing and all youthful as I was urged to get into youthful days...Wishing I would get beard..Wishing I would grow moustache...Wishing to wear jeans all the days...Wishing the teenage gals to look at me anywhere..Wishing I have a girlfriend who "Loves" me.... Rehman's music was a fashion statement those days and he took tamil film music to another leap. His beats to fast paced tracks, freshness to the melodies, started as a bad background scorer but, turned out really amazing background music director (thanks to Big directors he got to work with !).

I never had favourite actor consistently those days but, Rehman had been my favourite in film industry. I never knew a single hindi word ..but, dared to buy all his hindi works too ! Height of a fan's desperacy is that I couldn't wait for Uyire to be released, bought Dil Se in haste and after couple of weeks, bought again Uyire audio. He slowly transitioned for good into more matured music with movies like Rhythm, Alaipayuthae, Kannathil Muthamittal, Vande Mataram, Iruvar, Kizhakku cheemaiyilae, and few hindi period movies to prove his versality. But, oflate he is truggling to get back his rhythm that he had in his olden days. Although Boys, New, A Ah, Rang De Basanthi were are his hits... there is certainly something lacking from him these days !

Of course, nothing is going to stop me from complementing other music directors... I feel yuvan has grown a big structure these years. In my recent Tamil audio listening, I honestly felt Pudhupettai (Yuvan) is lot better than Rang De Basanthi (Rehman). I took a chance, cursed my lack of hindi knowledge and wanted to see for next Rehman. Godfather ! I was not even interested to hear it again...Still, I forced myself to hear few times as I know Rehman's music is good as it grows on... nope ! I failed !! Jus a day back, I tried "Pattiyal" (Yuvan) which is simply mindblowing. I had heard atleast 15 times in a day i downloaded the songs. I think, Yuvan is fresh with experience, nativity and his music knowledge. I would love to see this youngh talent (Is he really young for this industry ???!!!!???) grow more and bigger !!!

Jillendru Oru Message !

2006-02-23T01:19:00.000-05:00

That was a foggy december morning in bangalore and I just returned from my usual weekend chennai trip. I always kind of feel I come to bangalore to significantly do something, all the way from chennai. So, such a Monday morning is always with all hopes ;-) Err, I missed the usual East Station and had to go until City Station in my Bangalore Mail. Its good in a way, I could stretch my sleep for 20 more minutes.

On my way home bangalore, I see a girl watching me throughout the station platform and I as usual felt uncomfortable. I with my hands checked my hair and checked my waist for my pant and finally the essential one..yea, all the guys would have got it now. My wallet, it is there ! So, I could reach home and don’t have to encourage the gal's courtship for a silly lift that she might give after use of my exemplary flirtious talk. (Probably, I see a reason my friends saying I am doing galish thing sometimes -- using gals for silly helps). I got back to my usual arrogant looks to continue on my walk to see for an auto if possible or a bus.

Jus like the movie, the gal who watched me got into the same bus. (Err, Editor in me messed up and this para is abrupt…I saw a long queue for auto and preferred to take bus has been ripped off). I don’t want to take ticket before she did..yea, I cant see another irony to see her get down in my stop - Domlur and thereby let this blog a more lengthier one… I always felt I foresee things for better ;-) …But, yea she did it exactly and I couldn’t even believe she walked down with me to my street. I was dumb-stuck to see her get into the house next to my house in Indira Nagar. She was in a nice churidhaar and certainly looked a Tamilian as my gaze on her bag read a shop in chennai. I remember I had been in that Indira Nagar house for about more than 10 months and with friends all in 24-25 age bracket.

What certainly is wrong with my harmones, to have not realised some girls living next door ????? Or, simply with the outlook on the life ??? Although, Bangalore is no alien place for Tamilians, we could have befriended some native people around and taken/offered some help. All that I am bothered of is I manage to go office in time, finish off to get back home to watch some crap on TV. When I come out of house, that means I either take a personal call on my mobile that my house-mates probably should not overhear or, to see for someone at doors looking to sell something. Younger generations (let me include me too into this for some more years) got to see for neighbours as well and need not be so selfish, never mingling with society.

Carisbrooke Castle , Isle of Wight , UK

2006-02-14T06:29:00.000-05:00

That was a very romantic British Spring weekend. I was definitely happy to get off the Chennai Summer and be there for a month. Although my passport page read "Business Entry", I still count that as one of my exotic vacations in recent years.

There was certainly no home-sick when I landed in Heathrow, London because, I had my return tickets in my hand and my stay is just for one month. But, still there is couple of reasons I was sad about.

One is that was April 14 - Tamil New Year Day. My mom was feeling like I missed a great opportunity to eat her "sakkara pongal" with the family (it jus matters 4 of us) on that day.

Another is April 14 (again !) - Release of Ghilli Tamil movie. My sister was feeling like she missed a great opportunity of going for that movie on the first day. In fact, I was not keen about the movie then ;-)

Coming back to the topic, the spring has just been rolled out and schools/universities were on spring vacation so, we were happy to roam around in local busses. UK was treating us with really longer day as the Sun was for us until 9 PM. On the first weekend, we cruised to an Island - Isle of Wight just few Kms off the harbour city - Portsmouth where IBM had its UK headquarters. There we had been trekking a little to get to the "Carisbrooke Castle". There you see my friend Thilak posing with our Hero.

I really forgot my family, friends, girlfriend that I do not get to call them because, I was all in mood to roam around and I was happy for the information and infrastructure that the country had for its visitor. I felt so comfortable with the place unlike bangalore where on returning from chennai, I still wink on every Monday morning where I should go further to reach my home.

All I learnt in one month was - " Definitely, i witnessed the reason UK ruled us for 100 years and I now saw what all they did with the money the looted from our Rajas and the civilians ". Indians in UK - realise this and return to bring India to the glory it deserves having produced so many software professionals !!!!

Dates in my Life ;-)

2006-02-14T05:54:00.000-05:00

Dates - This is probably the most heard/uttered word today... I dont really find a relation between Feb 14 and Dates... But, certainly there is no day for me without dates. As I sat little underutilized and unproductive to my boss, i am here blogging a few words on my opinions on dates.

This is different generation where even the married couples dont eat in home (with certainly both career oriented and have to get to their work and spare me, I am used to see slogging couples in my very little grown up years and most of them both in software industry) because of getting to sleep really late in the night (again here, i am not getting pervert trying to say what they do until the early morning ;-D) due to work pressures and highly impossible deadlines (hehehe, i certainly had stolen these much used words from recent Email forwards and the TOI daily in bangalore ;-) ). Here, the couple is happy that they get to date every dinner, either in some restaurants on the way home or in the office canteen itself (if both were employed for same firm). The quality of food and the necessary contents for the health gets defeated when they enjoy each other's presence and enjoy the dinner-date.

Here, I want to go back and think of my school days when I was not so used to Dates and not been in any liking for it. My dad has always been health conscious on his kids that he used to tell "atleast 1 illae 2 eduthukko..otherwise, you will feel tired and dont get the energy". At this time, if you guys guessed what he is meaning.. I would say you are "my kind". I am even not interested to eggs those days (this is not certainly due to my Iyerism on this taste) .

But, these days when I am living alone and my dad and family 400 kilometers away when they could hardly mind what my day is like, I run at 9 PM to Food World to get a packet of Lion Dates because, my stock of Dates is over by yesterday. Being a vegetarian and not getting used to suggested ergonomics for my body and health.. I am always used to go gym atleast 5 or 6 times a week. Egg, Dates and Banana are definite must for my diet. It is said, Dates give the necessary Iron content that my bones grow harder to carry the weights in the gym. If I get to bring my dad or mom to my place in bangalore, they would definitely be happy at my changed attitude on diet.

I am worried now if I become part of that busy working couple, would i be having time to jog, work-out, eat my banana & Dates that I need ????

I certainly believe i emphasized what I wanted to blog ;-)

Why did I finally create a blog spot ????

2006-02-08T04:37:00.000-05:00

I've been avoiding to blog online for long time....that kills the purpose of being interesting to people who move with us. There should be some pep and thrill in people who get into my life to know who n what I am and what was my past like. A blog spot just kills all it !!! Its like throwing a less personal diary online for anyone to go through it in detail and leisurely.

(Some reader : ok, asshole tell me the bullshit why you started blogging ? )

I have been noticing that my life is changing too fast and too unlikely I sometimes dont like to look back what it was like and what I liked to have my future as. I am in a lifestyle where I check system clock more than my wrist watch..read "The Hindu" online, plan my travels online, purchases/transacts too much online now, I am getting scared (may be unnecessarily) that I might forget/miss the smell of reality. I wanna put my mind then and there where i can do "autograph thing" after some years or months probably. My mind had been swinging too much these days that I feel myself like a "super mix of tastes" and dont seem to be a guy of "mix of super tastes". I stand to hate what I was like few hours/days/months back. I just want to pile up my personalities/emotions/thoughts somewhere and of course, some time that I got now to create a blog spot.

(Same reader : kill you mo'fo, this is why everybody creates !!! )

As Fred Durst wrote in his "Results may Vary.."

When i reminisce ignorance was bliss,
Back in the days where the magic exist
Never be the same as it was, 'cuz the way it was
Just another day in the maze of a myth
Had a lot of fun living life on the run,
Never had a chance to pause to get a better glance
Everything was free and everything was fast
Never even thought it wouldn't last
When you go the mind of a man in the middle
Life is just a big fat riddle, so figure it out
Always thinking that you kno
wEverything little thing there is to know
But you don't really know, ya know?
It's like love, some people get it
For some it's just a glove that just never fitted
For me it's just a pain in the ass
But i'm addicted to the taste of hopin' it could last