A Feather Out Of My Book

Shop till you drop

2011-11-29T15:20:00.001-08:00

Never understood that phrase, until I did that. I don't know if its the colder climate or the low humidity or perhaps the lack of crowd in Colorado in comparison with Ranganaathan street, I did not drop even after 14 hrs of roaming around on Black Friday.

I knew a few things which I had to buy for sometime now and was postponing those for this day of the year. Visibly the discounts weren't that great this year if you zero'ed up on a specific product and wait for a slash on the price, Instead if one doesn't care for the brand or fine with lesser features then one might end up in a steal if one has the patience to stand in line 4 - 5 hrs in the cold for the doorbuster deals that happen when the shops open by 12:00AM. I was very specific on what to get therefore I didn't bother to brave the cold for the doorbuster deals.

I started by 8:00AM and visited some furniture shops and then the factory outlet malls followed by IKEA and then the park meadow mall. Since these were in Denver/outskirts of Denver, it was visibly the Black Friday crowd, but in comparison to the crowds in NY/CA, it was considerable and thus I was able to shop around easily. As far as electronics is concerned I sealed up a solid deal for a 40" Sony - Google LED HDTV in Sony website. It was fun to visit so many shops in a single day and I think this is the first Black Friday wherein I contributed to the economy through my shopping spree. Finished the day with a visit to the local Best Buy to check around.

The Curious Case of Peppers

2011-07-20T11:29:00.000-07:00

There are few stories that is hard to believe, one such is the story of the expensive black pepper(Tamil: Milagu), the diminished usage of long Pepper(Tamil: Kandanthippali) and the rise of Chilli Pepper(Tamil: Milagaai). These 3 commodity's history and even their etymological namings in various languages are interwoven. The spice trade route in the high seas estabilished by the portuguese in 1498 paved the way for this.

My interest in the Black Pepper was kindled by the Malayalam film "Urumi" and did some reading on Peppers. And so the story of Peppers unfolds. Prior to the Age of Discoveries, Black Pepper was native to Southern India(malabar region) and long pepper was grown in the North Western regions of India and these two were the only commodities to make the Indian cuisine hot. The european world prior to the age of discoveries used long pepper(imported from Northern India) for spicing up their cuisine as black pepper was very expensive and hard to import from South India. As the Romans thought both black and long pepper is from the same plant, they termed both as piper(actually derived from Tamil/malayalam root Pippali or Tippali) which became pepper in English.

When Vasco Da Gama estabilished the sea route to south India in 1498, Black Pepper almost became like the Dollar currency in FOREX of these days. With the continuous flow of Black pepper to Europe, long pepper's stock was going for a nose dive :) It was during this time that the Columbian Exchange happened wherein the commodities, culture etc were exchanged by the Europeans with the Americas after the Columbus discovery of America in 1492. Now the third contender chilli Pepper (a native of America) entered the scene.

The Europeans and Indians so far had known only Pepper as the source of Hotness in cuisine, therefore when they encountered Chilli, they named it based on pepper too, thats why it is called as chilli pepper (Tamil: Milagaai - Milagu(Black Pepper) + Kaai(Unripened fruit)) How intuitive!! When chillies entered India through the portuguese, it took us by storm it was far easier to cultivate than long pepper and all the cuisines made earlier with long pepper(the spiciest one at that time) was substituted with chillies. Probably is this the reason that we look up on anything foreign with awe, irrespective of whether they are the best in class or not? Right now, the only dishes in south India that I know that makes use of long Pepper is Kandanthippali Rasam and Deepavali Marunthu.

That sealed the demise of Long pepper with chilli pepper and black reigning the supremacy across all cuisines. Looking back in retrospect, the traders around the world in the 1400's and 1500's were responsible for so many things associated with our cuisines/apparel/culture etc, Its hard to believe that we never knew about Potato, Tomato, Capsicum, Beans, Chilli, Custard Apple (Sita Pazham), Corn, Guava, Groundnut, Sweet Potato, Pumpkin, Pineapple, Papaya prior to 1500s. All these cam from Americas through Europe. I wonder what were we eating during that time?

Some traces of foreign introduction of some vegetables and fruits are still evident in our life, for eg, During some festivals, rituals and Mangali ponduthal there is a rigid rule of what should be cooked. The curry would always be Vazhaikaai(Plantain) / Kothavarangaai(Cluster Beans) / Katharikaai (Brinjal) / Poozhanikaai (Ash gourd) / Avaraikaai (Broad Beans) / Podalangai (Snake Gourd) curry and all of them would be seasoned with coconut and not fried, Maanga(Mango) pachidi, Vazhaikaai (Plaintain) chips which clearly are made only with the indigenous vegetables and probably the rules were devised when the other vegetables existence was never known. These vegetables are also referred to as Naatu kaai (Country or local vegetables). Some vegetables and fruits never got a proper Tamil name(eg, Carrot, Beet root, Apple) and some got names referring to their history (eg, Pumpkin - Parangikaai : Parangi(Foreign) + Kaai(Unripened fruit)) Also, even though we embraced potato, tomato, guava et all with open arms, still in our house we avoid eating Pineapple, Papaya and Custard Apple giving it a suspicious look :) I hope someday there is mass production of Indian vegetables here in US, I miss the kothavarangaai, Avarakaai, Poozhanikaai, Podalangaai. I am tired of buying the same old Potato and Tomato everytime in the grocery store!!

World Champions!! Atlast!!

2011-04-07T16:33:00.000-07:00

1983 is quite a long time back, and all that I know about India lifting the Cricket World Cup is from the iconic still in which Kapil Dev holds the trophy in Lords. Fast-forwarding 20 years, I was in the cross-roads of writing the MOST_IMPORTANT_EXAM of my life, the 12th standard public exam. In spite of that, I saw all the matches that India played. India had an humiliating defeat vs Australia in the qualifying round and went on to win everyone(England, Pakistan, New Zealand, Sri lanka to name some) else convincingly.

Some of the most memorable matches were played in that world cup series, The hook shot from sachin in shoib's over(India vs Pakistan) etched in the minds of the people forever. It is comparable to the Aamir Sohail's wicket taken by Venkatesh Prasad in the 1996 world cup!! We were basically cruising in that world cup, only to meet Australia in the finals. I had my Computer Science public exam the next day and to my horror saw India getting pelted by Ponting and his men!! I could see India loosing their hold on the World cup and myself on the computer science exam.

Heart-broken, Literally everybody was in tears. I gave my best shot in the Exam and stopped watching Cricket from then on. Now and then I would just check the scores in The Hindu and come to know who won what. In 2007 world cup India had to face crushing defeat in the hands of Srilanka and Bangladesh eventually getting kicked out in the qualifying rounds itself. Towards the end of that year, I got the chance to watch IPL Ist Edition in bangalore between Chennai Super Kings & Royal Challengers, Bangalore. The crowd was crazy(that means us) and the cheer was maddening. We supported CSK and it was a crucial win for CSK, in the end

Under Dhoni, India lifted the 20-20 world cup in 2007, CSK lifted IPL - 3rd edition. Again it was the time for the World Cup in 2011 and initially, India tied/lost 2 matches but qualified easily for the quarter finals against Australia. Till then, I followed the world-cup only from the newspapers. Now the heat was on, though it was tempting, I resisted and followed only in Cricinfo that too the second half of the second Innings. Yuvaraj and Raina took India safely and knocked Australia out of the series. It was a sweet revenge for the the loss we had in 2003. I was more than happy and the next hurdle was Pakistan in Semi-finals.

The media and the politics involved took the match between India and Pakistan to the next level and inadvertently created unwanted pressure on the players on both the sides. Being Superstitious esp in cricket, I followed this match too in cricinfo and it was real fun to see the status updates in FB and Twitter. And so we moved to the finals, the celebration back in India knew no bounds, and I dutifully saw them in youtube, what else I could do? Our generation never knew how India celebrated in 1983, but I am sure it would not be anywhere close to this.

The venue for the final clash between India and Sri Lanka was Mumbai and SriLanka played first and possed a formidable score of 274!! India lost sehwag and sachin by 32 and the future looked bleak. Thankfully I didn't follow this and was sleeping peacefully paying heed to my superstitious beliefs. And when I got up and checked cricinfo, Gambhir and Dhoni was slowly but steadily closing in the gap. I knew that India is making history this time and I couldn't suppress my curiousity anymore. I started watching the match in some streaming channel. Inch by Inch we were closing on, though we lost Gambhir. Yuvraj kept the required run rate low while Dhoni was rotating the strike. When we had 11 balls and 4 runs to win, Voila!! Dhoni's finished the match with a SIX!! He scripted the masterstroke with his infamous Helicopter shot and made History!! India is now the World Champions and lifted the 2011 World Cup!!

The stadium/celebration was electrifying. The 28 year wait finally paid off and we lifted the cup in India, happiness and excitement knew no bounds. Sachin's resume is complete and Dhoni is the best Indian captian of all times. Kapil Dev's 1983 world cup trophy brought the passion for cricket into this country, Sachin's 22 year crusade in Indian cricket made young/old, rich/poor, men/women to closely follow the sport. Dhoni's 2011 world cup is a dedication to the 1.2 billion hearts which beat together irrespective of the differences in language/custom/religion, whenever India played. Never before in the whole history of mankind would one-sixth of the world population would have completely forgot everything and jumped up in joy and celebrated. The celebration was not confined to India alone, the NRIs across the world celebrated and took to the streets. The whole world felt a lot lighter that day!!

It is quite a privilege to be in this era and watch this, it is one moment to cherish and recall back in posterity to the future generation....

Following Intuitions

2011-03-15T15:58:00.000-07:00

Sometimes out of the blue after blotting the door and while walking down the staircase, the heart perturbs and quips "Have you switched off the lights in the Living Room?" Ok, here I go to check it out and everytime it would have been properly switched off. But sometimes one tend to fight against this intuition and go forward but end up regretting later.

With a huge plan in the mind for the weekend, I got myself ready on Saturday morning and was about to leave for the Eleven Mile State Park. As usual the intuition told me to take a pen along with me. I laughed at my Intuition thinking, 'why would anyone need a pen in the Isolated Prairie grassland, when there is a Frozen Lake to play with and the snow clad rocky mountains in the horizon to look at.' Probably taking some water with you makes sense and having woolen gloves is prudent enough in case the temperature dips. As I traveled the distance, the last 15 miles was indeed on a isolated gravel road with scenic spots on either side. Through the green grasses here and there have started showing their finger to winter, the overall outback was still yellowish brown. After a bumpy 15 mile drive the Eleven mile lake started unraveling itself.

The board at a distance beckoned us to the state park and some instructions that were listed there. "Pay the Park Entrance Fee here" caught my eye, and a careful reading told that we had to fill-up a Entry form and pay the fee in the "Hundial" kind of a box, stick part of the entry form on the vehicle and only then we could enter the park. Sounds simple, no queues, no manned hazzles etc. Ok, Out I go to fill-up the form, and checked my shirt & pant pockets. Nope, Nobody had a pen. Probably in the car, no luck there too. Probably we could wait for another 5 - 15 minutes, Nobody in sight, As the Spring hadn't fully set in, nobody really cared to pitch in their tents in the midst of a frozen lake. And so after a 20 minute wait, we drove back disappointed (Pona machan thirumbi vanthaan). For the next 20 miles or so there wasn't a shop to get a pen and after covering that distance, we weren't in a mood to go through the bumpy gravel road again.

Pay heed to the intuition it helps. While coming back was thinking about what my father used to say everytime I went somewhere outside "Enga ponaalum oru penna (Read Penn as ezhuthukol :) ) eduthundu po"

Some awesome movies

2011-02-12T21:51:00.000-08:00

Netflix being the only pass-time, I watched some not so famous foreign language films recently. Some of them turned out to be really good.

The Stoning of Soraya M - Farsi
Bliss - Turkish
Letter from Iwo Jima - Japanese
Red Cliff: Theatrical version - Chinese
Sophie Scholl: Final Days - German

The direction and the acting are a class apart from the stereotypes. would add more to this list as I get to know them.

Masters: In Retrospect

2010-12-26T23:02:00.000-08:00

After I started off with my masters, I couldn't find much time to pour in my thoughts and the happenings around, but the last one and half years have been replete with so many happenings and I would like to etch it here before it gets disappeared in the sands of time. I made so many friends here and I am sure most of them are a bond for the whole of the lifetime.

Fall'09: Who am I? Where am I?

The Bangalore gang's midnight walk to the HSC and back to Chapin soon after we came to SUNY-SB.
The first trip to New York City and calculated spending on each and everything. Trip to Richmond.
The trip in the college bus to buy groceries @ Pathmark & Walmart, followed by the visit to Smith Haven Mall to do window shopping. The trips to Desi store which provides the pick-up and drop service.
The daily cooking with Rajesh in the evenings.
The consecutive and consistent night-outs for OS projects has inculcated the insomniacal practice and now its really tough to sleep anytime before 3:00AM. Listening to Prof.Erez Zadok's Operating System lectures. Probably after my schooling this is the first time I listened carefully to all the classes with ultimate concentration.
The part-time web-designing job and with that I opened some kind of an money inflow in Dollars here in US.
The Pot-Luck Lunch & birthday parties filled with josh, dance and gameplaying.
The IGSA get-together/parties on festival days (esp the Ganpathi festival)
The Gyan sessions @ J2146 with the tamil-gumbal
The tightly packed days with no free time even on weekends really made one to think how much time we had wasted earlier in life.
Watched the snowfall for the first time and played in it. Also watched the mercury dip 18 degrees below zero
And so the semester ends with the back to back OS & Algos final exams on the same day and the horrible preparation I did in that regard.
Understood it is prudent to take courses which one can handle than stuff oneself with complex courses and try to learn something out of it. Also learnt that the best place to study is the HSC library after the end of the finals!!

Spring'10: The New Hope!!

Waded through the severe winter winds to the lab during the winter holidays and got appointed as the Research Assistant in Seclab.
Trip to Montauk Point & Washington DC.
Courses weren't tough this semester but internship hunting was!! Got calls every now and then and had tension filled phone interviews. Relieved by Ides of March, when I got the internship offer from Akamai, CA

Summer'10: Unforgettable California

Landed in California for the internship and had the best time with the roommates. Preparing different cuisines everyday. Yummy vangibath by Shayan, crispy hummus sandwiches by Sandeep Cholae by Harit and saumitra
Ate outside almost all the weekends and covered almost all North/South Indian restaurants in Bay Area. routine weekend visit to Castro street in Mountain view for eatery. We finished the sunday night with a footlong at the subway, in san antonio shopping mall!!
Visited Google Multiplex, Shoreline Blvd Lake, Marin headlands, Lake Tahoe, Stanford University, Napa & Sonoma valley, Half Moon bay to name a few.
Extensive trip to SFO and covered the important must-see places like Golden Gate, Baker's beach, 4 KM coastal walk along the beach and cliff, Fisherman's wharf, Pier 39, Crooked street Westfield Mall et all
Meetups with Stony Brook gang in the Bay Area
Started back to Stony Brook with cherished memories to remember for a lifetime

Fall'10: All Well that Ends Well

The inflow of Fall'10 new faces into the department
Trip to Niagara Falls!!
Everyday chitchats at Rajesh/Sharath's & Aaliya's place
The gruelling days with the search for full-time job and added to that the Network Programming projects and Comp bio assignments and project. Trips to places across US for job interviews, and secured the job with LSI.
The last kick-ass birthday party with everyone getting their Ass-kicked is something which everyone would remember
Hurray!! Completed the last exam of the Master's program.
Trip to Atlantic City and lost money in Casino!!
New Year's eve with SBU group in New York City. Dinner at Hotel Saravana Bhavan. Jan 1st 00:00 2011 at Brooklyn Bridge!!
Visit to the infamous American Museum of Natural History, NY and Rockefeller Center.
Trip to New Jersey with Subbu and meetup with Kumaran. Stunning views of NY skyline from Newport.
Successfully completed the work at Seclab and bid adieu to SB and NY.

It might be just a timespan of just one and half years but lot has happened within that time. With my head held high, I would say proudly that I am an Alumni of State University of New York, Stony Brook.

Kaapi, You ROCK!!

2010-06-07T11:42:00.000-07:00

Coffee alias Kaapi is a good thing, infact the best of things. Though the transition from 80:20 chicory blend coffee in a stainless steel tumbler to Starbucks french roast coffee in a microwavable cup has taken place, it still amuses me.

When I was told that coffee found its way into India from Arabia, through the sufi saint Baba Budangiri only in the 1600s, I couldn't digest that fact, who could have? Coffee and Tamil Brahmins are inseparable and I grew up for around 20 years drinking the Madras style Filter Coffee. And I could not think of a lifestyle without coffee, prior to 1600s. Similar to the English style Tavern, The Coffee Houses sprung across India in the late 1700s. The Iconic Indian Coffee House setup in the early 1900s is still patronized by many. True to the phrase "Old wine in a new bottle" Cafe Coffee day et all sprang up recently adding more hip to it.

When I used to getup early to prepare for exams, and with a coffee cup in hand I used to think that someday, I should wake up early and enjoy this coffee seeing the sunrise, without the tension of exams or hurry-burry. Also having hot coffee on a dark rainy day afternoon sitting in the portico had been on my wishlist for long too. Someday... Someday.

Some times, even if the coffee is bad, it is the company of people and the environment which makes it heavenly. The cherished ones in my life include the coffee time chats with Vineet, Bharat and Amber @ HP, the 2 hour pattrais @ Annan Kadai in Madurai with Sens, Sri, Subbi, Musi & vanni. the all-alone coffee times in CCD, madurai and bangalore. The best coffee include the Madras style tumbler coffee @ my home and the one in Murali Kaapi Kadai, Srirangam.

On the lighter side, Coffee gets a pat on its back, for it helps a bachelor to take the first step with the words "How about a cup of Coffee?" Someday... Someday :)

PS: While I had just spent time for a blogspot about Coffee, Mark Pendergrast had written a whole book on coffee "Uncommon Grounds: The History Of Coffee And How It Transformed Our World"

And So I Move On

2010-01-28T08:15:00.000-08:00

I seriously don't like change, especially when it comes to leaving behind a job and the people whom I was associated with. I was working as a web designer in the department and it was real fun to be with those people who used to work there. From now on, I am going to pursue as a Research Assistant in the Secure Systems Lab under the guidance of Prof.Sekar, I am really excited for securing that position, for I was dreaming to get this position from the last semester and thinking about the challenging tasks that are going to come down my way, a Master's student can't ask for anything better than this.

But, it again boils down to saying good-bye to my friends in that web design & tech support team. Thats the problem with me, I get attached to people and the place really fast. Bye - Bye guys (Andrew, Richard, Pratik, Akshay & Ilya) It was my pleasure to work with you people and Thanks JAG for everything. And so I move on from one to another uncertain where my destiny lies, but with an optimistic confidence that everything happens for a good reason.

Aayirathil Oruvan (Tamil Movie)

2010-01-18T11:37:00.000-08:00

Aayirathil Oruvan, an adventure fantasy film thinly touching along the lines of Indiana Jones, King Solomon Mines has broken the monotonous, boring and judgeable storyline in the Tamil Industry. A real bold step by director Selvaraghavan and I expect and wish success for this film. Nobody would have expected a historical adventure film from selvaraghavan who is well known for his masterpieces like 7G Rainbow colony, Kaadhal Kondaen which are more related to love and relationships.

The film has been receiving either very good positive reviews or very bad negative reviews, because the director has stepped out of the stereotypes and has given something different. But I would recommend people to watch this film and then come to a conclusion on their own. What appeals more is the inclusion of our own history ie chola dynasty in the story with some imagination added to it. The first half is too good, where they cross the obstacles to reach the place where the lost civilization is expected to reside. The next half isn't that very spine chilling but much better than "Yet Another Movie in the Industry"

The director could have avoided the usage of black magic, sacrifices et all associated with the chola dynasty which I really doubt if it existed then. I am still wondering why the people were shown in rags and with a very dark skin. probably to make a difference that they were away and lost for a long time. The usage of gross language could have been avoided too. Leaving behind these, I acknowledge that it is a bold attempt and the way to go. Kudos to the lead cast and the crew who has made this film. I am waiting for the film's DVD to be released soon.

Thanksgiving

2009-11-28T23:32:00.000-08:00

If someone asks me the similarity between deepavali holidays, pongal holidays back in India and the Thanksgiving holidays down here, there is only one. You start planning to study the whole semester syllabus in this 3 - 4 days holiday(very realistic plan, eh?), and as usual end up waking up with monday morning blues realizing the very fact that the books weren't even touched during the holidays(taking solace on the thought that there is always Plan-B).

After hearing about the Great Black Friday discounted thanksgiving sale, Keeping the academics aside, I applied serious thought on the goods that I might need in the near future (ie, until the next Thanksgiving), probably an external hard disk? (No use pal, Pirated films/torrents are banned here. the whole purpose of owning a external hard disk is lost). I considered everything from iPhone to ingi-marappa(Ginger-candy), nothing clicked.

Before zeroing up on anything, I was in smith haven mall along with KB moving from apple store to JC Penny et all stores in the mall. My already stocked up wardrobe prevented me from going for any dress purchase and after 6 hours of roaming in the mall, I still came out empty handed. Habba, my wallet wasn't deflated by this Thanksgiving, Hope the same trend continues until I am a student desi.

Solution for the annoying ticking sound problem in Ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala)

2009-11-28T13:25:00.000-08:00

Recently I upgraded from ubuntu 9.04 (Jaunty Jackalope) to ubuntu 9.10 (Karmic Koala). From the moment it booted it gave this annoying ticking sound through the speakers and also through the headphone every 10 -15 seconds. Grrr...

Extensive googling lead me to the solution. here it goes,

* Open /etc/modprobe.d/alsa-base.conf
* Goto the last line and comment out
options snd-hda-intel power_save=10 power_save_controller=N

* Now restart or reload the module and this annoying sound problem would stop for good.

Courtesy: I thank the ubuntu forum members for posting the solution. The reason behind this bug and detailed discussion could be found in the following links

https://lists.ubuntu.com/archives/ubuntu-devel-discuss/2009-May/008239.html
http://ubuntuforums.org/showthread.php?t=1311206&highlight=power_save

Magadheera

2009-10-18T22:40:00.000-07:00

Of Late, as kollywood is facing a dry run, in terms of giving super hits, I started watching other language films. In the past one month, I saw some good Telugu flix like Happy, Desamuduru, Tholiprema, and Magadheera. And Magadheera topped all in terms of the grandeur, storyline and screenplay.

Though Magadheera's storyline slightly resembled jackie chan starring "Myth" and the real life story of Prithivi Raj Chauhan & Samyuktha, I wouldn't underplay the storywriter's contribution. The technical brilliance in terms of the sets, stunts, fast screenplay/direction and heart melting music are the backbone for the film.The chemistry between Ram charan and Kajal had worked out really well.Ram Charan with his well built physic and commanding looks dominated the film followed by Kajal with her princess looks and dressings.

The Epical part of Magadheera is the best part of all.The Love for each other had been portrayed really well. The film had been shot at Rann of Kutch, Gujarat and then in Rajasthan and they had come out really well.The Epical battle is shot without any exaggerated stunts and thats why it is so real and final scenes of the Epic are so so touchy :( In fact, the epic love story, has kindled my desire to read through some of notable love stories in Indian History. No doubt Magadheera is a super hit in Andhra and far!!

Goodies!! Goodies!!

2009-09-25T15:05:00.000-07:00

* 1GB USB stick from Vmware
* T-Shirt from Bloomberg,
* Laptop keyboard Night lighter from Morgan Stanley
* Rucksack from Computer Associates (CA)
* Radium ball with built-in LED Circuitry from Riverbed
* Key chain from Falconstar
* Wall board + writer from Vmware
* Soda bottle opener from Acoustics concepts
* Unlimited Tasty Veg Pizza hosted by Microsoft and yummy dinner hosted by Vmware,

Thats all I could muster in a two and half hour job fair drive that happened in our college :) While this year gonna_be_pass-outs were trying hard to push-in their resumes down the stack, we freshers took this opportunity to grab them all. Because I was naive(curse my shyness and what_would_she_think_mentality), I missed out on some company T-shirts and backpacks :(

Some machakaarans like KB laid hands on Nikon CoolPix cameras too!! இப்படிக்கு அடுத்த ஸ்ப்ரிங் ஜாப் பாயர் இனாமிற்காக (கூட்டிஎஸ்) காக்கா போல் காத்துக்கொண்டிருக்கும் மாணவன்!!!

All Alone, Along the Broadway

2009-09-12T13:13:00.001-07:00

The last weekend trip to New York City gave me the much needed confidence, and this weekend I went alone to NY - Penn Station. Reminiscing the walk along the 5th Avenue that I did last week, I wanted to try out the oldest north-south through-fare "The Broadway" this time. I knew I was looking at a 4.8KM walk from Penn Station to my destination @ Allen Street which is in the middle of Chinatown. Keeping the ever viewable, mist shrouded(It was cold and raining) Empire State building spire as my guide, I ended up in broadway.

One good thing about NY city is the avenue and streets criss cross each other at right angles (the exception being broadway) and named serially using numbers, All you have to worry about is whether you are heading at the right direction, as you could move from one street to another very easily. As I walked along the Broadway, the glass & concrete monolithics came into view one after the other. The street hosted almost all the brand shops that one could think of and it was very tempting to enter them all and look around, but I continued on with my paatha-yatra. My next pit-stop was Union Square, a historic intersection in the broadway.

Union Square hosts the infamous Union Square Greenmarket Taking some snaps and apples, I moved into the Union Square park, which I heard has a statue of Mahatma Gandhiji. I went around the park and an active inquisitor followed me throughout, whether out of curiosity or perhaps for the apples that I had in my bag :) This stuart little showed no signs of fear and I took some snaps, u bet!! After moving around the park twice or more, I could not locate the Mahatma's statue. A fellow Indian manning the nearby newspaper stand pointed the direction in which I could find the statue. With a nod and a smile, I started moving in the direction he pointed. At a few steps from the main park, there was a small enclosed garden and atlast I found Mahatma Gandhiji statue in Union Square. I considered my sole purpose of the walking through the broadway fulfilled and headed towards allen street through Bowery unknowing of the high drama that was about to unfold in the Allen street. Contd... in the next post.

Recipies for life

2009-09-04T21:53:00.000-07:00

Gone are the days when I used to dream of damn good chicks. Toor dal and spices from India shows up now and then in my dreams giving me a Deja vu experience. What looked attractive when I was in India doesn't get my attention anymore and what was common to get back home doesn't find a place here.

I have been away from home for around 6 years now, and my perspective continues to change and so does my understanding of life. From being a die-hard hotel food fan six years back, I converted myself to a connoisseur of home food after my 2 year stint in the college hostel. The next 4 years, I managed to eat at some hotel everyday and moved on. Though I know cooking, I never really did that full-time, now that I am donning that role too, slowly it dawns on me the travails of cooking everyday's every meal!!! So far, I never realized how hard it would be for my mother to cook day-in and day-out.

Guyz, If you are studying and staying with your parents, Its the best part of your life enjoy and eat well. If you are working somewhere in India and staying away from your home, do not wail for not getting good old home food, you always have the option and ability to pay and have some real good food at some hotel nearby. If you are staying in a foreign country, where the word "VEGETARIAN" is never heard of, where vegetables are stocked for weeks if not for months together, where people don't have any staple food like "RICE" or "WHEAT", where people live on DIET_PEPSI and DIET_COKE and call them as "SODAS", where vegetables are costlier than chicken, meat, beef and pork, where people cook once and "MICROWAVE" the rest of their life, where people call bread by different names like bagel, muffin and bun the only striking difference being the shape, where veg food means lettuce leaves + sliced tomato + chopped onion, where spices and dal prices gives you a heart-attack and the monthly grocery bill is the reason for your receding hairline well, you are not entirely alone. Find some solace in whatever you cook and in the fact "good chicks always like good chefs!!!"

Resident Alien??

2009-08-22T16:03:00.000-07:00

Accustoming to a new place is tough, and to a new place in another country is even more tougher. In the last 6 days of my stay here, I had some weird happenings and I would enlist them here

* The bank employee said "Thank You" 10 times in 2 minutes. Be it when I handed over the application form or when I confirmed the spelling of my name or when I typed the PIN first time, and when I typed it second time to confirm again I got a "Thank You" In return, I said "You are Welcome" twice after which I felt very awkward and stopped saying anything.

* These days when I go out, I prepare a short answer for the question "How are you doing?" Almost all whom your eyes meet up with ask that question. And by the time with an Indian accent I start saying something, they are out of earshot. Sometimes I look at the ground and walk or before anyone asks I quip the question and walk away he he!!! eppadi??

* The roads are all deserted (in comparison with our Indian traffic) and it is hard to find any houses/shops on either side of the highway, because of this all roads looks the same to me, and I cant keep anything as landmark to understand which part of the road I am in!!!

* After the long lecture about Fire alarm in the international orientation, and also the advice from seniors about how the whole world comes to you if you raise an fire alarm in this part of the world, I actually saw an alarm going up in college, and like we used to do in India at the HP office, I walked lethargically down the corridor, and hey presto the door opened and people were pouring out and almost ran over scaring the shit out of me!! By the time I came out of the building, Police, Fire brigade, etc etc were there on the entrance. I came back home and decided to have a chappathi and reheated it in the microwave. The timing I gave for it was more and it started smoking off. Knowing very well that the Fire alarm is going to go off any moment, my friend and myself took the oven and ran out of the house and opened it, and started waving the smoke out of it. Oh God!! we were saved!!! I stopped using the microwave after that.

* No one is allowed to wash their clothes in buckets and hang it in the balcony!!! One has to use the washing machine and drier only!!! To cap it all, one cant find a tap either in the toilet(that everyone knows) or in the bathroom (only a shower would be there!!)

* One good thing I did this week was enrolling with freewheels in college. Freewheels is an NGO organization who have a great passion for biking. I was given a cycle frame and I have to attend 3 classes 2 hrs each to assemble the whole cycle, End of the Day, I could keep the cycle with me till I leave the college. Thats cool isn't it?? If my father asks me what the hell did you learn from US after I return back. I could atleast tell him, I learnt how to fix a puncture!!! :)

FF EXP

2009-08-22T15:18:00.000-07:00

And so I started from bangalore, leaving behind everything I own and I like. BIAL was good, and started giving the already-in-the-foreign-country-effect.There the whole bangalore group(15) was there, and so we entered in bidding adieu to the near and dear.The normal fear in the first flight experience from Bangalore -> chennai was not to be seen as we were travelling as a group. In chennai, the airport has become so bad, that it resembled a railway station.For the night we stayed at the retiring room in the airport @ 400/bed. Next day morning, we checked-in @ British airways, only to know that we wont get the seats together!!

The Plane was really big and somehow I swapped seats with a French lady to sit alongside Sharath. The flight's chief air-hostess resembled Bianca Castafiore of TinTin series, that I even thought of asking her to sing us "God save the Queen" :) I saw the flight takeoff in broad daylight for the first time from inside as the BLR->CHN was a night flight. 10.25 hr flight with the entertainment system programmes going around in loops drove me mad. Also, the breakfast was given in Indian breakfast time and the lunch in London Lunch time(Breakfast to lunch duration gap is 9hrs. Grr!!!).The plane circled around London and we saw the Big Ben, London bridge, and the new Olympic stadium being built near R.Thames.We got down at heathrow,London and was amazed at the consecutive flight take-off and landing taking place.

We ran across the Terminal-5 to catch our next connecting from London to New york which was in just 45 Min. The airport is truly out of the world and it is indeed unfortunate that we had to run off to our gate. The flight was waiting because of us, and we settled in slowly and then took-off to JFK. The person next to me was an American, and the next 3 hrs was a great comedy as he saw Ghajini-Hindi in the entertainment system and we both(myself and Rajesh) translated the same for him. At the end, he swore that he would buy a DVD of this and keep it next to memento in his DVD collection. :) The LON->JFK flight had a lot of entertainment channels and it kept me on the go. We landed in New York -JFK and I was received by my sister, Brother-in-law and in-laws. The First Flight EXPerience is one that many would remember throughout the life and I am no exception

Change - III

2009-07-17T01:37:00.000-07:00

It's now official(I mean, things are finalized), and I can post it in my blog, the news what so far only my closest circle knows. No, I am not getting married, (Although some my friends and classmates are getting ready :( ) I am moving to New York from Mid August to pursue my Masters in Computer Science at The State University of New York @ Stony Brook aka Stony Brook University :)

The last one and half years, I was preparing for this. Wrote the GRE in last September and TOEFL in October and managed to scalp 1370 and 110 respectively. How I wished for a single window system for the US universities like we have for Engineering/Medicine here in TN for it was the toughest part of the process. Preparing the Statement of Purpose and getting the Recommendation letters was the next stage. Once through with the application part in early January, it was followed by an infinite wait, and in March, I got the first admit from Clemson University followed closely by University of California, Irvine, Arizona State University, University of Maryland - Baltimore County, North Carolina State University , State University of New York- Stony Brook and Ohio State University. The strike rate was much better than what I had thought (0.7)

Selecting SUNY-SB over others wasn't difficult for it is the best in Computer Science, ranks much better than others, fees is comparatively cheaper and more than that, some of my seniors and close friends are already there. what else would one need above all this? Getting the I20 docs took some time and eventually scaled the tension-filled visa interview and got the US visa stamped in the passport.

Whew!! It had been a tight rope walking all these days, managing the job and the aspiration to pursue MS. Now comes the most difficult part, leaving India... Change is always tough, and every change teaches some important lessons in life. What I would miss the most, needs a separate blog post by itself and hence I am leaving it for now.

Now waiting for Change - III to take over after the successful Change - II (Madurai to Bangalore) which happened two years back.

Into the Wild

2009-07-14T02:35:00.000-07:00

"Into the Wild" is a travelogue movie sticking along the lines of "Motorcycle Diaries". It accounts the travel adventures of Christopher Mccandless from Atlanta to Alaska through Arizona, California and South Dakota and his stay in the unbearable Alaskan cold for 4 months. The film is a visual treat to nature lovers and people who have a strong inclination towards travelling. The tragedy in the end is quite disturbing.

The film is adapted from the novel "Into The Wild" by Jon Krakauer which in turn is inspired from the real life story of Christopher Mccandless. Through the protagonist's thought process, the film also dwells on the purpose of life and the pitiable state where the human society heads. The script writer must have experienced and savoured such thoughts and has come out with such scripts.

"I mean, the core of man's spirit comes from new experiences."

Though the central character's travels and adventures kindles a fire for outing in us, Going into the wild without any preparation or tools and his underestimation of the risks involved sometimes irks and I believe the tragedy in the end is a consequence of his own foolhardy. After all, Human life more valuable than any adventure.

Kemmannugundi Trip

2009-06-24T13:19:00.000-07:00

What started off as an ambitious trek started to fall apart as murphy's law reigned over the two days in whatever we did. This time the tripmates were Muthu, pramod, prabhu, DP, Sens, Subbi, Musi, Bharathi, Peter and thirukumaran. Armed with the Survey of India Maps and a compass, we boarded the shimoga express and got down @ Tarikere. From there we took a bus to Lingdanahalli and from there a Tata Ace(Kutti Yana) to Kemmannugundi. Finishing off the Idlies @ the Guest house canteen we boarded the jeep to reach the start of the trekking trail from KG to Mullayanagiri.

Our plan was to Camp that night @ Galikere. The nascent greenish cover due to the recent monsoon showers made a whole place a dreamland to be in.Enjoying the view and taking snaps then and there we moved on. At one point the trail started to lead through some dense cover and before we could enter that, Leeches started their attack.To avert them we took a detour from the trail to the top of the nearby mountain. At the top we rested and cleared up the sticking leeches and started moving forward.Again the dense cover obstracted our way, and the impending danger of another leech attack sent shivers down the spine. A light discussion revealed that even if we cross the forest cover uneventfully, another 6-7 hour trek awaits us to reach Galikere is what we estimated. Let down by this info, leech attack and the dense fog which covered up the whole trail we reluctantly retreated back. Taking a long circuitous route we were back in square one.

We rested our bones at a nearby scenic pond and continued with the lunch. Two or three trips back and forth from the start of the trail to KG town by walk to figure out a way to reach Galikere exhausted us and the efforts too went in vain as the jeep driver were scared to drive back from galikere after 6. Nowhere to stay(as one of the tent had a damaged rod) , we stayed for the night at the guesthouse. Next day, we hired two jeeps and we went through to Hebbe falls. It was a real jungle safari by all means (bumpy trail which a 4wheel drive alone could survive, thick forest cover) A punctured tyre saw us walking a little extra through the greenish path to the falls. The leech kept us at bay and finally we reached the falls. We were the only group at the falls by that time and we had a really good time bathing and playing in the waters. A marathon run through the unwinding path to the jeep to escape the leeches did the trick and we reached KG back in time to catch the bus to Tarikere. From there we came to Chickmagalur and from there to bangalore.

This place for sure needs another visit during the monsoons with much better planning. Probably next time we should take the route from Mullaiyangiri to KG.

Visit http://picasaweb.google.com/kpraveen85/Kemmanugundi for pics

Himavad Gopalaswamy Betta Trip/Trek

2009-06-07T23:36:00.000-07:00

When it comes to deciding between blood sucking leeches/venomous King Cobra filled Agumbe and Wild elephants residing Gopalaswamy Betta, it is tough. During monsoon we thought it was a bad idea to visit Agumbe, the Cherrapunji of the south, that too especially for a trek. Hence we zeroed up on Himavad(meaning fog/snow in kannada) Gopalaswamy Betta(meaning mountain in kannada) near bandipur. The Inmates were Dilip, Sharath, Praveen V S, Rajesh, Chaitanya and myself. Too bad Shrikar missed this trip.

We burned the midnight oil @ Dilip's house as we had planned to start by 2 AM on Sunday. Jubilant over India's victory against Bangladesh in the ICC 20-20 match, we started exactly as planned. By 4:00, we were in mysore and by 5:30 we hit Gundlupet. The route to Himavad after crossing the Gundlupet village was scenic as it was a wide landscape without any object of obstruction except for the silhouette of the mounatin ranges at the horizon and the first rays of the sun illuminated the horizon in vivid flaming hues. The intermittent rain added spice to the whole scenary. By 6:00 we hit the Forest department gate at the foothills of the Himavad Gopalaswamy betta. Nothing to do except for sitting in the Car till 7:00 (the gate would be open only by then) as the the rain was taking control outside. As it started to drizzle, we ventured out to explore the area a bit and to click away something.

As we gathered some altitude, we started living up in the land of clouds and fog. It was a breathtaking experience to be there. It was a dream come true for me, to walk through fog filled dark roads with trees on the sides like an avenue, whose existence is visible only for the next 5 - 10 metres. The drizzle continued, partnering with the heavy violent winds and literally we had to stick hard to the ground. We took up some trails from the top to reach the adjacent ranges enjoying the lush green grasses and the fog filled pond on the way. Wave after wave, the army of clouds conquered the mountains, and we could not view the whole ranges filled with sholas + the green valleys (even though we were there till 1:00PM) The fresh elephant's dung here and there always reminded us of the prevailing danger somewhere near shrouded in the mist.

We reached a stone hedge formation and here we sat for sometime, chatting and then we started playing throwball, it was funny to watch the ball drifting, the direction in the heavy winds that was blowing throughout on the top.As another Praveen developed a cramp, we abandoned our trail from then on to the next range, as already we were at a distance from the vehicle. As we walked up and down landscape, the temple shrine came into view, and we headed directly to the temple instead of taking the roundabout route which we took up while coming up.

We went to the temple, and the main pooja was going going on, and the main priest orated about the sthala purana(history of the origin of temple) in kannada. From my friends, I came to know that it was built by a chola king 700 years back and is considered to be a papanasa(Free of all sins).While we were draped in the jerkin in that teeth clicking cold, I saw some devotees taking bath, whew!! what guts!!! My cell picked up the TN network, and the truth dawned in me that we were actually on the border just few good kilometres from Mudumalai.With a heavy heart, we descended down the Betta and were on the way back to the concrete jungle.In Sharath's slang, the trip was "Chammak"

Visit the pics @ http://picasaweb.google.com/kpraveen85/HimavadVenugopalaswamyBetta

SHE's in my Life

2009-05-28T06:49:00.000-07:00

Dark secrets linger in everyone's heart, and none lives, without the attempt to screen others from perceiving those.This is a literary attempt to break the tradition and share mine, but with the name filtered atleast till the concluding part.

SHE(Ms.X) knocked me down completely. I understood what "Love @ First Sight " really means. She wouldn't come over for a cup of coffee even if I ask her out, always calm & serene and out there in solitude. Shy enough to move away from the company of people, expecting one should take that extra effort to approach and then get on with her. Regularly, I started watching her from a distance, and was keen to avoid the direct eye contact, knowing very well that I couldn't take her sublime radiance.This went on for a while until the most unexpected thing happened.

When Fate had scripted something, You can't bypass that. Likewise, It was destined that we both have to meet by chance at Munnar. She was damn gorgeous, and I felt that she must be as pure as a virgin. Shrugging aside the shyness, we both got into speaking terms and thus it went on. I knew she was too good for me and was happy over the fact that she is atleast considering me and radiates a smile whenever I see her.

It was through her I came to know Ms.Y. Y is kind of a complicated character, but a very interesting one.She is a beauty in herself. When with her, time flies by very fast.She would tease you a lot, but thats what keeps me hooked to her. Though I am not too close to her, there are some who really are. I envy them with all my heart.

When you know someone very close or from childhood, you tend to overlook them, though they are beautiful. such was the case with Ms.Z, I know her from my childhood days, a girl next door character, very close and had been a great companion for me. She grew as I grew, and was in sync with my wavelength. She would understand my feelings like no other and cheer me up whenever I was in a low.

So are these three my girlfriends? would they fillup the back seat of my bike whenever I ride? No, they won't because, replace Ms.X with Nature, Ms.Y with Photography and Ms.Z with Books and read the previous paragraphs again. Dont try to hit me, its the caffiene in my head doing all this

In layman terms, these three(trekking, photography and books)does the job of a girlfriend very well, keeps me busy after office hours, sucks money like anything and also keeps me entralled and excited!!!

Les Miserables

2009-05-23T22:59:00.000-07:00

Les Miserables by Victor Hugo, an Epic tale of social injustice, politics, heroism and love, is setup in the early 19th(1800s) century French backdrop.The commercial success of this novel is etched in history that could be best explained by an anecdote. while on his vacation during the publishing of this novel, Hugo telegraphed the publishers a single "?" to know the outcome and for that the publishers replied with a single "!"

I read the abridged English translation by Norman Denny original version being in French. The protagonist of the story Jean Valjean steals a loaf of bread in his early years and then spends many years trying to escape his reputation as a criminal.Though he is a changed man and rises socially, he is not allowed to forget his past by the sadistic policemen Javert who is determined to expose him. Jean Valjean thus runs from city to city with his adopted daughter Cosette escaping the clutches of Javert and the vile designs of the villian Thenardier.Many characters chip in and add their part making it more interesting and gripping.

The narration is simply superb with vivid descriptions and the love between Cosette and Marius is best described. For something similar to the "Annalum Nokkinal avalum nokkinal" scene here goes the excerpt
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"Thus for the first year Marius saw them(Cosette and her father) almost daily in the same place at the same time. He liked the look of the Man but took no interest in the girl.
.....
For some six months he did not setfoot in the alleyway.Then one day he went back and there was the same couple,seated on the same bench. But as he drew near them he was struck by a change. The man was the same , but the girl was not. What he now saw was a tall and beautiful creature,soft chestnut hair flecked with gold, a forehead of marble, cheeks like rose petals, a pale sensitive skin, an exquisite mouth.
....
She was no longer a schoolgirl in a plush hat and woollen dress.She acquired taste as well as beauty and now dressed with simple, unpretentious elegance.
...
Marius went by their bench. the girl looked up at him and their eyes met. What message was to be read in her eyes? Marius could not have said. nothing and yet everything. A spark had passed between them.

What he had encountered was not the frank innocent gaze of a child.There comes a day when every girl has this look in her eyes, and woe to him who encounters it! She looked steadily at him with a soft pensive glance that caused him to tremble from head to foot.Marius was in the first violent and entranced throes of a grand passion. A single look had done it."
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The beauty of Cosette is best described from this excerpt
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"One day when Cosette was in the garden she heard old Toussaint say:'Has monsieur noticed how pretty Mademoiselle is growing?' She did not hear her father's reply, but Toussiant's words filled her with amazement. She ran up to her bedroom and looked hard at herself in the glass.

She uttered a cry,delighted by what she saw. She was beautiful as well as pretty.Her figure had filled out, her skin was finer and there was a new splendour in her blue eyes.
....
In less than a month she was not merely one of the prettiest women in Paris, which is saying a great deal,but one of the best dressed, which is saying even more."
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I found the following lines pretty amusing and quite true too!!
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"Cosette for her part,was giving away nothing.without knowing precisely what was happening to her,she knew that something had happened to her and it must be kept secret.

There is a law applying to those youthful years of agitation and turmoil, those frantic struggles of first love against first impediments: it is that the girl never falls into any trap and the young man falls into all of them."
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Compared to the vulgar description of the intimate relationship that most modern writers are ept at, Victor Hugo has handled that scene with a single sentence, but the meanings' conveyed(such are the powers of the contemporary writer!!!)
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"The day after the wedding is one of solitude. We respect the privacy of the newly-weds and perhaps their late arising."
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Les Miserables is a good book to savour and read...

On a hat-trick run

2009-05-14T00:27:00.000-07:00

Wanting to find solace in some classics, after my previous read of Fountainhead, I took up "The Catcher in the Rye" by J.D Salinger. I knew I made a big mistake this time.

The first person narration of Holden Claufield, expressing his teenage angst on anything and everything could get you nothing but headache. The whole story is about the 3-4 days of the so-called-vacation that Holden takes(doing whatever he likes) when he is expelled from school, before packing home. The ways of Holden(a poor role model) and his illogical and flimsy decisions taken throughout, and his disrespect for elders(Including his parents) doesn't resemble anything close to that of an average matured, teenage guys of today. Combining this with all the bad habits(highly deplorable for his age) that Holden has, there is no take away from this book. The first person narrative makes it even more gloomier and depressing.

It is no wonder, that it is one of the controversial and most censured books of the 50's to 80's. Somehow this book became popular, though I could not attribute anything to speak of. Anyone in his right sense of mind wouldn't want to find himself synonymous with the despicable character of Holden Claufield.

Hats off to my school and college syllabus framers for making me to study Shakespeare, O Henry, Dickens etc and not this book which is still being taught in High schools, esp in English speaking countries!!! Any takers on whether it is going to be a Hat-Trick read of boring books?? This is one feat, that I surely don't want to achieve.

Learning to Say "No"

2009-05-10T23:12:00.000-07:00

I am Mr.Nobody to be a critic of Ayn Rand's "The FountainHead", but what follows is just a rant that crossed my mind when I started reading it, which eventually lead me to return back without finishing it.

The character of Howard Roark (Protagonist) (the guy who never bends, just for the sake of "what-would-the-society-tell") is obnoxious. In real life, this protagonist would end up only as a failure(From the society's perspective, but in his mind, he would continue to be a winner, what is the use of this puffed up EGO, I don't understand).

Next irritating character is Dominique Francon, characterized as an intellectual sure-shot head-turner, who marries almost all the characters in the novel except for Toohey(because he is old??) and Guy Francon(because he is her father, Ayn Rand could have tried that too, that's revolutionary isn't??) just to punish her, because she lives in a society where people doesn't recognize true-raw-creativity(good reason eh?? This shit is much worser than I-came-late-cos-of-cycle-tyre-puncture reason I used to give in school). I don't understand her ideology-crap of marrying Keating, simultaneously having a relationship with Howard Roark and also planning for the downfall of Howard by destroying his reputation. (Psssst!! She eventually marries Howard Roark!!! after divorcing Keating and marrying Gail Wynand and then divorcing... I remember only these people names) Ayn Rand describes Dominique as "the woman for a man like Howard Roark." (Good, that she doesn't describe her as the woman for every Man)

As I could not take this **** any longer I gave back the book at the library deciding not to venture out any further, into any of her works. obviously, it is not for ME!!! Now started reading J.D.Salinger's "Catcher in the Rye" which better not dwell along the same lines.

Munnar Trip

2009-04-29T19:03:00.000-07:00

After quite a long time, it was a trip that was planned along with my parents.The hot climate enroute to Munnar raised questions regarding the climate in Munnar, but as we approached the destination, It was evident that we are going to have some extraordinary experience. We took the long route from Trichy -> Theni -> Cumbum -> Kumily -> Munnar just to get the permit for the vehicle else we could have took the diversion after Theni and reached Munnar through Poopara skipping Cumbum and Kumily. Taking some quick snaps at the Anaiyirangal (Translated to Elephant passing area) Dam Waters we moved on. At Devikulam, We came to know that the sita devi lake is out of bounds as it lies within TATA Tea Estate and needs special permission :( But we could see the sprawling Devikulam Tea Estate extending even beyond the horizon.

As we passed the Lock Heart Gap, we had in-the-midst-of-clouds experience. The valley below could not be seen as waves of wispy clouds have conquered the valley below and was hitting upon the mountain one after the another. Though it was mid-afternoon, the area was pitch dark (figure of speech, please excuse!!) because of this. As we crossed the Lock Heart Gap, the other side of the mountain was filled with sunshine(quite a converse from the other side) On reaching we checked in @ Elysium Gardens, a nice place to laze your bones. That night after having the complimentary dinner @ the hotel, I had a nice little walk which ensured that my bones are frozen to the deep.

Next day, our first destination was Top-Station a excellent viewpoint in Tamil Nadu (34 KM from Munnar) while returning back, we got down at various places like Yellapatty Tea Estate, Kundale Dam, Echo Point and Mattupatty Dam. The route to Top-station from Munnar is spilled with many places to visit. Apart from this, the lush Green Tea Estates would follow you through the whole path except for the last 5 KM which is inside the reserve forest. If not it is the Tea Estate, it would be the lush green grass on the mountain slopes that would grasp your attention.

That afternoon, after lunch we went to Eravikulam National Park and boarded on the Park's Vehicle for a trip to the Rajamalley's(King Mountain) summit. The ascent was terrific, and as we gained height the clouds came back and once on the top, the scenic beauty is beyond compare. We had to walk for another 1KM to gather more altitude. The mountain slopes were filled with Lush yellow tinted grass and NeelaKurinji(blue kurinji, a plant which blooms only once every 12 years. The next bloom is on sept 2018) It is here we sited the hordes of Nilgiri Tahr lazing and grazing the grass on the mountain slopes.We had som terrific encounter with clouds once again and we walked back to the pick-up point. Before boading the Vehicle, paid a visit to the Park's Museum(Story of the Park) which had fossils and many photos of the slopes of the Rajamalley when Kurinji was in Full Bloom and some photos of the flora and fauna that could be found there. Some deep inside the reserve forest pics caught my attention.While returning to the base camp, we were shown the Majestic Anaimudi Peak(tallest peak in south india @ 2695 m)

We retired for the day, and the day next we started covering the sevenmalley estate and pothemedu viewpoint. Then we moved to cochin and from there to guruvayoor for the night stay. Munnar's beauty lies in the extending sea of tea garden and the cool climate. Visit my Pics @ http://picasaweb.google.com/kpraveen85/Munnar

There are many places to visit and this link gives a good idea http://www.mouthshut.com/review/Munnar-72199-1.html A small extract of that here for my future reference .

The places in and around are basically divided in four roads or directions :
1) Mattupetty : In this direction you have these places to visit
a) Photo Point : Good places to take snaps in the tea garden (4 km)
b) Mattupetty Dam (11 km)
c) Indo-Swiss Project : This place is a must visit (13 km)
d) Shooting Point : Place where many south Indian movies have been shorted (14 km)
e) Echo Point (17 km)
f) Elephant Arrival Spot (20 km)
g) Kundale Lake : Don’t miss the Boat ride here :) (25 km)
i) Kundale Golf Course (28 km)
j) Top Station (about 6300 ft above the sea level) : This is in the border of Kerala and tamil nadu,there is a way to Kodai from this palce. We need to walk down for about a 1 km to reach this stop from the road, it is a terrific sight, and you can also see the world?s highest tea plant from this place. (32 km)

2) Coimbatore : In this direction you have these places to visit
a) Anaimudi, Highest Peak in South India (about 8853 ft above the sea level,20 km)
b) Nyamakad Waterfalls : Samll but a beautiful falls (8 km)
c) Eravikulam National Park : You get great view of munar from this national park, one has to walk about 1.5 km and you will also find a rare and endangered wild goat which can walk on mountains, we were privileged that we could see them (13 km)
d) Lakkam Falls (26 km)
e) Sandal Wood Forest : This drive is just too good (35 km)
f) Childrens Park (43 km)
g) Wildlife Sanctuary (Chinnar) : You can also go trekking here to a falls which is flows through the jungle , the falls is about 8 kms from the road.Pls take care not to honk or make noise when going through the forest since there are good chances you may miss out some wild life (63 km)
h) Amaravathy Dam (78 km)
i) Crocodile Dam: You can find crocodiles at different ages here , entry fee is 50p per head (can u believe this) ;) (79 km)

3) Cochin : In this direction you have these places to visit
a) Blossom Park (2.5 km)
b) Pothemedu View Point : A beautiful view spot for Sunset, there are couple of resorts near by this view point,you can also see coffee and cardamom plantations here. (5 km)
c) Attukkadu Water Falls (10 km)

4) Thekkady : In this direction you have these places to visit
a) Sita Devi Lake : Cannot miss this beautiful lake and scape (22 km)
b) Lock Heart Gap View : Should I explain this view ;) (14 km)
c) Power House Water Falls (17 km)
d) Resorts Village View (18 km)
e) Anaiyirankal Dam View (18 km)

Malpe Trip

2009-04-02T03:50:00.000-07:00

After some 250 conflicting emails sent across for the preparation of the trip, finally it was decided that we are making a move on 13th March for a Dakshin-Coastal-Karnataka Trip. The Tempo Traveller was fully packed, and the people you chipped in were myself, senthil, subbi, musi, shyama shastri :) , Prakash (Prabhu, Rajesh, DP, Pramod) annas, sai & nachi. Rajesh and Subbi made it for the trip at the last minute.And so we started for Belur by 12:00 AM.

We were planning to reach Udupi through Bangalore -> Belur -> Mudigere -> Kalasa -> Karkala -> Udupi. Our driver drove through the Kudremukh sanctuary in the kalasa -> Karkala stretch in the wee hours and it was a blessing in disguise. The Samse Tea estate was fully covered in early morning mist. As we moved through the Kudremukh Sanctuary, a wallpaper like scenary took our breadth away!!! The slopes of the Kudremukha(Horse-face) mountain was fully covered in heavy fog and the day before rain that had drenched the slopes made it a sight of a lifetime.The whole-night-wide-awake-syndrome combined with the topsy-turvy curves from Mudigere already made us feel dizzy and thus we couldn't look outside any further the fog covered mountain stream flowing under the bridge and the mist covered town of Kudremukh. Cursing the bad-shape we were in, we finally reached Udupi by 9:00AM

Getting ready, we headed towards the Malpe Harbour to take a ferry to the St.Mary's Islands, a virgin Columnar basaltic Island in the midst of the ocean. Changing two boats enroute to the Island(Bigger one to a smaller one as the water would be shallow) we reached it atlast. The awe-invoking grand Columnar volcanic rocks, Crystal clear Greenish water, steep beach filled not with sand but with sea shells, greenish grass filled landscape interspersed with coconut trees makes St.Mary's Island a lonely-Treasure-Island effect & a dream destination to visit. We had a nice bath in the rough beach of the Island and after a round of clicks we headed back to the harbour in the next boat that visited the Island. The Irony associated with the title of this blog post is though Malpe was our main place to visit after St.Mary's Island, we avoided visiting that, as we were running out of time for lunch and the next place to visit.

After lunch, we went to Maravanthe Beach, a renowned sun-kissed beach where the beach on one side, sauparnika river running parallely to the NH17 on the other side makes it a wonder-struck sight. the only stretch of land is the NH17 and the rest is water on all the sides. We played Football till sunset and then paid a visit to anegudde Vinayagar temple. That night we had our dinner at Mitra samaj and finished the day off with a round of playing cards.

Next day, we set off to the Udupi Krishna Temple, and worshipped the deity through the window panes from the backside of the temple(The reason why the deity faces the backside of the temple is beyond the scope of this blog). Gobbling up buns, idlies and vadas at Mitra samaj, we steered towards the desolate Kaup beach. The lighthouse out there is open only from 4:00 to 6:00 hence we missed the terrific view from the top. But we played the game of the lifetime, beach volleyball as the waves splashed over us. From there, our plan was to reach Kodachadri before evening, but due to the fear of night driving in the Ghat section, we took the diversion to Bangalore when Kodachadri was just 14 Kms. Atleast we left this for a future trip. Enroute to bangalore, we got down at Thirthahalli to get a nice view of the Tunga river which flows through the town.

Photos at http://picasaweb.google.com/kpraveen85/Malpe

Wall.E

2009-03-11T23:29:00.000-07:00

The Pixar guys never fail to amaze in any of their releases and this time its not just with their animation prowness but with a touching and gripping storyline. I didn't feel a bit of sleep coming in when I saw this one from 1:30AM to 3:15AM yesterday night. Wall.E is an animated full length film, revolving around the protagonist Wall.E [Waste Allocation Load Lifter Earth-Class] the last robot[this character carves a niche that many real life actors fail to] that was left without powering off when humans left the Earth. The story is projected to take place some 800 years into the future when the earth is no longer habited and humans have migrated to a highly sophisticated fully automated spacecraft Axiom.

Wall.E's daily chores brings in a sympathy for the ever working Robo. The she-protagonist of the film Eve[Extraterrestrial Vegetation Evaluator] arrives in style and Wall.E falls head over heels for her. When the first sign of vegetation in the form of a plant is found, Eve takes that back to Axiom's captain. Wall.E dutifully follows her and how they overcome the ship's Main Robo's devious plan of destroying the plant and preventing the humans from migrating back to Earth to recolonize is the remaining story.

If the emotional ending of Wall.E touches the heart, the film's credit showing the dedication of the film in the loving memory of Justin Wright and the real story of Justin Wright brings one to tears. It is a pity that a film like this managed to bag just an Oscar, while a not so appealing many others bagged a lot(I have nothing against Slumdog Millionaire, But I feel(Which I am entitled to) Wall.E deserved a much better appreciation than what it was showered upon). The storyline delineates the state of affairs we would be in if we do not put an end to the excess of garbage that we are throwing out.Way to go Pixar!!!

Coorg Trip

2009-03-10T02:17:00.000-07:00

Never expected a day before the trip that I would be packing myself to Coorg, such was the pace of our decision. This time we hired a Qualis @ Rs6/KM and the inmates were Myself, Shyam, Yuva, Bharathi, Subbi & Sridhar. This time people came to my house and we started by 12 Midnight. As we hit the mysore road, the driver started showing his weariness and slowly we reached mandya and parked ourselves in one of the CCD in the Mysore road.We had a great time out there sipping coffee(2:30AM) and trying out photography @ slow shutter speeds(took pics of the traffic) By 3:00 we started again, and moved towards srirangapatna, and from there through the deserted route to Medikeri(Coorg). By 6:15 the cold breeze could be felt and the desolate old buildings of Medikeri could be seen. We rented an apartment in the first floor of an furnished building for 1500(we could have bargained a bit).

Once we got ready, we headed towards ThalaCauvery a 35Km drive from our place.The climate was bit hot and the dry vegetation along the roadside indicated that we had infact come during the wrong time of the year. The green lush vegetation wetted by the evening drizzle, the mist covered valleys were the hyped things to experience in Coorg and we knew this time we aren't going to see any of them.Thalacauvery is considered to be the origin of the river cauvery, It is a 2x2 well like structure and a small pond nearby. If you are expecting to see the R.Cauvery grow in stature from a trickle to a torrent, you would be disappointed. It is believed that only from this point in the bramhagiri hill cauvery starts and travels underground to come out of the kodagu valley in the western ghats as a mighty river(the first dam across it is harangi dam in coorg). The breath-taking views from the summit of the Brahmagiri hill is hard for anyone to forget easily. From there we started to Abbey falls. This falls lies within a private property(first time I am hearing something like this.) We were lucky enough to see a good amount of water on it. Bathing is banned on the falls and a bridge across the falls was a good viewpoint kind of. Pit-stop-3 was Gadduge, three tombs of the kings. interesting aspect of these structures were they had adopted islamic architecture interspered with Hindu figurines like Nandi. To see the sunset, we reached the Raja's Seat a park cum viewpoint. We made a light descent from this place to reach a much secluded place to view the sunset. The path was filled with hip high brownish weeds, and this turned out to a good place to take some really good pictures as the descenting sun rays were adding a golden tint to the whole landscape.This was followed by a Light & water Fountain dance show arranged by the park authorities.It was around 7PM and we got some food parcelled and I bought 1KG of Coffee Powder(Half kg with chicory cost 70 and another brand half KG pure coffee cost 100) We slept like logs that night.

Next day, we vacated the house and paid a visit to Omkareshwar Temple. This temple architecture too resembled islamic style. we started heading towards Dubare Elephant camp on the banks of R.Cauvery. We crossed the river on our own by walking across the rocks protruding here and there instead of using the boats.The path turned out to be scenic and our walk the more exciting. Once across, we saw the horde of elephants eating, bathing and some were building some keep of wood. One baby elephant was having lot of fun running here and there butting people. After having our breakfast there @ Dubare Inn, we started towards Nisargadhama, an island midst of the R.Cauvery.We lazed ourselves in a boat for some time and then explored the Bamboo covered Island. We walked almost to the end of the Island, but missed walking along the rim of the island to make a circum tour. Taking some pics we hurried to the next stop in our path, Namdroling Monastery. The Tibetan settlement in Bylakoppe have built some amazing Tibetan style structures here. Once you enter the place, It would be hard to believe that you are in South India. The whole place has been neatly maintained and interspersed with many Tibetan Monasteries of varying shapes, colours and sizes. The mighty monasteries with many statues of Buddha and his incarnations amazes one.The vivid colours in the exquisite paintings on the walls captivates even the dull non-patroniser of art. I missed the Veg.Momo but ate Veg. Tukpa at the Tibetan restaurant out there.

From there we started heading home, and we reached our house by 11:00. Whew!!! it was one good unplanned-yet-a-satisfying-"Covered-all" Trip. Visit the Pictures @ http://picasaweb.google.com/kpraveen85/Coorg

Yelagiri Trek

2009-02-17T09:32:00.000-08:00

If you have assumed Yelagiri, to be an extraordinary getaway with many scenic spots and places to cover, you got to think again. During many travels, the common hills and mountains fills the backdrop by the side, I have always wondered, if anyone had ever scaled those so-familiar yet so-ambiguous mountains. The answer came along and I saw myself scaling one of those last weekend,Yeah its Yelagiri for you.

The day dawned and we(Myself,(Muthu + DP)anna,senthil,sai,nachi) were on the lalbagh express standing in the unreserved compartment heading towards jolarpet. The DP anna's desparate attempts to sit on the floor & the hue and cry raised by one of the fellow passenger kept us rolling on the floor laughing throughout the journey. Getting down at jolarpet, we were joined by Rajaguru anna and from there we caught a bus to Yelagiri. The 14 hairpin bents and our driver's driving stunts made the just-eaten-idlies @ Jolarpet move up-&-down the gut. Once there we made our way to the lake and went for a boat ride. We then started our trek to Jalagampaarai falls. If there are two things that bogs down a trekker, its the heat and the weight of the bags. The head-above-noon-sun saw to it that we were scorched by the heat throughout the trip and the tents, sleeping bags & MTR instant cook recipies added the weight in our bags.

We were joined by a local village folk by the name Raman who guided us through the mountain. With the hurrying guide(he has to catch a bus back to yelagiri from jalagampaarai in another 4 hours) on the lead, and the fear of facing a bear enroute kept us on the heals most of the time. We moved through the valley and rise, stopping only a little to refresh then and there. The heat and the mostly dry vegetation (during this season) didn't attract many clicks from my camera. By the time we had covered 3/4 of the trail, we sat by the side a dwindled stream under a tree and had some bread and jam.From there it was mainly a descent down the mountain it was kind of easy to cover. The 4 hours of sweating from morning atlast got some solace on seeing the Vimaanam of the Jalagampaarai temple.Finally we reached the spot we had marked as our destination.After taking rest we climbed the steps to reach the falls.The falls didn't have any water except for the trickle oozing through that seem to say "ONE-AT-A-TIME-PLEASE". The trickle didn't deter us from taking bath in the falls.

The Temple of jalagampaarai had only one or two paying a visit and was largely isolated except for a tea shop catering for the 1/2 pilgrims coming in.Even they pack up and move out by the evening.Getting their advise on the location, we setup the two tents on the clearing in the midst of the forest cover. we collected some firewood and water and set up the rocks around for cooking. Once the fire boiled the water, we placed the MTR Instant Pongal,Sambar Rice,Rasam Rice,Tomato Rice packets and heated them. we had a hearty meal together under thr blanket of the bright twinkling stars and then went to the tent pretty soon. The eerie darkness,russle of the forest leaves followed by the dogs bark brought in a sense of insecurity.Though we were surrounded by the tent, it didn't extinguish the fear of wild animals like the bear.The day dawned and we got ourselves ready and paid a visit to the temple. We finished off the breakfast of kara paniyaaram with kaara chutney ordered by us in the tea shop. Very soon we hopped ourselves on the bus to Thirupattur and from there to krishnagiri -> Bangalore.

The Trek in all was exciting. especially our first time experience in setting up tents, cooking with firewood etc. The adventurous night sleep in fear turned out to be a false alarm, and it came to light as we travelled by bus to thirupattur. The bus took a right turn round a bend and we saw human inhabitations through-out. We had in-fact camped on the plains.The surrounding eerie dark forests turned out to be animal free forest cover followed by paddy fields.

Visit http://picasaweb.google.com/kpraveen85/Yelagiri for photos

Nilgiris Trip

2009-01-22T03:25:00.000-08:00

DAY 0:

During the christmas holidays, I had planned for a trip to Nilgiris(Ooty) with my school friends, and stuck to the note.On the eve of christmas, myself, Bharathi & siva boarded the coimbatore train.After the rendezvous with Priyan, Mani, Hari, Dhinesh, Prakash, Pradeep @ the coimbatore railway station, we boarded the so called last bus to mettupalayam according to dhinesh to end our dinner in a hurry :) We reached mettupalayam in an hour (12:15) and booked ourselves at kaveri international for the night(300 per room). Next Morning by 5:30 my good ol' pals came up with the crashing news that the Nilgiri mountain rail is fully booked.

DAY 1:
We boarded the bus to coonoor(breath taking valleys and fog filled mountains could be sighted in this route) and in another hour we were in coonoor freezing from head to toe.From coonoor, we got tickets(Rs 4/per person [dead cheap])in one of the 5 Nilgiri mountain rail operating between coonoor to ooty. By 7 the train started chugging through the Ghats revealing the Tea estates then and there.On reaching Ooty we checked in @ a so called cottage(infact it was a apartment) in the Davis Dale street(2 bedroom flat for 1400 per day accomadating 9 ppl).Snazing the breakfast @ Thendral restaurant near A.P.C junction, we (myself, bharathi, Priyan) started off (through Ettines Road) to District Forest Officer(south region) in wenlocks road(munching fresh carrots) to obtain permission for sight seeing Avalanche - a restricted forest area. We should have met the Wild Life Warden first to get a good Idea of trekking spots and later the Nilgiri WildLife Association for trekking permission and jungle rest house booking. But we obtained the permission from DFO(south) by evening without knowing exactly what is there in that place.BTW, the tourist officer in wenlocks road was very helpful and gave us a map of the Places to visit in and around ooty.(I would try to scan and put it here)The bitingly cold climate in the evening made us to hop into Cafe Coffee Day opposite to wenlocks road.Finishing off our dinner @ saravanaas Restaurant we headed to our cottage.That night the temperature touched 2 degree Celsius.

DAY 2:
Next day, We hired a Jeep(Driver : Ramakrishnan, cell: 9487073352) to avalanche @ Rs800.Once there at avalanche, we came to know that due to scanty rainfall, the catchment area was kind of dry. Crossing the checkpost, we went to the Power Station up there. We couldn't go up further to the most talked about upper bhavani catchment area as we hadn't obtained permission for that.We spent some time trekking to the fresh water tunnel coming from the Upper Bhavani and then to the banks of the avalanche catchment.It was a breath taking view of the water body and the dense shola on the sides.Returning back we got down in the ooty lake and walked along the road bordering it.Then myself and Bharathi reached Botanical Garden by evening and explored that too before darkness crept over.Retreating back through Charring cross we reached commercial road to make a rendezvous with others for dinner.We ended that day by playing cards till midnight.

DAY 3:
Being a sitting duck for the cold the last 2 days in the cottage, we moved to Hotel TamilNadu-II (Youth Hostel).It comprised a large room with 8 separate beds + other amenities. Truely we raised our eyebrows on seeing the neat and tidy room which we had not expected in a government run hotel, that too all this for Rs 1125.In fact, Hotel TamilNadu-I(in wenlocks road) offers a scenic stay for 2-4 ppl.since we are a group of 9 ppl, we were accomadated at Extn-II. Leaving behind our bags we started to Pykara on the same Jeep. Enroute we stopped at the Pine Forest to take some snaps and proceeded on to 9th Mile, a shooting spot that no director leaves in his film.We spent most of the time here trying to take on the air pics :) Then we proceeded to the Pykara Lake. Since the 10 seater boat was scheduled to make 2 trips ahead of our turn, we backed off and went to pykara waterfalls.Since the water had dwindled to a trikkle, we walked through the stony riverbed for some time.We tried to make it to the doddabetta view point before 5:30, only to know that the view point closes by 5:00 :( We went to the Tea Factory while driving down to see the Tea making process. Nice management technique indeed, not one stepped outside without buying tea powder packets, and we were no exceptions.That being our last day in ooty, we walked through the commercial road, charring cross till our legs ached, had dinner and came back.That night we played cards till 2 and after that the priyan trio saw to it that no one slept that night.From 5:30 next morning, I took up the job of driving people mad by trashing them with pillows.

DAY4:
Packing our stuffs quickly, we had our breakfast and did some shopping in charring cross(Note: best place to buy home-made chocolates,Eucalyptus oil,Tea powder,ooty varkee & rusk is either charring cross or commercial road) Enroute to the bus-stand Myself and Bharathi got some really fresh Nilgiri Carrots & ooty fresh vegetables home.

Points to Ponder:
* The early morning walk to the elk hill planned by me and Bharathi to see the mist never happened due to fear of venturing out in the damn COLD weather.

* Though the trip to Nilgiris was exciting, especially with good old school friends I couldn't put a tick mark above nilgiris in the Map as we didn't visit Parsons Valley, Porthimund, Mukurthi peak & national park, Western Catchment & Upper Bhavani (all under reserved forest area). Sometime down the lane, I am determined to obtain permission and stay in some jungle resthouse within these area and visit them. Only then Nilgiris would come under visited places list.

* One Important outcome of this trip is, I won the FEL Vacation Photography contest 2009 with this snap :)
Visit the Photo Gallery @ http://picasaweb.google.com/kpraveen85/Nilgiris

FEL Vacation Photography Contest 2009 - Poster

2009-01-09T05:00:00.000-08:00

After the 16 days vacation, I am back at the office and the very first work I did was designing this poster for the photography contest. It took me some time in arranging the collage(on the top) and then it was as easy as butter.

I have also sent in my entries. With my fingers crossed I am waiting....

Update: Hurray!!! I won this competition with the following photograph taken in Nilgiris

LAB Cultural SKIT

2008-12-17T03:47:00.000-08:00

Before the curtains are drawn for the year 2008, We(FEL-FUN Team) decided to host a skit, making a comical parody of the events and people here. We started a week back, and came out with a brilliant script wherein some real people out here were mimicked. Preparing the script as a team was a fantastic experience for me, especially it made me to understand how tough it would be to write, screenplay and direct accordingly.

I took up the role of an employee and the main crux in that is I had to dance for a telugu song(aa ante amalapuram) and enact for a Hindi song(jo tumko ho pasand) The Dumb-C played during my school days helped me in acting properly throughout, but the dance part still eluded me. Trying hard, yesterday night to memorize some dance steps placed me in a better position and the skit performance hogged the limelight.

Infact, appreciations started pouring in from all sides, from Lab director & other section managers too and a meet-up to appreciate our efforts also took place.The other cultural events like the solo song and group dance made the cultural a grand success. Now I realize how much fun I had lost in my college days by not participating in any cultural events!!! The SKIT was videotaped and right now I am playing that again & again

gearing up for Potluck Lunch and further

2008-12-04T03:51:00.000-08:00

Hmmm, Last minute preparations for the Potluck lunch took off from the FEL's Fun Team and as usual I was asked to design the poster yesterday evening. Totally helpless, I started from scratch last night and gave the finishing touches in the morning. unlike last time, this poster got so much of attention and appreciation.

The screen is set for the D-Day, but the main thing still lies in cooking something and taking over to the office tomorrow. Armed with nothing but a burfi recipe I am planning to sweep many off their feet. Let me see whether the ONE is getting sweeped or not!?!

Jogging isn't my piece of cake!!! (Part - II & concluding part)

2008-12-01T04:55:00.000-08:00

YAWN!!! That was interrupted by a Final Year girl chipping into our class, when the boring afternoon sessions were going on in full swing. she made the announcement for the "TCE MARATHON RUN" for world peace or something. We were in the second year by then, and somewhat excited we gave our names. The run was scheduled to start by 5:45AM from Germanus Days Inn entrance and supposed to end in our college for guys and for the fairer sex it was to start somewhere near Pykara. Now everyone joined in the run with their own ulterior motives like.......freebies :) Sriram was reluctant to join because of his wheezing problem, but I saw to it that he was there in the race too.

And so I got up early in the morning woke up my roomates in hostel(Sriram, Hariprasad and Yuvaraj) The former two murmured and got up, the latter cursed like anything in some foreign language :) and went to bed again. Our college had arranged the college bus to drop us at the CSI church near to Germanus, and I was irritated for they had worked out even the finer details like arranging separate buses for Boys and girls :( There they were, in the midst of the crowd subramani, our super senior Bamu with high levels of adrenalin and flaunting the T-Shirt given as part of the Race. Shocked to hear that the Freebies were over, we(myself, sriram and hariprasad) started looking around for some guys of our sort for the race, but before we could find any, our principal had flagged off the Marathon.

We were with the crowd initially and Bamu ran along with us and when we came near the Aparna Towers(400 Mtr from starting point) I made the first Pit stop. From then on there was no more running, only pit stops one after another near to places like Raymond showroom etc. By this time Bamu got irritated and started advancing ferociously. By the time we had covered some 1KM, I can safely confirm that we were the last ones in the race and we could not even see the runners in front of us anywhere near the horizon :) It was around 6:25AM

Totally dejected, I turned around seeking for some help from someone, Goddess Meenakshi came to our rescue!!!

We were standing opposite to Madurai Meenakshi Bhavan on the By-Pass-Road. A look at Hariprasad told me that he too had what I had in mind. Then by Veto we overpowered sriram and he too budged. We turned the course of the Marathon and the three runners were spotted running through the entrance of Madurai Meenakshi Bhavan as early as 6:30AM. The watchman told us that it would take another one hour for the Tiffin to get ready. No probs was our reply and we sat and started chatting coolly. By 7:30AM we got our Pooris and then we helped ourselves with the second serving and finished off the Breakfast with a cup of Coffee. Slowly and clearly evading the refreshment centers set up for Marathon(In fact, they were already packing the stuffs) and also any college guys from spotting us coming out of Meenakshi Bhavan, we reached Palanganatham by walk.

We boarded the bus and were glad that we had given a nice slip and happy over the fact we had been saved from the embarrassment if anyone had spotted us when we came out of the hotel or when we had boarded the bus.We were quite sure that by now the Marathon would have ended and people would safely be in the respective classes for the sessions to commence. Clad in Tracks or rather Pyjamas, some local sports shoe and T- shirt we got down from the bus HORRORSTUCK!!!! The whole college was in the bus stop!!! Our Principal had cancelled the first two periods because of the run and people were going back to their house and hostels to change their dresses!!! Most of the good looking girls of that time were there giggling at us. And our set guys, would they be left far behind somewhere?? they were also there roaring with laughter. We dashed towards our hostel and by the afternoon we entered our class only to hear fresh peels of laughter from both the sides.

After one year, one Final guy asked for excuse and entered into the class. I started looking at the ceiling to avoid Sriram's glare who was sitting next to me when the announcement was being made for the next series of "TCE MARATHON" :)

Jogging isn't my piece of cake!!! (Part - I)

2008-11-23T17:52:00.000-08:00

It was one of the chilly wee hours in the month of December 1992, as decided, myself and my cousin got up for jogging for the first time in our lives.My mother was already up and putting that big Kolam(that month being Margazhi, nice day chosen for jogging isn't it??)My cousin was already in his mid teens and I was barely a 7 year old kid by that time.I am still unsure of his motive as why he came up all of a sudden with an Idea to go for jogging..Hmmph so clad in a full hand shirt and a full size pant, and a sweater + scarf + BATA white canvas shoe(no nike, RBK those days) to wad off the cold we started off. My sister knew already that it is not going to take us any where and she didn't bother to join us.(In fact she doesn't involve in anything that is done before 7 AM :) ) We saw to it that we woke up everyone in the house, Grandfather, father, paternal uncle et all.

They all stood by the door as though they are flagging off an marathon event, and finally we started by 4:45 AM amidst the downpour of advice from all sides.At that time we were staying in BHEL Quarters, Trichy. Our aim was to reach the Training centre,(a place in BHEL) By the time we turned round the corner, our pet dog spotted us and he had a quizzical look in this face that could only mean "What the HELL are these two BOZOs up to in this unearthly hours?" Eventually, two runners became three and we moved on..Whenever any yelping of any other street dog came through, our dog used to cut that off with a sharp bark.

By now we had reached my school and I was no longer jogging and my cousin was grudgingly walking along with me after his morale boosting vehement encouragements failed to move my leg any faster. It was those days when not many used to go for jogging(when you have office(BHEL) by 7:40AM who would?) The milkwallas and newspaper Boys were whizzing past us to supply the commodity.When we were somewhat nearer to the Park in the double garage road I could no longer bear the brunt and I started pestering my cousin to return back.My cousin and myself settled for a rescheduled destination to reach ie, the present Thiruvalluvar Roundana in Double garage road.

Finally, after some umpty number of Pit stops on the benches by the roadside, and my cousin's continued persistence we reached the rescheduled destination.By this time, the Sun was rising(6:25AM), and it lighted up the sky in varied hues.Enjoying the Sun's first rays falling upon us and much to the disgust of my cousin, I started collecting the flowers that had bloomed on the central divider in the double garage road and also on the road side exposed, low hanging branches from the residence quarters. If we are caught plucking the flowers, the inmates of the house would obviously leave off the 7 year old cute kid from scolding, but not the 15 year old. Keeping his heart in his mouth, he watched tensely as I collected different varieties of flowers.When we finally decided to turn back home, it was around 7:15AM. My cousin was relieved that we had not been caught by any for plucking the flowers and he looked forward for a nice walk back home.

But fate extinguished his desire, my paternal uncle and my father had come in their scooters looking out for us. I enjoyed this not very expected Free ride from the back of the scooter and clearly avoiding my cousin's glaring eyes. By the time we reached home, my grandfather started scolding my cousin for taking so long to return back(It is always good when one is not the oldest). For a change, now it was my Mother's turn to add up some ginger to my cousin's plight. she had made sorasam (a juice made from Ginger etc, good for health, but the taste really sucks!!!) We were forced to gulp that down to maintain good health. That afternoon, after lunch my cousin went to bed to take a small nap, I dutifully followed him and asked "Super ah irunthuthu da inniki kaathala!!! Naalaikum Pollama?? (It was really super today morning, shall we go tomorrow too?)" But the reply never came.

In the next part, I would recount my next jogging session when I was in college!!!

Jog Falls - Murudeshwar - Kollur - Sringeri Itinerary

2008-09-29T19:51:00.000-07:00

Inmates : 9 People
(Myself,Senthil,Prabhu,Rajesh,

Shyam,KB,Venkat,Pramod,deivapalan)

Commuting in koramangala @ Prabhu anna's house, has always been our routine, and this time it was no exception.Boarding the Tempo Traveller we started from Bangalore by 9:30.As we travelled through the NH-206 Bangalore - Shimoga, it seemed we were the only ones
travelling in that direction on the totally isolated uninhabited highway. When the Highway was not arrayed with any Tea shops/Petrol Bunks/Mechanic puncture shops, the weirdness in our minds soared. By
3:00 we crossed Shimoga and we stopped @ Laxmi Lodge,a mediocre inn @ sagar for refreshing. we started again by 8:30 and reached Jog Falls in an hour.At first the massiveness of the falls didnt strike us.

We trekked through the unlaid, stone path to the bottom of the falls.The mammoth height of the falls and man's miniature standing made us realize the sheer size of the drop.After taking photos we retreated back, Extinguishing our desires to venture out into the waters.The return to the top was a torturous one, especially for Faint hearts, we thought we could never make it any sooner :) Once at the top, we moved towards Murudeshwar and booked a 3 - 3 bedrooms for 350 each. We rested for a while and then dragged ourselves to the beach.

Murudeshwar Temple is put up in the midst of the beach and the view from the mound is a beauty.After playing Football for some time we came came back to the lodge to refresh and started again to visit the temple.The Temple Gopura is 249 Feet surpassing Srirangam's Raja Gopura of 236 ft, but the base is not as huge as in Srirangam.We barely made it on time before the temple closed by 8:15PM.After having the dinner at Naveen Beach Hotel, we went to sleep like logs in the lodge.

Next morning, i made a rendezvous to the top of the mound to capture some snaps and soon after we started to Kollur Mookambiga temple.Kollur temple's style and custom resembled that of the one practiced in Kerala.Next we made an vain attempt to reach Sringeri temple (one of the four mutts started by Adi sankara) before it closes, through the Agumbe(of Malgudi days Fame) route.We took some breath taking pics at the sunset point in Agumbe and moved on planning to make a dedicated trip to Agumbe sometime later.Since the temple was closed. we justed visited the Temple complex and the River Tunga by its side.The fishes in the Banks are really HUGE and needs special mention.There are two temples inside the Temple complex, one built with the South Indian style having the sharadambal deity.Another one is of a Hoysala structure.

Then we drove to Chickmangalur and then to Bangalore.These two days we had seen ghat roads more than what we had seen in the whole of our lifetime.Mountains, valleys, Fertile River banks, filled the scenary.The Rice cultivation done by means of contour ploughing needs special mention too.This trip turned out to be a Trekking trip + relaxing trip + Pilgrimage too.Too much in one shot.

More than anything else, this time with my new Camera, i was mainly standing behind the Lens rather than in the Front :)

http://picasaweb.google.com/kpraveen85/JogFallsShimoga
http://picasaweb.google.com/kpraveen85/Murudeshwar
http://picasaweb.google.com/kpraveen85/SringeriKollurAgumbe

Its time for the Aperture's Cynosure

2008-09-09T02:57:00.000-07:00

Certain interests doesn't pop out of thin air, it grows as one develops.One such was my passion for Photography.It got intense when i made some trips without a camera to picture the rusticated locations.A small chit-chat with a professional photographer of the national geographic gallery calibre brought me some insight into this Art.I narrowly missed being part of the Photographer's forum(special interest group) in college.The bereft of a proper DigiCam during those days atleast prevented that.

Now that, i bought a magnificent marvel from Kodak, this is another dimension in which i have to delve into.The Kodak Z1012 IS is a 10MP camera with 12x Optical Zoom fitted with Schneider-Kreuznach Variogon, f/2.8-4.8 Lens.It is a calculated Risk that i took when i selected this one over Canon S5IS.This could be taken as a signal to check my picasa & Flickr album then and there.Thanks to Ekanth and Prabhu anna for ordering & carrying this Cutie from US :)

Specifications @ http://www.kodak.com/eknec/PageQuerier.jhtml?pq-path=12456&pq-locale=en_US
Reviews @ http://www.digitalcamerareview.com/default.asp?newsID=3527

Rolled out a Poster

2008-08-10T23:07:00.000-07:00

Last week i rolled out this poster design for our Lab's Independence day celebration.

Chaotic theory - the buzz word

2008-06-23T03:03:00.000-07:00

In all age circles, dasavatharam has penetrated Some are sarcastic about it for not being a Commercial masala, some are acerbitic for the involvement of religion. But look at it, it is a beauty by itself, first time in the Tamil film industry, a physics theory is advocated and illustrated with a storyline and it has become the talk of the town.It is not like a shankar's film with the stereotyped corruption problem as the storyline and the moral of the story being spoon feeded. The beauty of it lies when you do your homework and analyse the storyline for the interwoven chaotic theory. Here is a link to some analysis on the storyline.

The showcasing of Tamil History in the first 20 minutes with the icon character of Ranganatha nambi cant be done any better.When Hollywood derives its film from books like Bourne series, jurassic park etc. why dont the Tamil film industry make a film out of Sivagamin Sapatham, Ponniyin selvan, Paarthiban kanavu?? Dasavatharam effect still lingers in me and i feel Kamal Haasan is the right person for this venture.

Kudos to Kamal Haasan and for his well researched film "DASAVATHARAM". I am not saying all Tamil films should be like this, but it would be good if it is :)

The Malayali Touch

2008-05-18T22:52:00.000-07:00

Be it the south indian stranger @ the Cafe Coffee day or the South indian receptionist @ the Computer Gadget store (to name a few), they have popped out the same question, "Chetan malayali yo?" Then with a blush they would accept the fact that i am a Tamilian the moment i tell them.Whether it is by my looks or by my name or by the way i speak tamil leads them to this doubt, i dont know. To get to the bottom of this, i had my ancestral line under the scanner, only to find that my Grandfather's sister's grandson is the closest in blood line who happens to reside in Kerala :) I also doubt whether i got that touch from the three sorties(comprising of 2 days each) to kerala that i did in the whole of my lifetime. A tamilian in reality, and a malayali by recognition, cool!!! i am enjoying this dual "States"manship as long as it leads me to something good and worthwhile. When it happens to be the North Indians across the desk, they have no problem in identifying,because they use the rule of generalization.Madrasi is the term coined by them for anyone from the four southern states of India(Madrasi => People from the province of Madras during the British rule.Sixty years of independence, four states have formed in the south, Madras got liquidated into Chennai, still the same name lingers for anyone from the south)By coincidence the Northies gets my state's capital right, and then i would go on to tell them that i am not a chennaivaasi(Resident of Chennai) but from the state of TamilNadu, blah...blah..

கலி காலமடா மனிதா!!!

2008-05-09T10:45:00.000-07:00

பேருந்திற்காக காத்திருந்தாலும், தன்னவல் இந்த கூட்டத்தில் இருப்பாலோ என்று
வழி மேல் விழி வைத்தவனை நோக்கி வந்தால்,
தன்னவல் அல்ல, வறுமையினால் "Thin" னவள் கை குழந்தையுடன், கை ஏந்தி
கால் அனா கூட அலக்க மனம் ஒப்பாமல் இருக்கையில் முரையிட்டான் ஒருவன்,
"Excuse me Sir, Could i have your attention for a minute? i am from xyz child foundation blah blah"

கனிசமான ஒரு தொகையை வழஙகிய பின்,
இன்று ஒரு நல்ல காரியம் செய்தோமே என்று எண்ணிக் கொண்டே அவன் மறைய
"ஒரு அற்பனுக்கு பொருள் தராமல் coat போட்ட சுப்பனுக்கு தந்தானே!!!!" என்று
குறை மட்டும் கூரிக் கொண்டே தோன்றியவன் இதை பற்றி "blog" கும் செய்தான்.
கலி காலமடா மானுடா இது கலி கால்மடா!!!

International Tech Park, Bangalore

2008-04-25T04:39:00.000-07:00

For today's lunch, our team planned to go out somewhere nearby to eat, and we zeroed up on ITPB's Food court. Most Tamilians would have sighted this in the Film Ghajini where Surya and his PA walks along with a laptop and attends a call from Asin :) This ITPB is built by Ascendas. The plush green grass and the glass buildings looked pretty sophisticated.The Food court, other amenities, and the people coming out for lunch made me think as though we were inside a Mall or something. I wonder how one would get the mood to work from there :)

The wrath against the Software engineers

2008-04-24T23:59:00.000-07:00

The Software engineers are the poor souls who end up being criticized, be it in films (Tamizh M.A, Arai En 305il Kadavul) or in the walks of life for the high renumeration package that they are receiving.When it comes to the dilapidated rise of commodities and real estate prices in Chennai and Bangalore, the software engineers are the most bashed.The people on the other side find the high salary unreasonable and undeserving. Point Taken that the higher salary has created the divide, but why spitting the flame at the software engineers who never committed the crime for the divide, the only thing that they did was in selecting computer science as their major in the college. The Real estate people took advantage of the higher salary and rised the prices, the common people who owned the plots earlier took it as a cue and raised instantaneously. At a grocery store people never question why beans are always priced higher than the potato, but they expect every job to have the same salary level.

During the 1960's Government jobs were the most soughted,In the 1970's it was the era of Industrial revolution in India giving ample scope for Civil and Mechanical engineers, 1980's it was the time that a Job in a Bank was the most lucrative, from the 1990's the craze for being a software engineer could be sighted.nobody bashed the previously most soughted jobs of their times.When the employment at the core companies were reaching the brim in the 1990's the alarmingly rising levels of unemployment was extinguished by the IT Industry. Could any industry challenge the IT industry for its ever increasing intake thereby keeping the unemployment levels at its check? In fact because of the higher salary the software engineers falls into the 30% tax slot and end up paying most part of their renumeration as tax, this goes unnoticed by the masses. When Dr.Manmohan singh ruffled the feathers of the Corporates asking them to cut down on the CEO salaries, did he consider whether all the MP's and MLA's in India had a PAN card on their names first of all and declared their asset owning properly? In a System where quota is given based on the caste rather than on the scale of poverty you cant expect anything better.

The Projects of the IT Industry predominantly comes over from Americas and Europe and hence the salary levels are compared with the salaries up there and tried to be in par with them. It might also lead to fluctuations if the foreign currency rate decreases. Due to lack of Domestic market this Industry is highly prone to Various risks like cut-offs and lay-offs. Ever heard of the core company shedding off its employees in thousands?? On parallel lines, this is more like a Stock market where you profit when there is a Bull-run and bear the brunt when there is a Bear-run.Easily said, but the high lucrative package of the software engineers would continue to be grudged untill a new burgeoning industry replaces the IT industry.

Goa Trip - Cavalossim to Baga Beach

2008-04-08T08:52:00.000-07:00

The idea of going to Goa got conceived two weeks back and the preparations eventually followed for a 3 day trip to goa from 4th to 7th.

Day-1 : Colva to Majorda Beach
Inmates: myself, Senthil, Musi, Sap, Prabhu, Rajesh, Keyankay, KB, Venkat, SenthilKAS.

Taking the Marmagoa express on friday night, we chugged through the Deccan Plateau and then through the scenic Western Ghats to reach Goa by 1100 hrs. The train went through many tunnels and we had a chance to cite the Dudh-Sagar waterfalls as soon as we entered into the state of Goa.We stayed at the Vailankanni Guest house near the Colva Beach.Colva, a south bound beach in Goa is prominent for the low waves and white sands but it is somewhat isolated.We then proceeded to the colva to take a dip and then started off with the beach volleyball.Lunch was at Josefa's corner, a beach shack.

By Evening due to the non-availability of any motorbikes in the area for hire, we had to dump our plan of going for the Goafest @ the cavelossim beach.But we hired autos to reach Majorda beach relatively nearer to colva. Majorda had only a few takers and is devoid of many refreshment parlours.We watched the sunset over the horizon here and continued on with a dip and football.Instead of taking the auto back to colva, we treaded to colva beach by walk (more than 5 kms) along the beach.@ the colva beach we dug up tunnels and a huge pit, Prabhu anna fell for the trick of measuring the depth of the pit by getting in.We then buried him in it till the hip and took snaps :) Totally exhausted we had our dinner at Sher-e-Punjab.That night followed with a round of playing cards.

Day-2 : Colva to Baga Beach

Next day we hired 5 Honda Activas(Rs 300 per day) and started of to visit the north bound beaches till Arambol (65 Km from colva approx). First hit was the Dona Paula, but instead of the beach we visited the Dona paula Jetty from where we had a good view of the sea below us.The road as it uncoils to the top unveils the scenic beauty of the seas below springled with yachts & boats bordered by palm and coconut trees.From there we reached Panaji(by now we had travelled 30 kms) we crossed the River Mandovi along with our bikes in a Ferry at free of cost provided by the Goa Tourism development.We then set out for the coco beach,the most isolated one where waves could not be found in the water.Here we set out on a Boat to spot the dolphins @ 100 per head. Yeah, we spotted some dolphins and then the ship's captain :) set out on a sight seeing tour showing us the Palace owned by a malaysian, Kingfisher's Cruise, Aguada Jail, Portuguese building ruins etc.

Having our Lunch at the Octopus, we visited the Aguada fort, a portuguese strong-hold in their times.Now it holds a Light-house nothing more.Taking some snaps of the sea atop the highly forted walls, we started towards Sinquerim beach.Sinquerim is a visibily rough beach(b'cos of that water bike rides are famous here) where the sky blue water strikes against some old rocks and fortified walls near the beach's edge. One by one went in for the waterbike ride @ 150 per head. As i stood there taking photo of Sap and prabhu, i was nearly run over by the Bikes in which they rode :)We vacated the place soon after to visit Calangute Beach. Here myself and KB in the bike got lost and by the time i almost reached Calangute our set was returning back as they found the beach highly crowded. We then went to baga beach, but managed to see it only in the moon light as the sun was already down.The beach was crowded and it looked heavenly with a highly lit-up resort on the road overlooking the sea and the water strinking its bolstering walls.There was also a shallow back-water going in.It was almost 8PM and we missed out visiting Anjuna, vagator & Arambol Beach(atleast 30 - 40 more Km to travel)

We started heading towards colva,and because we lost track of the bikes in the front and back, we had to stop here and there for a reunion.By the end of the day the speedometer showed that we had travelled some 145 KMS. In that I drove for nearly 105 KMs and i found that really fantastic, remainded me of the motorcycle diaries :) We had our dinner at one of the beach shacks @ the colva beach.We found ourselves playing Beach Volleyball by 1:30 at night in the Colva beach.Trully it was amazing and we enjoyed every moment of that.

Day - 3 : Colva to Cavelossim - Old Goa - Panaji

We planned to visit the south bound beaches till Palolem (55 KM approx from colva) First pit stop was @ the Cavelossim Beach where we hardly sited people. Cavelossim beach stretches for eons together at both the ends and we treaded only for a small distance by walk along the shoreline after a quick dip in the seas.We then set out for Palolem beach, but due to lack of time(40 KM approx more to go) and petrol we turned back after covering some distance. On the way back we visited Benaulim Beach where we had our breakfast & rested ourselves in the recliners under the umbrella.That day we had travelled 48 KMs.After returning the bikes and vacating the Guest house we boarded a bus from colva to marmagoa. From there we boarded a bus to Old goa through Ponda.The whole bus trip consumed some two hours of our good time :( we had onion pakoda,Mysore Bonda,Chilly bajji,potato Bajji for lunch at a way-side yummy joint @ old-goa.We visited the Basillica Dom Jesus Church here and then boarded the bus to Panaji.

From Panaji bus stand we made our way to Panaji market buying trinkets and Cashews(its really cheap just 270 per Kg) all through the way.This way is bordered by the River on one side.The well lit-up pavement with stone seats at regular intervals overlooking the river makes one wonder whether it is Panaji or Venice!!! We treaded our way to the bus stand to catch the Bus @ Sharma Travels.It was a nice and enjoyable 3 day hang-out for us.

Would upload the photos and give the links soon...

The Elusive Freebie finds its way through

2008-03-27T04:29:00.000-07:00

Upon purchasing the laptop, i was promised a freebie (that would be shipped ) which glued me like a child to a lollypop. I used to check up for any parcels that had come for me everyday and after this routine stunt for about a month, the watchman got curious and he too started waiting in on the parcel.But it was nowhere to be seen.

After some three and half months finally i received the freebie that one could only dream of.Well it is a pack of 20 English DVD movies.What then!! its movie time the whole of this month!!!

Jesus lived in India

2008-03-16T04:26:00.000-07:00

The following content is just a gist of the book that i read and it may or may not inflict my opinion,

This book by Holger kersten could be considered as an addendum to the issues dealt with in Da Vinci Code and the only difference being the fact that India is pulled into the vortex of the issue.The book is about the early life of Jesus Christ and His days after crucifixion.

The book starts of with Nicolai Notovitch, a Russian historian 's startling discovery of manuscripts in the buddist monastery of Hemis which details the stay of Issa during the early First century.He found the characteristics of Issa strikingly similar to Jesus Christ.Then the author takes us through the research that many has undertaken about the early life of Jesus Christ(ie before the Baptism at the age of 30) There is a lead which unveils a possibility that Jesus Christ could have reached India through the Silk route and settled in Kashmir in the Ladakh region where he came to know about the buddhist preachings.

The Author then shows the striking resemblence of some the preachings across the religions by quoting them from the Bible, Buddhist scriptures, and from puranas.Indeed some stories are similar.It seems that the world religions are more interconnected than we had thought.Later the author evaluates the new Testament primarily the works of Matthew, Mark, Luke and John for any clues about Jesus Christ's early life.

Next he moves back to the time of abraham who is said to have lived in haran. This haran could well be the one in Kashmir and he gives striking resemblence of the etymological names specified in the old testament in Exodus and the places in the present day Kashmir.Then comes the interesting episode of Moses who liberates the people from Egypt and takes them across the River Jordon to the Promised land by God. This land could be Kashmir because in Exodus the place where moses tomb lies is specified and those 5 reference landmarks could be found in Hasbal, a town near srinagar, even more he takes us to a tomb in that town which dates back before the christian era and the tomb is set in the east-west direction customary of the jews.

Another instance is when soloman sents his navy to tarshish and the soldiers brings back gold, tukki, etc. This tukki refers to the peacock feathers and the hebrew language did not have a word for peacock hence it uses the word "tokei" as used in Tamil itself, easily proving the fact that soloman's soldiers reached the western coastal line of India well before the christian era.

The Ten Lost Tribes of Israel is the most sought of mystery in History and some of their DNA traces could be found in the people of Kashmir, and in the north-western frontier region illustrating the fact that the Ten Tribes of Israel had migrated to as far as Kashmir in the pre-christian era itself.The book then takes us through the places where the shroud of Turin had been and the author explains why the shroud of Turin is real and not hoax.

Nearing the end, the author explains how Jesus Christ survived the Crucifixion and his journey to Kashmir with many proofs in literature(even in Koran!!!) and also by understanding the etymological meanings of places.By understanding the meanings of place, the author found the tomb of Mother Mary in a town near Taxila.Next he uncovered the Tomb of Jesus Christ in rozabal, khanyar quater of srinagar who the author claims to have died at the age of 80.The author is still trying to open that tomb to unveil the truth to the world with facts, but the tension prevailing in the region keeps him on the hold.

Based on this book and another, a hollywood film is brewing with the title Aquarian Gospel and it is expected to hit the theatres in 2009.

visit http://www.tombofjesus.com/2007/home.html for Photos and more information

This saturday i was in Friday

2008-03-15T09:56:00.002-07:00

With a neatly pressed Cotton Khaki and a german flag coloured stripped T-Shirt on i set out with no particular destination in mind. At Indira nagar a college friend joined me and by that time rain started playing havoc and we decided to settle down at TGI Friday's (Thank Goodness it's Friday), an American restaurant chain. We were welcomed by 2 waiters with a big smile and badges all over and we were shown the seats. Everytime we visit a bar attached restaurant, the Bar menu would be promptly handed over to me and the food menu to the others by the waiter, i dont know why and this time it was no exception :)

We ordered 1/2 of mushroom soup each and i went for veg chimichanga while my pal selected chicken tchoupatoulis and dismissed the, order one beverage get another free(Happy Hour) funda explained by the waiter(Note : Coke costs 95). A look around certified that we were inside a sophisticated watering hole with couples holding each other's hand.The chit-chat primarily centered around how could these guys afford not only for themselves but for the damsels by their side. By then our mexican food had arrived and it ressembled somewhat like indian food with rice and chappati kind of stuff and it was not the type of experience we had at little italy eating italian food(details in next post).

Now comes the interesting part, the bill came and we found ourselves astonished, looking at a whooping bill of 1102 just for the 3 items we had. The net bill was 900 and the Vat of 12.5 % and Service tax of 10% amounted to 1102.First time i am paying 22.5% tax :) We shared the bill and left the hang-out place with a free gift coupon of 500 which could be redeemed next time(who cares?? who gonna come again? atleast if they had waived the tax part alone this time i would have been happier) .The expenditure spree didnt end here, as my friend took out his bike the Security charged 20 for the parking lot fee :)

Visit http://www.tgifindia.com for more info

adding splash to life

2008-03-12T03:27:00.000-07:00

Being a member of the fun team of our Lab, the onus of creating a poster for our Lab outing coming friday fell on me.Designing posters is an interesting job, and i used to envy the graphic designers for their creativity and the splash of color combination.Looking back at the posters created during my college days be it for cyber, fstival, primarily the base was a picture which conveyed the meaning. Thats the only thing i could think of. Somehow something new clicked my mind, and i experimented with Vector Graphics. Vectors are cartoon representations, be it human figures, objects, scenary etc which resonates with the mood.

The initial idea was something and it got transcended to something else in the end.The poster was optimized for A3 size.The base theme i used for the poster is some kind of exuberent mood in every vector, listing out the various fun events zeroed up on activities like dance, Sports, Relaxing in a scenic place etc. Next task was to come out with two Main components of the collage and getting the color tone synonymous with all the vectors used. Orange & Black goes well for gaity activities hence selected that. Churning up a caption and text was the next job. Once this is over, The poster is complete but with lot of blank spaces, hence patching up the poster took some time and the final output was attractive and appreciated :) Atlast got that thing printed out and stuck it up in all the floors.These posters brings alive the memories of the past if i take a look at them, hence i am holding all the posters which i had created in my college days too.The whole collage was created using Gimp.

Configuring Perl IDE using Eclipse + EPIC + Perlcritic

2008-02-21T22:39:00.000-08:00

Though not an ardent fan of any IDE (integrated development environment), i just thought of setting up one for PERL. i decided to stick on to the one available Free & Open option ie, Eclipse.This tutorial is a sneek peek into the getting this IDE for Perl up and running in Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon.

Softwares needed:
JDK or JRE
Eclipse 3.2
EPIC
Perlcritic

First Install the Eclipse platform preferrably 3.2 or above.Ensure that the JRE or JDK is already present because eclipse is dependant on that.As of now Eclipse would support java only, to set it up for Perl, download the EPIC package from http://e-p-i-c.sourceforge.net/ To install the plugin EPIC in Eclipse, in the eclipse window, navigate to Help -> Software Updates -> Find & Install -> Select for new features to install -> New Local site. Now select the downloaded package and the installation would go on fine.

It is assumed that creation of workbench, projects and files in eclipse are known.Now we have come to the interesting part of setting up perlcritic. perlcritic is a static analyzer which analyses the file on compilation and spits out warnings in case it does not fall in line with Perl Best Practices by Damien Conway. This comes in handy to write efficient and discernable code.Perlcritic is dependant on a number of perl modules most of which are not part of gutsy but part of hardy. Before installing perlcritic from http://packages.ubuntu.com/hardy/perl/libperl-critic-perl look into the dependencies and install those by dpkg -i file.deb once the perlcritic is installed configure the EPIC properties in Eclipse which is a easy one to do.

Now for perlcritic to throw up the warnings, install the perl module criticism from http://search.cpan.org/~thaljef/criticism-1.01/ then in the code that you write include the line use criticism 'gentle'; remember to remove the this line before shipping your product :) Now you have a perfect IDE for Perl up and running.

I am still on the search for a perl source code browser something like cscope or opengrok which works for C. If someone knows of any, dont forget to share it with me in a comment!!!

Treasure

2008-02-10T10:46:00.000-08:00

Clive Cussler books got my attention after i saw his filmed masterpiece Sahara starring Matthew Maconaughey and Penelope Cruz. Treasure is a novel which weaves around the Lost books housed in the Library of Alexandria which were burned down by Theodosius in 390AD.Clive Cussler tries to converge two or three independent plots at the same focal point which irritates some times.The same goes with Sahara.

Dirk Pitt, the james bond's alter-ego of Clive Cussler stories is sometimes overhyped.The Author could have shared the intelligence of diagonocise with other characters too.The plot is thick at the start where Julius Venator, a roman statesman of 390's relocates a part of the invaluable books of Alexandria Library along with the Alexander's coffin (before the library is burned by theodosius) to an unknown location in the planet.Dirk Pitt and an archaeological team stubbles upon a clue which leads them to the treasure 1600 years later.

Also looms behind is a conspiracy by capasperre brothers to unseat the government of egypt and mexico by hijacking the cruise containing the presidents.COuld Dirk save the presidents and also dig up the treasure before it is too late? Read the book to know the climax.

good old pals meet up

2008-02-10T09:10:00.000-08:00

Boarding the Cauvery express, V 4 (me,sen,subbi,Musi) transcended to Chennai.We disembarked at perambur where our sanikutty #1(sriram) was waiting. Slowly we tottered our way to his house and after devouring the yummy idly sambar we started to FossConf. After a rendezvous with Priyan and the juniors we had our lunch along with stylesen & Ranjani. We spent the evening in the Besant Nagar Beach with Vanniaperumal and Joe joining us.finally we had our dinner out there.

Next day, we packed and left for Mahabalipuram in a Auto.The Auto ride was exhilarating filled with pattrais.Though i had been to these places before going with friends is something different. At mahabalipuram we covered most of the places except for the five rathas.Later we came to spencer to while away the time, where vanni joined us.Some of the juniors who came to Spencers did not even care to say a small 'hi' which irked us, after all we mingled with them just like good old pals rather than like super-seniors when in college.No one to blame, because thats how some ppl react weird when they have someone by their side.Atleast they should have known that we are decent enough to know how to behave when there is a lady by the side. Later at the Chennai Central Shanoof paid us a visit, and the train started chugging along with myself trying to start the fan by rotating the blades with a pen since it was having some starting trouble :)

visit the album @ http://picasaweb.google.com/kpraveen85/Mahabalipuram

Kolli Hills Trip

2008-02-10T09:02:00.000-08:00

Another Mission(To Kollimalai), Another Troop(V 3 -me,sen,subbi, and our 5 year seniors - prabhu, Rajesh, Muthu, Rajasekar, Sadeesh,SenthilKAS) this time waded through the ourskirts of Bangalore to each salem and from there to kolli-hills. Under the command of Captain Muthu things were perfectly on track,like room bookings@PA Lodge, 1000 songs in 1 DVD. A traffic jam down the way kept us on the loop and we reached kolli-hills only by 10 AM. This prompted us to gobble up the idlies on the fly and we set out to have a bath at Akash Ganga, the waterfalls in the Kolli-hills.The ascent after the bath proved very tiresome and we rested our bones at the aarpaleshwarar temple sipping up a medicinal tuber soup.Later we got some picturesque view from the suicide rock and then we commuted at semmedu village to have Tea at a Joint and to have a look at ValVil Ori statue,ie the king who ruled this place.Wrapped up the day with Dumb-c.

Next day very early in the morning when the mist covered the whole mountain we went astray through the paths where not many had tredded.It was when we got the news that Muthu anna could get promoted to the post of Father any time.We started down the hill and dropped Muthu at Rasipuram bus stand from where he planned to catch a bus toTenkasi.We continued on our way to Hogennakal, our next stop in our
Trip.Speechless!!! the amount that we paid for the rowers ofthe boat is totally worth the view and the bath.The river cauvery fall from the gorges on both sides and we were rowing in between!!! Then in the lagoon we had a nice bath where i practised swimming with the help of Rajasekar.Sunday night 11 PM saw us cuddled at our usual residence of the weekend ie subbi's place.

Visit the Album @ http://picasaweb.google.com/kpraveen85/KolliHills

Bandipur Trip

2008-02-10T08:51:00.000-08:00

This trip was undertaken some 2 months back yet, scrapping on the blog to reflect upon in the sands of Time.The inmates include V 4(me,sen,subbi,musi) & our seniors (SAP, smartsara, Elango, vichu,vasanth, shyam, ramesh, palani, sri and vimal).We started on a finenote by bathing at the sivasamudhra falls, and then continued forward towards Bandipur but fate thought otherwise and a mechanical snag inthe Tempo traveller made us to reach Mysore for repairing the

vehicle.Once done our indomitable spirits lead us to Bandipur Forest in the unlikely hour of the eerie night.We 14 ppl managed to cuddle up in a single room(all other rooms got booked) for the night and the morning rays saw us boarding the Safari van by 6 AM.Photographing only the deers and peacocks which caught our eye we started of to mysore.Out there we saw The Mysore palace, Daria Daulat Bagh in
Seringapatnam.We closed our trip at the forum departing our ways through the chaotic Urban crowd....

Visit the Album @ http://picasaweb.google.com/kpraveen85/Bandipur

How Poetic!!! great writings

2008-02-07T21:38:00.000-08:00

Recently i came across a community in orkut by name

'GETHU' dhaan aamblaikku sothu

The greatest thing about that is the description of the community. read it below and have fun!!! The community owner must be a great poet :)

neenga pallu theikkum bodhu kooda orkutla irupavara??

neenga orkutla,ice-vikkra-maari ponna kooda aiswarya rai nu solravara??

neenga orkutla irukkura parama attu figure ellarayum mt.everest heightkku yethi vidravara??

neenga sappa figure album paathu jollu vidravara??

idhulla edhavadhu oru category la kooda neenga idam petrurindhaal----kettukunga..

maanam getta naaye,
band-width waste panra b***u,
communaatteee naayee--indha community pakkam thala vachu kooda padukaadhaa!!!
po engayavaadhu poi scrap adi po...

neenga eenam-getta pasanga adikkira maanam-getta scraps ah paathu vendhavaraa?? nondhavaraa???

ivanga ellaam pasanga dhaana nenachu vekkapattavaraa?? dhukkapattavaraa??

pasanga inamnu innum onnu irukkaa?? illayaa??

apdi onnu irundhaa,adhulla neenga orutharaa irundhaa-----indha community ungalukku dhaan!!! ungalukku mattum dhaan!!!

join pannunga,mudinja alavu kalaasunga!!!

visit the community @ http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=14271910

Another community worth notifying is "Sappai ku Laddu"
-Sooper figure ku, sappi pota manga kota mari oru payan kidaicha, vayir eriyira makkal ku indha community.

visit the community @ http://www.orkut.com/Community.aspx?cmm=3939191

Guys dont miss those two communities forums chanceless conversations.

Tippoo Sultaun: A tale of mysore wars

2008-01-25T03:58:00.000-08:00

Daria Daulat Bagh(Sea of Wealth), the place craved for attention at first sight and thus i started the journey backwards by turning the pages of history.Daria Daulat Bagh is the leisure palace of Tipu Sultan in seringapatnam.The silhoutte of the ruined fort of seringapatnam has a story which not many have penned with authenticity.

Tippoo Sultaun : A Tale of Mysore Wars by Meadows Taylor, unearthed some of the untold events in history.The book is written from the perspective of two persons Kasim Ali alias Meer Sahib and Herbert Compton.The former being a soldier among Tipu's Army who raised in rank and later jumped to the British side.The latter is a British soldier who was a POW and released after the storming of seringapatnam.

This Book is more a Love story between Kasim and Ameena & Herbert and Amy than anything about Tipu.The Book written way back in 1800's is simply marvellous in the way it was written.But it leaves a black shadow on the character of Tipo portrayed as an Tyrant and arrogant which we have not heard in India.Perhaps this could be a ploy by the colonial masters to reduce the majesty of Tipu or could they be right?. Who knows what was true!!! only the ruins of seringapatnam could tell.

The events are woven around the citiy of Coimbatoor, R.Bhowanee, R.Barauti, Seringam, Trittinopoly, Balapoor, Nundidoorg, Bangalore, Mysore,etc. The author had made reference to pillaging the temple of srirangam in 1798 by Tipu's army.I dont think this ever happened, because being a resident of trichy i have never heard of any story like this.But a rumour remains here that a tunnel between trichy rockfort and seringapatnam exists and Tipu had been in trichy for some time.Tipu could have been here to defeat the british but not to plunder is what i believe.

go Wi-Fi easily!!!

2008-01-19T06:06:00.000-08:00

Recently i Wi-Fi'ed my house by running Linksys WRT54G Broadband Router. We got Airtel broadband 384 kbps connection along with a Beetel BX220 Modem. Though the net is filled up with a lot of tutorials on configuring the router, a complete start to end procedure couldn't be found. hence i thought of taking a ride along this path.

The Beetel BX220 is a modem cum router.Now you can access this modem at 192.168.1.1 When you attach the Linksys router it would also take up the same IP. So there are two work-around.one is by bridging the modem or to change the IP in the Linksys router.To bridge the modem connect to it and disable the DHCP server in it and change from PPPoE to Bridging.By this the modem would act just like an relay nothing more.

Now connect the cables in the following way.from phone to modem and from modem to router.now connect the computer to the router.The router could be reached at 192.168.1.1 The configurations out there are quite simple (refer to the userguide of the router for more info) Since the modem is now no more than a dump relay the router has to dial-up and other stuffs .Hence select the PPPoE by providing the username and password provided by your ISP.Enable DHCP server in the router.

4 points are to be addressed here to ensure security.

1. Change the password of the Router.

2. setup a Security pass key .Though WEP is widely used, going for WPA is recommend as it is tough nut to crack than WEP.

3. Disable SSID broadcast.By doing so your Router connection name wont be seen at all.Only the people who know the SSID can connect to the Wi-Fi.The crackers now have another field to crack apart from the Key.

4. Enable MAC Filter.By doing so you can allow only the systems with the MAC address you have enlisted to connect the Wi-Fi.

By now you would be up and running Wi-Fi

The Motorcycle Diaries

2008-01-04T04:45:00.000-08:00

Looks like i have hit upon a film whose lines are the same as i have in mind for quite a long time.Spare yourself from the routine life filled with monotonous happenings and start exploring life the way your heart yearns for."Diarios de motocicleta" is a true story of Che Gueveara and his friend who embarked on a 12000+ Kms across the whole of south America on their "la Poderosa(The powerful)"a Norton 500 motorbike from their hometown of Bueunos Aires, Argentina

The film is awesome in spanish and the scenary behind is breath-taking, especially when the path unfolds through chile,peru where the incas once lived unyielded.Machu picchu is also shown during his travels.Atlast both of them end up in Venezuela from where Ernest takes flight to his hometown whereas his friend lives by practicing in a hospital in venezuela.

The friends recounts with awe as how they managed to come out of many trying times during the journey which looked bleek with no escape route and always showed the path to end of life.Highly recommended film during your hearts low and it would ebb you out and bet that it would kick alive the desire to start up a motorcycle journey on your own.My Verdict: Ultimate!!!!

The Devil's Alternative

2008-01-04T04:41:00.000-08:00

This book by Frederick Forsyth would be loved by people who like plots involving political background strewn with scandals and spies.The novel is neatly brought out from the three countries perspective(USA,Russia,Britan)With the land on either side filled up with spies deep inside the government and the satellites accessing each and every move of the soviets, the Russians have to come up to the Table for talks on reducing arms if they need the help from America for its forthcoming famine due to crop failure.The side track which emulsifies into the main part near the middle is the rising of the Ukrainians for freedom.When the Dublin treaty was about to be signed, a new twist awaits the readers and the American president faces two options both of them would lead to death of men and the situation is called the devil's alternative.Now the British spy Adam Munro comes to the forefront and clears the things out.

But The story doesn't deserve a so simple and predictive end.As already said this would entertain readers who love treading on the two 'isms' (capitalism & communalism)on a large scale not a person whose heart lies in legendary heros in historical backgrounds.After crossing Tolkien's Rowling's & Dan Brown's i am now sampling uncommon authors with one of their works, so that i could settle in for an author's full collection once i like his/her plot and narration

Sampling includes,

Stephan King's Shawshank Redemption(Nice one to read,Film - IMDB rating 9.2)
Michael Crichton's Timeline(starting looks cool,yet to cross 460 pages)

Jab We Met

2008-01-03T04:15:00.000-08:00

i dont have the habit of watching Hindi movies unless i get good reviews from my peers.This time my sister pursued me to watch "Jab We Met". The narration or the screenplay is the heart-throbe of the film.The incidents are neatly portrayed from the first scene which glued me to the seat till the end .Though The story is somewhat like minnalae or its hindi equivalent "Rahena hai teri dil mein" it is different in many aspects. especially the chemistry between Shahid kapoor and kareena kapoor has done the trick added to that is the childish pranks of the kareena who plays the part of a sikhni from Bhatinda.How could they break off in real life after a film like this wonders me.After watching many films in a row without logic and reason this film strikes a better note in this regard to earn itself a high rating.Not a film to be missed

Linux Internal Training

2008-01-03T04:14:00.000-08:00

i attended a linux Internal Architecture training for a week in a training center @ 80 feet road, indira nagar.it was a informative session conducted by Venkataraman RadhaKrishnan.he covered mainly the following topics,

Linux Kernal Intro
Development Environment
Process Management
Kernel Compilation
Kernel Programming - core API's
Character Device driver with eg
Memory Management
PCI Programming Intro
USB Programming Intro

The Examples taken to illustrate helped to understand better.In Short It was a full semester OS subject neatly and clearly taken in a duration of one week.

The Silmarillion

2007-12-18T04:33:00.000-08:00

This is the prelude to the Lord of the Rings Trivia though posted posthumously by J.R.R Tolkien's son christopher Tolkien. This a must read for the people who wishes to know more about the environment and history of the LOTR in which it is set. The story starts of with Iluvatar the supreme god creating the world of Ea from a symphony and void. The Ainurs (Components of the symphony who are the gods of the world) or Valar descend into Ea to chisel out the world to perfection. As usual we have Melkor the evil Ainur planning with his devisive ways to corrupt the first children of Iluvatar - Elves. What ensues further is the war of the Ainurs with Morgoth alias melkor and chaining him up in the tomb of Mandos in the First age.

The Elves themselves are of three clans headed by Ingwe of vanyar, Finwe of Nolder and Elwe and Olwe of Sindar.Thus we enter into the second age with the elves living in Valinor, the blessed realm of valars. But Melkor gets released and by this time we have Feanor a master craftsman, son of Finwe, creating the three silmarils, the jewel blessed with the light of Trees created by Yavanna (Valar) which is abducted by Morgoth.From here on the story concentrates wholly on the line of Finwe's sons(Feanor,Fingolfin,Finarfin) and to some extent on the line of Elwe (Thingol). Most of the anecdotes in LOTR are described in detail, eg-Beren and Luthien's affair, Ring of Barahir(given to Barahir by Finrod Felagund), Castle of Thangorodrim.

After many deaths in Nolder's line in the hands of Morgoth's host, Earendil the half elven sets on a voyage to seek the help of valar themselves. The valar ambushes Morgoth's Followers and the infamous Lieutinent of Morgoth,ie.Sauron who sheds off all evil after the battle fearing the Valar.Morgoth is pushed into the void for all ages permanently never to come back.Most of the Nolder return back to Valinor, but some of them remained back. eg gil-galad son of Fingon, Celebrimbor Grandson of Feanor & maker of the Ring, Galadriel daughter of Finarfin, Cirdan the Shipwright who even in LOTR takes Elves to Valinor and Elrond - son of Earendil. The infamous Battle of Fingolfin with Morgoth and Fingon with Gothmog are depicted greatly.

The Sons of Earendil are Elrond and Elros. Elrond chose to be an elf while Elros represented men. He was known as the Tar-minyatur from whom the race of the Numenor starts.After 2000 years The heart of the numenoreans is blackened for the need of immortality and Sauron uses this as his high time to put an end to Numenorean race.The Might of the Numenoreans could be figured out when sauron surrended to Ar-Pharazon, king of numenor though sauron wielded the ring at that time. Though Sauron's cunning devices kills Numenoreans, Elendil and his sons Isildur and Anarion survive and comes to Middle-Earth to start the age of men in Middle-Earth.The rest could all be found in LOTR. Many questions of ambiguity in LOTR (like where & why Elves are going to the west in ships) would have it answered in THE SILMARILLION.

Ouch! i forgot to tell the destiny of the silmarils. one of the silmarils would be recovered from Morgoth's crown by beren and luthien and put up in the sky, but the other two would be put up in fire and Water of Ea.

The Silicon Beast comes into existence

2007-12-17T03:42:00.000-08:00

It was the month of december and it was dark in the evening, with the bitingly cold breeze wrapped around the smokey mist.It was the perfect timing for the rise of the black blended in silver.The laser Verve is infact the hood of the monster inside. It engulfes the victim with the desire to possess it. It bares one of all the sophistication that he has possessed before. It sounds the death kneel to other makes and defeats them with its stylish looks and sheer performance.It is the master of the Black which prevails over the others. Not many clones or equals it has,

Ladies and Gentleman,

Behold!!! for it is the HP's BlackBird, Emperor of all Desktops, exclusively designed for gaming.It is the dawn of the new era in gaming. No specs here. Get it for yourself from
http://h20435.www2.hp.com/

For heaven's sake dont miss the Flash intro

Finally, Aragorn is here

2007-12-17T03:28:00.000-08:00

On december 7th, i bought HP's dv2601 TX Special Edition Laptop. I christened him as Aragorn, the elessar who never fails. Truely The mark of the Anduriel Sword of the west is set as the laser verve design on my Laptop(just kidding, but the fluid design is cool). I had Windows Vista in that, and then i installed Ubuntu Gutsy Gibbon. The sound worked just out of the box.Kewl thing indeed. I am waiting for the free 20 DVD movies to arrive at my doorstep :)

http://h10010.www1.hp.com/wwpc/in/en/ho/WF05a/1090709-1116637-1116665-1116665-1116665-80627766.html for the specs

The Saga behind Middle Earth - Lord of The Rings Trivia

2007-12-03T04:52:00.000-08:00

Three weeks is too small a time to read the Lord of the Rings Trilogy that too on the walks of life of an Software Engineer during his free times, if not for the Knack in narration of J.R.R Tolkien or for the Grandeur of the characters. The trilogy includes,

* The Fellowship of the Ring
* The Two Towers
* The Return of the King

Though the films got 8.7, 8,6 & 8.8 respectively in imdb.com and bagged many oscars, they are in no way as expressive as the books.That too reading a book after watching the film made out of it would not give good impression of the book normally, but here is a book with a difference. Though i have seen these films a number of times, the book gripped me throughout.It is pity the book of such calibre was written way back in late 1940's and it became famous only after the filming of it. It is a shame that i stayed out the hullabulla of the Lord of the Rings release in 2001 to 2003 and saw the films all at a time one fine morning after the aura settled down.It is no doubt here is where the heart of Historical fiction lovers reside.It is a epic by itself set-up in a different timeline, different world, different species, different languages and what not.

For people who have seen Lord Of the Rings, it is just a part of the happenings in the end of the Third age and start of the Fourth Age.Not many knew that sauron the evil-incarnate actually was a servant of Morgoth, the evil valar(Valar=God in middle-earth) in the first age.It was morgoth who brought orcs into being and he had an army of Balrogs(The shadowy fiery creature which Gandalf encountered in the first part at the Mines of Moria) and during his time(Gothmog being the leader of balrogs) complete evil resided. The shaping of Middle-earth is a separate story by itself.The story of the first age, second age and other folklore of middle-earth are included in the various books like,

* Silmarillion
* The Book of Lost Tales I & II
* The Shaping of The Middle Earth
* The Hobbits
and many more to add

Truly the majesticity of Aragorn is derived by giving brief accompilishments of his 39 ancestors before him. The Story of Elendil the tall, Isildur Elendil reaches the pinnacle at the Battle of The Last Alliance of Elves and Men. Be it the High Elven Lords from Rivendell, or the Dunadians from the north, Tolkien has picturequely portrayed their history in the Appendix. The Rise to throne by Aragorn alias King Elessar of Gondor & Arnor marks the realm of Numenoreans of the west after a long time in history and the flame of the Anduril the sword that is reforged continued to flash against all evil.

In my Opinion, This is by far the best epic i have ever read, from Illiad to mahabharata, and by far the best novel in its category above the infamous Harry Potter.I couldnot take away the characters of my mind and because of that i bought a Lord of the Rings DVD rightaway as a memento of this great saga that i read.

Gutsy's compiz-fusion in Intel Graphics card

2007-11-30T05:40:00.000-08:00

Gutsy Gibbon wont be much different from fiesty fawn if you dont enable compiz-fusion in it.By default compiz-fusion would be installed.but you have to install compizconfig-settings-manager additionally. after installing this visit System->preferences->Advanced desktop effect settings. Then select which ever effect you want to have and then close it. go to change desktop background and select the visual effects tab and select custom. Most drivers would start compiz effects now like magic.but mine being a intel built-in graphics card, certain changes had to be made in the /etc/xdg/compiz/compiz-manager just add SKIP_CHECKS="yes" in that and you would have compiz-fusion running :)

for starting the cube-effect you have to increase the number of workspaces to 4 which would be 2 by default.

The Bicycle Thief -> Pollathavan

2007-11-29T06:15:00.000-08:00

Among the diwali releases many find Pollathavan better than the lot.I saw this film in trichy the day after Diwali along with stylesen, Siva, Ashok & Vinoth as we were returning droopy faced cos we could not get a ticket for Vel as well as Azhagiya Tamil Magan. It seems it is a blessing in disguise as i heard from people the plight of the audience who viewed ATM.

Though we entered after the start of the film by 10 minutes, i found the film pretty captivating though similar to puthupettai & 7G rainbow colony in certain aspects.Later i came to know that the story line is taken from a 1949 Italian film Ladri di biciclette - The Bicycle Thief. Namma Tamizhan paakaatha padamae illa pola :)

Here the story of Bicycle thief is tweaked a little by replacing cycle with pulsar, and peppered with villians throughout the story and seasoned with one Remix song and 2 nice to hears.The fight sequences are bound to captivate the audience for sure.Overall it is a nice film to watch and helps to be on the watch-out(sarcastically) for other releases with it.

All the Fuss about Gmail 2.0

2007-11-29T04:53:00.000-08:00

i was upgraded to GMail 2.0 quite before some my friends could feel the new GMail. How Google Inc chose me early i have no clue about.Overall i find some new features peeping out here and there. Some to list are

* Now group chat could be done through Gmail itself by selecting Options in any one the friends chat window and then selecting group chat.EMoticons are also added in the corner :)

* The all new sign-out of chat feature enables you to check mails without being disturbed by pinging.

* The back button in the browser is atlast made to use with ordered naming convention to take people thro previous pages.

* The new Contact list with enhanced navigation, and ability to to take in the form of vCards.

* Faster prefetching of messages to enable quicker viewing of mails.

* The new filter messages like these option in actions menu.

* Integrated Photo picker with Picasa web Album.

* Apart from this the availability of IMAP support is an added advantage.

* Ability to bookmark important e-mails which could be later reached though one has to be logged on into Gmail.

* Ability to share email seraches with friends.Thereby you could direct your friend to reach the mail you are talking about.

Brewing hot soon to be served are:

* Social Gmail, which comes out with a group out of one's contacts depending upon the amount of data you type, and how fast you respond etc, it would be more like a live profile. Also one could share documents, web-links,photos, what not through here itself..

* Gmail Offline, when microsoft office suite is feeling the heat of google docs, now its outlook's turn to feel the heat. Google is trying to come out with Gmail Offline with the google gears in the back-end, it is possible to check mails, etc when the internet connection is down(by aggregating the mails in local hard disk), and later when it is up it could be synced with the gmail servers.Soon it would become a full fledged offline Mail client.

* Viewing Account Activity: It would be possible soon to check your gmail account activities to figure out when it was last logged on, System IP address and all other log related information.

For the People who changed the segregation of mails into searching of mails it would not take much time to come up with yet another revolution.

Feisty Fawn to Gutsy Gibbon

2007-11-13T19:50:00.001-08:00

Though a patroniser of Debian GNU/linux for a long time, i didn't have Debian Etch with me to install .Therefore i tossed Ubuntu CD in the Drive and proceeded with it.Initially i installed Fiesty Fawn [7.04] and then the desire to use compiz made me to upgrade to Gutsy Gibbon[7.10].

The way to upgrade is to visit System->Administration->Update-Manager. First update all the softwares available for Feisty. since the update manager is configured to work by connecting directly to internet, it gave some problem initially.To correct this you have to do two things

1) Open Software Sources from System->Administration then make it to use main source from the list box.
2) Open Synaptic Package Manager from System->Administration then go to Settings->preferences and in the Network tab give your proxy details.

After this try to update all the softwares.Once it is ready you can move on to the next step.

Feisty Fawn sometimes comes up with a empty meta-release file in /var/lib/update-manager/. This file should basically contain the information on the next release etc, to enable upgradation. To overcome the empty file problem, download the following file and put it as meta-release file in the above specified folder

http://changelogs.ubuntu.com/meta-release-development

Now launch the update-manager, and proceed on with the upgrade button that is available there.Enjoy upgrading and be sure to read my next blog entry on how to enable compiz in Gutsy Gibbon in a system with Intel Graphics card.

Easylib - Kick-starting a new relationship

2007-11-05T05:29:00.000-08:00

Last weekend i became a member of Easylib.com, a private lending library in Koramangala - Bangalore. Thanks to my sister through whom i came to know of this. Though i was a voracious reader during my school days, i couldn't maintain the consistency through my life.To ensure a steady flow of books, i enrolled myself with easylib.The nearest landmark is Maharaja Hotel. from there take the road opposite to it and then take the first left. Here is where you end up in front of the library.

They charge a refundable deposit of 500 and a membership fee of 100. If you want your book to be delivered at your doorstep just pay them a debit amount of 100 more and they would take Rs 10 from that debit amount every time a book is delivered to you. Its just that easy and hence the name.it is open from 10 - 2 and 4 - 8 except on wednesdays.It is a nice hangout for book lovers who likes to have a nice rapport with the latest releases and the best ones in the literature world. What appeals more is your monthly premium (ie 10% of book cost) is waived off if your accumulated premium costs crosses 100. :)

visit easylib @ www.easylib.com

Ponty why dont you look back in time?

2007-10-24T06:52:00.000-07:00

What the few cricket fans did at vadodara is unacceptable.That too in India where hospitality is very well known.But Ricky Ponting's advertisement of this issue through press meet is quite weird.Some points to ponder here are

* Which team turned this gentleman's game into an arena to vent out vengence in the form of sledging?
* Which Team showed off its disrespect to elders by pushing senior citizens like Sharad Pawar off the stage to poss for Photographs?
* Which crowd spewed off rascist remarks on Monty Panesar and on the South African team?
* Which country all the cricketing nation fears to go? not because of the winning ways of Australian Team but because of the hardness of the players on the field backed up by their crowd
* Which Team doesn't have a sporting spirit and accept defeat in a friendly manner when defeated? Which Team hate other Teams winning the series or celebrating it and follows it up with a weirdo kind of a explanation for the defeat?

Australian cricketers consider themselves to be masters in sledging and make it part of cricket.If that be the case why are they annoyed if they are on the receiving end when Sreesanth did it? What actions Australian Cricket Board took when Rascist chants like "Give us a wave, Monty. You can't speak English, you stupid Indian. I'll have to say it in Indian.What are you doing playing in the English side? You're not English." were heaped upon Monty Panesar. Mukul Kesavan, one of India's best known cricket writer makes a point while saying "You did not see it with the West Indian cricketers because Indians always admired them a bit like Brazil and football. Symonds is seen as part of an abrasive, white team. But it is still deplorable racism."

Now With the srilankan tour of Australia round the corner,Bayliss,the srilankan Coach hoped the majority of people would respect his side, saying: "There's always idiots in every crowd, but most realise it's wrong and don't get involved."The same thing holds on for the players on the field.Some gentlemen like Adam Gilchrist exist in their midst too.Therefore it would be better if Ponting Stops his allegations and starts mending their ways to play a neat and clean cricket devoid of the so called "Sledging" that they Coined...

Gmail joins the Mailbox size increase Competition

2007-10-22T23:29:00.000-07:00

It seems that the gush of high capacity hard disks which have hit the market predominantly finds its way to the Data Centres around the world which powers the E-mail Industry.Recently Microsoft Hotmail Live increasing the mail box size to 5GB and Yahoo Mail celebrated its 10th anniversary by providing a mailbox size of Infinity from May 2007.Gmail which has remained the leader of the pack joins in for the fray too. Gmail which came into being in 2004 with a whooping mailbox size of 1 GB gave out 2GB in 2005 and released a "Infinity + 1" plan by which the mailbox size counter was always kept on the move.A graph outlining their plan attracted many Gmailians in 2005 and it is shown at the side

Gmailians would have noticed that their mailbox size have crossed 4 GB by now and speculative MailBox sizes are predicted all over the Internet.But the answer lies in your Gmail homepage itself.The counter is incremented by a javascript in the homepage where they set the limit to be achieved at a specific point in time.As per that, the following stats are arrived

Apr 1 2007 13:30 2835 MB
Oct 12 2007 13:30 2912 MB
Oct 23 2007 12:30 4321 MB
Jan 4 2008 13:30 6283 MB
Jan 17 2038 13:30 43008 MB
Jan 2 3456 12:30 number.MAX_VALUE = 1.79E+308

People @ Google Inc seems to have immense foresight however one question still lingers in my mind.The number.MAX_VALUE is the largest number could be represented and a value above this is called as infinity. So if Gmail has to stick to their plan of "Infinity + 1" then they have to score two more :)

Sivi - Remake of shutter

2007-10-16T05:20:00.000-07:00

Last weekend we consumed some 6 -7 films but not on a single sitting :) One film worth noting is Sivi. priyan told me about this film when the songs got released and believe me from that day on i became the advertiser for this film.I wont reveal the plot of this Ghost based thriller story which gripped us on the edge of the seats. Not just that,even if we think of this film, it terrorizes us day and night :( The film is a class apart neatly taken except for the fact that it is a remake of the Thai film "Shutter". Though a scene by scene remake, Sivi strikes the chord by clipping off the gory in the ghost of Shutter. Even then it is a High_end Thriller.

All the three songs in the film have been rated high in the charts but it is a pity that "Neruppum" song doesn't feature in the film.This film is highly recommended for people with a strong heart.But faint hearted people like me should not also miss this because neatly taken films like these are hard to come by..... For people who doesn't know what sivi means, it refers to the snake which adorns the neck of Lord Shiva.. still dont get the connection?? well watch the film yourself, not alone but with an escort :)

Blogging is getting tougher and tougher

2007-10-03T04:34:00.000-07:00

In college, blogspot was restricted hence i was able to chip in contents only now and then. Now there is no such restriction, but still blogging is getting tougher. if i started chipping in some technical stuff it would already be listed somewhere in wikipedia.so i started blogging more on my happenings in my life. Since i spend most of the time with a group of my friends everyone end up recounting the same thing in their blogs. It has become more like a ticket booking schedule in the Diwali crowd (ie first come first write). This is one such attempt to increase the no of posts in my blog :)

Top 10 Songs - Rated by me

2007-09-28T06:47:00.001-07:00

Here is the list rightaway

1. Way i are - Timbaland & Keri Hilson feat
2. Say it Right - Nelly Furtado
3. That ain't Right - Sean Kingston
4. Hips don't Lie - Shakira
5. Umbrella - Rihanna feat Jay-z
6. Beautiful Liar- Beyonce feat Shakira
7. Sorry Blame it on me - Akon
8. Give it to me - nelly furtado, Timbaland
9. In the Morning - Gwen Stafani
10. Whenever wherever - remix (Shakira is a dancer) - Shakira, jirob
Lately i got some material to hear other than the Tamil songs and popular tracks from Michael jackson, BSB, etc.I got inputs that there are some great music being produced by groups other than the well known singers. The names i got after some research and hearsay helped me to locate the best hits of them and i started hearing them.The above list that i have released is what i consider as really good. Try hearing them @ www.deezer.com

Ideafest '07

2007-09-26T06:25:00.000-07:00

Time passes on...The transition happened from science exhibition in schools to technical symposiums in college and now i attended the Idea Fest in my Company by wearing the audience tag :) This grand Tech mela consists of the people coming up with innovative ideas with implementation.Ideafest '07 - Monsoon session was conducted for 2 days and some 200+ ppl exhibited their wares.Some ideas really touched me as i have faced the same problem but not even once had i thought of finding a solution for them.Though i was able to cover just 10-15% of the stalls i learnt a lot in these two days than any other week.

As a part of Ideafest'07 a quiz competition was conducted, myself, vineet and sathya prakash formed a team and participated. We could not cross the written test itself but had a nice time watching the finals. thankfully we were not on the hot seat!!! It was a full-blown IT quiz and i understood that i have to learn a lot in that area. In short the whole 2 day grand gala rocked and i am looking forward for the next IdeaFest.

Headset gear adds to my arsenal

2007-09-20T06:38:00.000-07:00

Yesterday i attended the PCQuest Best IT Implementation awards ceremony @ Hotel Grande Ashok, Bangalore as TCENet Bagged the best innovative product award. Attendees include Mrs.Shalinie Mam, Stylesen, Ranjani, smartsara, Senthil, subbi and myself. while myself and stylesen were wearing jazzy jeans and T-shirt, every other person in the conference hall were in Formals and some in suit :( Our jubiliant nature made many to turn their heads.

The Master of the ceremony kept the function on the roll by asking GK questions in between the awards distribution. After my 2 year winning streak in quizzes during my school days i maintained a low profile by not participating in any of the quizzes during my college days. For two questions the opportunity evaded me. Atlast the finale moment arrived and the MC quoted "Name the other countries that have their independence day on August 15th apart from India" Though i was not sure my basic instinct made me to raise my hand and my mouth squeaked "South Korea" The MC asked my name and congratulated me and very soon a ramp walk model walked her way through to hand over the "Logitech Mobile Express Headset" worth around 3000 :)

I finished my dinner at the same place and returned home holding the headset which has entered my sophisticated gadgets arsenal. I realized that luck sometime favours me too.kudos to those old GK books that i read during my school days which made this happen.

Trussed like a Chicken on seat no 43

2007-09-19T04:35:00.000-07:00

It is the passenger's most avoidable seat, that too on a Worldclass A/C Volvo bus and evidently i fell for the trap last weekend.To make ppl understand the location of the seat, it is located in the middle of the last row in the bus ie, the seat at the end of the pathway.

Here is how the plot unfolds :)
The conductor paid a personal visit to my seat to ensure that i have strapped the seat belt(exclusive for seat no 43 passengers) properly. By having this seat belt around i could not even budge a little.My neighbour understood my plight and made the best use of it by conquering my seat little by little.All night i had to wage a war to keep a small part of my hands on the handrest.it is a pity that i had to share the handrest on both sides :( The A/C slits are available only for the two ppl on either side and a cool breeze would hardly make it to the passenger on seat 43. Being a volvo, where the engines would be on the rear side and i became the prestigious person to sit over the whooooooooooring engine all night with the heat waves flowing in.Hot sauna bath for free!!!! Added to that is the glaring headlights of the vehicles coming in the opposite side peeping through the gaps in the curtain.And at situation such as these you would be blessed with a stinking snooring neighbour falling over you all the time!!!!!!!

The HP way

2007-09-10T06:08:00.000-07:00

This book was handed over to all the new recruits when we joined HP. This is written by David Packard, one of the founding fathers of the Company. The HP way is a set of ideologies which was framed by the founding fathers as early as 1957 when no other company had even thought of it.hp way considers both the employees and customers as equally important and one of the speeches given by Bill Hewlett in 1960 to a set of new joiners states exactly that.

The book starts of with David Packard recounting his childhood days and his friendship with Bill Hewlett during their college days at stanford.The group consisting of Bill, Dave, Ed porter and barney registered for the class by fred terman which eventually turned out to be a turning point in life. After the college days Packard joined GE for a short stint while Hewlett did his masters in MIT and both started their company officially in 1939 in a small garage in Palo Alto.This garage now has become a historical monument and is called as the birthplace of the silicon valley.

HP initially concentrated on oscillators, High frequency counters, video/audio parts and microwave products. The HP desktop calculator marked the beginning of the digital era and later it plunged into the computer industry. Some of the path breaking HP's invention at that time includes the usage of caesium for accurate measurement of time pulses,LED's, very High frequency counters, etc.Since this book is written way back in 1995 not much information about computer development is given.

When the company grew the founding fathers came up with many management styles which have become the benchmark of many companies these days. Some of them like sharing the profit with the employees, Management by walking around, Management by objective are a path-ahead in the 1950s. HP's Open door policy resonates even today as even the Managers or VP sits in open cubicles without any door like every other employee in HP.It is said that the Legacy, the founding fathers left behind is not just the 100 billion dollar company but the HP way.

SRK's Magnum Opus

2007-09-10T04:52:00.000-07:00

Add Chakde India to Shahrukh Khan's best performance list and believe me it would top it all.Though he had a variety of roles round his buckle from a romantic romeo to vicious villian, the NRI and the Kabir Khan character suited him the best in Swadesh and Chak de India respectively.Many wouldn't have imagined that this baadshah would ascend to the top when he first showed up in Fauji, a serial in Doordarshan long time back.

These two film's baseline or the underlying story were pretty strong which added gravity to the lead role.Chak De India is a neatly compiled flawless picturing of how a disgraced hockey captain after a gap of 7 years comes back with a sole aim of coaching the undisciplined and egoistic women's hockey team to win the world cup thereby to redeem his pride.Some say that the story is similar to Miracle, a Hollywood film but i don't mind as long as i could watch some worthwhile films like this.The director's skill lies in clearly evading any romance or song sequence from the film thereby keeping the tempo on the go without any disturbance.The matches that are played are damn real

The film also delineates the sorry state of the affairs in the sports authority board and also the mindless cooking-up of stories by the media people. SRK's acting touches the heart when he leaves the home with a heavy heart and also in the end when his team wins. It would be great if other actors too tries something different like this rather than playing the same monotonous roles.After a long time i am seeing a film that is both gripping and inspiring till the end.I came out of the theatre wondering why SRK didn't coach the Men's team, only then it struck me that if he had done that perhaps his team would have won but this film would not have been a blockbuster!!!

Naanum Nalla Paiyan than

2007-09-03T06:18:00.000-07:00

This weekend i turned out to be good boy and started visiting temples (Plural because i went to 2 temples :) Saturday evening i went to the Maha Shiva Mandir in Kemp fort(Airport Road). The walk from 100 ft road through domulur to the temple was pleasing in the evening.The forest cover inside NAL, HAL, ISRO which could be seen from the road on one side and IT parks like Diamond District on another side strikes a contrast.

The entrance to the temple is very small and one would find it hard to believe that a huge statue of Shiva is inside that. For any tourist or a resident of Bangalore it is a must watch.There is a small cave kind of setup through which one could find all the Famous Shiva lingas and also stories about them.

Next day morning i went to the Iskon temple in Yeswanthapur. Instead of taking the straight route i went through hebbal with the BMTC daily pass tucked away in my pocket.The serene and clean surrounding speaks high of the temple.The grandeur of the structure makes one spellbound.Inside the Iskon there are sweets stall, Hotel, book store & Art emporium kind of. It is heartening to know that Iskon temple feeds 42000 children everyday. Iskon temple is one of the places which requires regular attendance.

South Indies - truly South Indian

2007-09-01T02:57:00.001-07:00

This time i happened to chip in to this restaurant (south Indies - 100 feet road, Indiranagar, Bangalore) with Vineet and sarit to experience new things. If the receptionists in sarees are surprizing you in bangalore wait till the waiter pops in with a cool HP iPaQ to take orders from you. Then one of them hands over wet scented towels to clean your face and hands. What thoughfulness!!

The Menu card would stike you with awe because its nothing like anywhere else. The exotic thing with this is everything has been designed with some creativity from dishes to menu card to interior decor. Here you could have foods from all the 4 south indian states (Thats why its south indies!!!). we started of with the murungai charu(Drumstick leaves) soup with fried onions ( really nice combination!!!). Then we went on to kal dosai with karuverpilai poondu kuzambhu. This combination is smashing. Then we ordered neer dosa which is yet another delicacy. We finished off with besi bela bath. Infact the waiter told us that there is some 8 - 9 course treat for 500. since we did not have that much appetite we ordered individually. Surely i would go for that one day.

Comin to the wallet part, the bill was around 650 which is really worth. The hospitality of the waiters would amaze you. I would surely recommend people to this restaurant. This provides not just food but rich experience. GO Xperience it!!! For more details visit http://www.thesouthindies.com

Non-Stop Film Festival

2007-08-27T06:10:00.000-07:00

If you are thinking that i am going to blog about Cannes film festival or something similar you are wrong. This is about a group of 4 guys who ended up watching 5 films non-stop on a Saturday night. Dont make guesses, its just me,sen,subbi and musi who did that inevitable feat.

It all started by 9 after our dinner at amirtham@ koramangala. after the first film which i am not supposed to name,me and subramani "veerappoda" thoongalammnu ninachoom,but we moved on to the next film starring ajith during which i slept.Then i got up to see the next film by 3:00 which is normally the time when the "flowers used to unfurl" its petals.Then by 5 i thought ppl would atleast consider to have a small nap. To my astonishment some were washing their faces to prepare themselves for the next show!!! Then we watched the madhavan starring film. Atlast ppl went to bed and i saw a part of Indiana jones "The raiders of the Lost ark" After that i had a nice sleep and got up by 10 only to see another film which remained us of our "school".

What a night it was!!! Thanks to Subbi and Prabu anna for providing us this entertainment gala and also for patiently getting the scoldings from their neighbours for we had kept them from sleeping too :)

What a welcome for new employees!!!

2007-08-24T05:46:00.000-07:00

This video is a must see for every software professional in India where a software guy is highly revered and respected. But this company took a step further and made these new joinees cherish the moment forever.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9GpPcMVbmtw

Geeks of india you rule the world.Give yourselves a pat.

Solaris to be shipped in IBM blades

2007-08-23T06:38:00.000-07:00

A strategic alliance is what Sun tells about this deal with IBM. IBM has accepted to ship Solaris OEM with their blades. So what is going to be the impact in the market? If you have a look at the market share of lower-end x86(blades, Proliants) servers its the HP which leads there followed by DELL and IBM. In an attempt to raise through the ranking IBM has accepted this strategy which might help Sun in promoting Solaris. I do not want to speculate much on this but going through the some analysis reveals that there wont be much change in the rankings.Perhaps the deal might affect the GNU/Linux market especially Red Hat's Enterprise editions as Sun is slowly trying to penetrate the GNU/Linux deployments in the internet arena where x86 & GNU/Linux combination rules.

For IBM its an optional offering with their hardware. For Sun its a new arena where their solaris has not penetrated much.Keeping my fingers crossed i am watching what is going to be the impact of it in both the hardware and OS Market share world!!

It happened in India

2007-08-21T06:10:00.000-07:00

One thing that strikes you is this person's inspiration to setup Big Bazaar, Bangalore central and other establishments are not after looking into walmart but after paying a visit to the infamous saravana stores in Ranganathan street,T-nagar, chennai. This Book by Kishore Biyani along with Dipayan Bhaisya takes one into the life of Kishore Biyani, the Rajah of Retail. Though the excerpts by different people who are part of the retail conglomerate are filled up with praise for Kishore which normally irritates you the rest written by him are the ones which pulls you into the vortex.

He recounts how from being an ordinary cloth seller he evolved to such heights. though he was from Mumbai his initial stunt was in calcutta where he setup his first pantaloon store. Later he moved on to mumbai and other cities. Later he went on to setup the Big Bazaar hypermarket customized to Indian style. His attempt to attract the tier-2 people of India (middle-class) was an instant success added to the lucrative offers his retail gives.No Big Bazaar remains the same, because it is customized to the regional taste. His foresight in procuring large enough real estates for building his malls are seen when he setup the 1.4 lakh sq ft Big Bazaar in Noida(The largest in india). He made some bold stunts in bollywood too by producing Na Tum Jaano Na Hum & Chura Liyaa Hai Tumne. His future group is aiming at various prospective areas where they could step into, to channelize the people's spending into their stores. Central is an idea born out of here.

Certain brands like John miller,Scullers, and Indigo nation are owned by them and by obtaining legal rights they are the dealers for puma, mark & Spencers in india. Just a three day offer(sabse saste din) in Big Bazaar during this year attracted people to spend 125 Cr in this shop.His separate unit for churning out new creative ideas lies in the Joseph chemmanur hall, Indira nagar Bangalore. These designers look into people's activities and behavior to understand more about people's need and tapping them. so next time if someone stares at you near indira nagar it could be one among them :)

he palns to own 30 million lakh sq ft of shopping paradise by 2011 with an annual turnover of 30,000 Cr. with the giants like walmart and Reliance stepping into retail business only time would tell whether he achieves his goal.

Trip to Sivasamudra (Bharachukki) Falls

2007-08-20T06:25:00.000-07:00

On August 15th we had been to Bharachukki falls which was not a planned one. This is 140 Kms from Bangalore on the mysore road ( not exactly). we got down at anapost and then caught an auto to this falls. We missed the ganganachukki which is some 8 kms from that place.we survived solely on cucumbers and bhelpoori that whole day.Later in the afternoon we suddenly thought of going to somnath temple which we heard was some 30 kms from there. but due to non-availability of Straight bus we abandoned that. we didn't go to talakkad ( the point where cauvery is huge) due to the same reason. Probably a detailed surrounding information before the next trip would suffice to end such dissapointments.

By 7 we reached bangalore totally famished and this prompted us to visit the Maharaja Hotel @ Koramangala where we dined pretty well along with Prabu anna.very soon we all departed in all directions to reach our home.

Visit http://picasaweb.google.com/kpraveen85/BharachukkiWaterfalls
for more pics

A better Xperience

2007-08-16T20:35:00.000-07:00

yesterday i went to the HSBC ATM center @ indira nagar. I came to know that the ATM machine is having some problems and i came out of the ATM center without taking the money.I was in for a surprise.The way i had walked through was fitted with granites and marble flooring which was unique in its own way and i easily missed the highlight of it when i came in.
Now i sat down and starting analyzing what design it was. Some architect or the owner of the building seems to have a good taste for the Zodiac signs and it showed off in the flooring. The floor was studded with a patterned granite slabs with the Zodiac signs too impregnated on it. Since i know the difficulty in cutting a marble slab the perfection in the cutting of the granites in various shapes including intricate curves amazed me. The design was somewhat similar to a sundial in the side and the flooring was like the sun flares.

I managed to take a closeup snap of my English Zodiacal sign Leo :) if you pass by the CMH road near the KFC you have this ATM and it is worth peeping in.

It is the creativity of the one and ability of the another to make it into reality, made me to enjoy this art in serenity

The Alchemist

2007-08-16T06:06:00.000-07:00

This book by Paulo Coelho is for those who are in pursuance of a goal in life but getting held up in the middle and for those who feel contented with the present state of affairs.Though it has a illogical happenings near the climax like the boy talking with the wind, sun etc the story line keeps you hooked till you reach the end. I read the whole book within a night.

--Spoiler starts here--

Santiago being a shepherd is content with his life until he comes across a gypsy lady who interprets his dream and from then on our boy undertakes an task of unearthing a treasure near the pyramids of Egypt who is helped by the king of salem initially.on his way he meets the englishman and then the Alchemist who guides him to his dreams.The story is written excellently by paulo coelho.

--Spoiler ends here--

Apart from the above lying story the author makes us to understand the way of life and some lines are sure to have an effect on one

"Every search begins with beginner's luck. And every search ends with the victor's being severely tested."

"If you start out by promising what you don't even have yet, you'll lose your desire to work toward getting it."

"There is only one thing that makes a dream impossible to achieve: the fear of failure."

"The darkest hour of the night came just before dawn."

Power of Itanium 2 (Montecito)

2007-08-14T06:22:00.000-07:00

Itanium has been the most talked about processor even before it hit the market in 2001. it competes with the enterprise server processors like IBM's Power and Sun's UltraSparc. But when it hit the stands its sales didn't soar up as it was expected.This is mainly because of the ignorance of many people about its architecture and how to get the best out of it. some time back when in college some people had sarcastically pointed out for our college going for a itanium processor based Symmetric Multi Processor system(SMP). Now i would like to clear out those dirt out of the Byte-crunching Itanium processor.

Itanium is designed using the Explicitly Parallel Intruction Code (EPIC) architecture which is a completely new design neither near to RISC nor to CISC. EPIC means the that Itanium processor does not have the hardware in its chip for identifying instruction dependencies for parallel execution. By doing so some amount of chip space is vacuumed which could be used for accommodating additional registers.All the parallelism has to be decided by the compiler itself during compiling. The resulting binary could be made to run on the Itanium processor at mind boggling speeds. Imagine having 128 (64 bit)General purpose registers, 128 (82 bit) Floating point register, 64 branch and predicate register, 64 application register etc working on your data. really stupendous!!! Therefore if your compiler doesn't parallelize the code just like for other processors you would find itanium lagging, leading to people doubting its capacity.Itanium is best suited for places where the applications are fine tuned for it and then would one realize its sheer speed in computation.

Itanium could theoritically execute 6 instructions per cycle and practically known to execute 3 instructions per cycle while x86 architecture could do only one instruction at a time.Itanium's latest release Montecito has 2 cores each with 2 threads(coarse multithreading - doesn't run concurrently, one thread chips in when other does memory lookup ) emulating to 4 processor. Thunder and NASA's Columbia supercomputer's secret lies with Itanium !!! Apart from this Itanium has built-in capability to handle virtualization which means it can run multiple operating system concurrently. its huge 24 MB L3 on-die (internal) cache adds to its efficiency in fetching data as quickly as possible.The speculative execution in Itanium is very robust adds to its performance. Itanium 2 has improved a lot in power consumption and in price/performance arena. Itanium's sales is picking up and latest survey has indicated that its revenue is over 63% of SPARC system revenue and over 54% of Power system revenue.

As Tukwila (Itanium's next generation)is round the corner packed with quad core, Simultaneous MultiThreading(SMT- Intel's next Lethal weapon) and Common system interface and other features up its sleeve, i could smell out a competition brewing in the processor arena with IBM's Power7, Sun's Ultrasparc Rock(16 cores with yet to be decided on number of threads) and from AMD's Fusion

ping --duration 2 days Chennai

2007-08-13T05:52:00.000-07:00

For the weekend i had been to chennai and the onward journey was by KSRTC mayura which i enjoyed the most. They took the chittoor route and in the midway they stopped at the cool A1 plaza owned by reliance. A1 plaza had a neat parking lot and the traveling facilities provided by them were many and was very clean too.The lightings and the spacious restaurant were worth noting. Reliance have their own knack of attracting people to their bunks by providing such facilities.

For the rest of the two days i had to stay back in my paternal uncle's house except for a quiet stroll to Priyadharshan's. With the glittering hoardings all over the place i got a quick update of the happenings in Tamil nadu. Madhavan and bhavana starring Arya got released the day before and the deserted satyam theatre is enough to tell about its success. Kalaignar Tv is all set to be launched by september 15th as per one of the huge hoardings in the city. Kalaignar Tv actually owned by Raj Tv became the talk of the town as they bagged the rights to air the films Shivaji , Guru, pokkiri and varalaru after three years of release.

i had to miss the class reunion planned at spencer plaza due to one good reason. On sunday night i caught the Corona which was very spacious. Though they put Dhoom in the bus i resorted to peer through the window to have a look at Vestas, Nokia, Motorola, saint Gobian and samsung industries in the sriperumbuthur area. Later by early morning 3:30 i reached my home. These people drive pretty fast and that helped me up for a cosy 3 hour sleep before starting to office.

Getting older year after year

2007-08-07T05:32:00.000-07:00

yeah today is my birthday. It was a smooth one as far as birthday bumps are concerned. I did nothing great or special today. But it is really surprising to see so many of my collegemates and schoolmates ringing me up and wishing.I was never a good guy in remembering these important days in others life. probably i have to be more careful next time.Nothing more to pen down for the day.

looking through the pensieve

2007-07-31T06:12:00.000-07:00

Happy Birthday Harry Potter!!!! i saved up my blog on you for this special occasion. "To buy or not to Buy" was the dilemma which i had for the "Deathly Hallows", the last book in the Harry Potter sequel. Harry Potter series is the best book that gripped the hearts of the people of this era. It is hard to come across such treasure in ones lifetime with the last being TINTIN. Saying all these i pre-ordered this book for just 633 @ indiaplaza.in while the book on the stands was about to cost 975.

Though i ordered this book i went to my native for the weekend and got the book in my hands only on monday morning. It was followed by a two sleepless nights and atlast i finished reading the climax of the gripping story which encompassed 7 books across 10 years. I have no words to explain my experience with it. Never had i read any story so very engrossed all through the night and sometimes dodging my mom's call to sleep and sometimes leaving the studies behind in 12th standard :)

It all started like this. i never knew what it is some 10 years back. it was my good pal Bharathi who handed over the philosophers stone book. it made me feel as though its all realistic and i started living in the potter's world from that day on.Then i got the chamber of secrets game on my PC which thrilled me to read the second book. From then on there is no stopping me, i jumped straight to the Goblet of fire which as per to me is the best of all classics. Then i read Askaban courtesied from Bharathi again. similarly i laid hands on the 5th and 6th book during my college days.

Atlast when the final book was released i made up my mind to buy the book on the day of release itself.The deathly Hallows ended on a happy note.Truely J.K rowling made a difference in the literary arena which created an impact on many including me. With the 7 years of Harry's school days over now i wish that he had not passed the O.W.Ls at all so that there could have been two or more books on him :) Really i miss Harry and the Hogwarts. Ending this post with a hope that Rowling continues to write such magical adventures.

Starting a new Thread

2007-07-30T06:50:00.000-07:00

This is nothing to do with POSIX thread or kernel threads. As the days go by i find myself in a similar situation as i was some 4 years back. that is when i joined my college in madurai & i used to go far and wide to try out new hotels out there and sometimes i used to recommend people about which recipe is good at which place. similarly after been here in bangalore for some one and half months i have been to quite a lot of hotels and more joints are yet to come.Therefore i thought of recording my new discoveries right here.

Three Quarter Chinese
This fully chinese style restaurant is in the AMOEBA complex off brigade road.Though the entrance to it is not grand, once you are inside it strikes you with awe. The service is at its best. I was offered a non-smoking zone with two menu books(liquor & food) of which the first one i clearly evaded.I ordered for a LAT-CHE noodles veg and it puntured my purse by 170 (145 + VAT + all TAX) Though expensive its worth the experience and i would recommend it for atleast once.

Ambience : good
Service : Excellent
Taste : good
Bottomline : not exactly one of the places to throw a grand party.

50% off ? total crap

2007-07-30T06:31:00.000-07:00

My father used to tell me "Dont fall for any discount offer" hmmph, just now i fell for one. It was a saturday morning and i had no plans for the day. sitting with the Bangalore mirror is the best thing in life i would say. An advertisement in that attracted me immediately . Woodlands offers "50 % discount on outdoor gears" hurry i was planning to buy a woodlands for myself and this offer really made me jubiliant.

In the evening i ended up in the Woodlands store @ commercial street and browsed through the collections. cool man i found a perfect pair for me. it was love at first sight as it was exactly the way i wanted. Enquiring the cost made me to know that it would take away 2290 from my purse. And there was no discounts on it as the product on which discounts applied were kept separately in which i could not find anything similar to my pair. Deciding to go forward with it, i bought it.

The shopkeeper twitched a smile of satisfaction as i got down from the shop with a pair of shoes + woodlands shoe polish spray(175) + a brush (45) exclusively designed for my woodlands. Though i fell for the offer i would say that the shoe is worth the price :)

Rummaging thro others playlist

2007-07-16T04:57:00.000-07:00

I dont know how many people have this habit but i find this pretty enjoyable when i start looking into people's music CD collections. It has been quite a long time since i got an excellent candidate for this. Last week i had been to subbi's house and i faced a stacked up CD collections of Ekanth,SAP,Prabu and all. I was pretty engrossed in that and least noticed what others were doing. I started playing them in the philips boom box they had.

The interesting aspect of this habit is you tend to know about new albums and new singers.The two albums that struck me are Guitar prasanna's "Be The Change" and ARR's "Bose, the Forgotten Hero". Bose had some 10 songs and 10 themes. It is really great to hear those songs.Then i also had my hands on "Pray for me Brother" DVD and CD.After those enconters i watched the Raiders of the Last Ark, an Indiana Jones Trivia.

With the Harry potter's "Order of the Phoenix " film out in the theatres we are planning to watch it next weekend. COming to the "Deathly Hollows" i have not yet decided as whether to proceed on to buy a book or to wait a little longer. only time would tell.

Emacs vs Vi

2007-07-11T05:54:00.000-07:00

Oh god!!!! not another flame war. Today as a part of training session seminar i took emacs and as usual it ended in a flame war. very particular in not degrading any other editors during my session and giving out the salient features of Emacs itself lead to this.

Once started would i leave it so easily??? no way man. its a crusade from the chruch of emacs headed by me. I started of protesting vehemently. The moderators atlast put an end to it and asked us to come up with a list of differences between them some time later.

many links speaks in volume about the differences. but the below one is really funny.

http://www.newsforge.com/article.pl?sid=01/12/04/0326236

An anecdote in my life

2007-07-10T02:25:00.000-07:00

Accustoming myself to the new city has been the chore that i have been doing for the second time in my life. i am almost settled after some 3 weeks in Bangalore. i like the Bangalore times and Bangalore mirror newspaper.It has the right mix of stuffs i need. The night lights in Residency, brigade and MG road would attract anyone.

After many bumps with autowallahs who cheating me, i memorized the map of Bangalore so that i know the route that i am taken through in auto. These days i am even showing directions to the autowallahs :)

Yesterday one thing happened.i was in majestic to board the bus back to home.I was on the 17th platform waiting for any 300 and above number buses which passes through my house. to my dismay only two digit number buses whizzed past me(basically 2 dig buses are internal buses and 300+ are sub urban buses) normally those buses wont come on 17th platform. i made sure i was on the right platform. i waited for some 15 minutes only to realize later that i have to turn around to view the predominant 333 HAL bus waiting in the bay for someone to get in. what a fool i have been to miss all the buses just behind my back. Then i boarded a 317 and reached home. Such errors are part of human and are never to leave.

Two inspiring films

2007-06-09T06:43:00.000-07:00

With the people and even Ad-film makers paying little attention to the Indian Cricket Stars after the fall of the so called Goliath batting lineup of the indian team to the david bowling queue of the Bangladesh cheaply in the infamous World Cup 2007, There is an upbeat enthusiasam in the dressing rooms of other sports in india.People of the cricket crazy nation have turned their heads to other sports these days. The Indian tour to Bangladesh attracted very few and the Afro- Asian cup is being conducted in india with unbelievable quarter to half filled stands.

This being the situation around i saw two sport centric films which are worth mentioning here."The Greatest Game ever Played" is a film about Golf.This is a real life incident in the early 1900. Harry vardon considered to be the best golfer of all times is overthrown by Francis Ouimet in the US open in 1913, an amateur in Golf. Insults, humiliation and discouragement in the family circle doesnt deter Francis from winning the game. The story is woven around the theme that family linearage doesnt play a part in one's success and upliftment. In those days and even now Golf is the game of the elite society and Harry vardon and Francis Ouimet break these rules. The sportiveness of Harry strikes the pulses. The plot enlivens from the day the US open begins and Francis atlast makes it into the tournament with his puny caddie Larry.His loyalty till the end to his caddie touches the soul though he was offered paid better caddie near the end.The background score really tantalizes the tournament.

The Film #2 "Goal" is about soccer.These films are not much heard of in India. Santiago a street kid masters the game right from his childhood days and a glimpse of his game is tasted by an agent to NewCastle, an English League.Amidst protests from his father and through his grandmother's benevolence Santiago hardly makes the trip from california to London. In the Testing session Santiago fails to impress the league manager but in his second and final attempt he does that. Though he makes it into the team he is really made to sweat it out in the training and practice sessions without being given a chance to play. Finally chance comes and he plays a vital role in the games one and only goal thus taking the league to the final match against liverpool.As usual disaster strikes and his father dies and decides to play the game than to travel as nothing could be done.In the match against liverpool NC strikes early with one goal and liverpool strikes back with 2 goals.Santiago and his teammate works out a strategy and scores one goal each in the final minutes to get past liverpool thus qualifying for the next biggest tournament. NC hasnt made that before.Santiago changes his life path and the way the film is taken really speaks in volume about the research done by the director to exactly portray the match as it is.

The Field,the crowd,the jersy,the dressing room and each and every thing makes one feel that we are watching a game than a film.i wonder how they made it. The appearance of David Becham, Zinedine Zidane and two other colossus of soccer really takes one with surprise.Believe me these two films kept me in tenderhooks till the end not because of the action or animation or grandeur but because of the solid suspenseful storyline. Wish i know to play these two games.Dont miss these films for anything.

Travel quelled the Tantrums

2007-06-06T22:41:00.000-07:00

I had not vacated my room in madurai by june 1st so before doing that myself and my parents went to kodaikanal, palani and while returning came to madurai and vacated the room. The ascend to Kodaikanal by the road devised by the Englishmen with just two hair pin bends was smooth. I searched the net for info about kodaikanal and got quite a few.Kodaikanal history dates back to 14th century. By the 18th century the people fled to kodai hills from palani to thwart Tipu sultan from conquering. It was in 1845 that the U.S missionaries and Englishmen actually thought of setting this place as a hill station. The Britishers could not tolerate the heat in madurai during summer hence they searched for a cooler place and they found this abode 2200 metres above sea level. At that time it was just a mountain it is they who set up the artificial lake that we use for boating.Then they setup the Bryant park.It was one of the Major who brought the pine and Eucalyptus tree here. An English Enthusiast climbed the 112 metre pillar rock and planted the Cross on its top. Berijam lake was a swamp some 80 to 100 years back. They used it as a catchment area which now provides water to Periyakulam.Coakers walk along the hillside edge was found by coaker a sergeant in British army. (The pics to the right and above is that of the lake)

So much to the history of Kodaikanal. The present state of the affairs is quite different. The Princess of hills or perhaps the infrastructure could not handle the amount of people during summer. The falls view tower on the edge would give a good view of rat tail falls(dum dum).i dont know why the silver cascade din have a neat and clean base though visitors are not allowed to take bath. The Parking lot is very small and not properly setup with the municipality people charging Rs 20 without even giving a receipt evidently to hide the fact that the parking cost would be much lower.i never thought that i would travel some 180 kms to see the small Bryant park where they charged Rs 5 for nothing.Then the Pine forest was nice(pic to left). I didnot go to the Devil's kitchen (Gunna cave) as i din have much time left. The pillar rock is where the scenic beauty is great(pic below). The green valley or suicide point has a sheer drop of 500 metres which obviously one cant see as its thankfully barricated near the edge. The shops on the way to green valley is worth noting which contains stuffs ranging from yummy home made chocolates to eucalyptus oil. The Kodaikanal golf club looks great from outside especially because Trespassers are not allowed :) The really fresh carrots with leaves is what i enjoyed the most. It was raining heavily out there in the afternoon while there was scorching heat in the plains below.

My kind of advice is its not a place to just visit the important spots. Just book up with Carltons or other such high end hotels and resorts up there during july or august. It is during this time that there wont be any crowd and though the temperature would be quite low you can watch the fog hovering over the lake and below you near the coakers walk. Then doing some expedition sort of stuff with your pals would be more interesting than anything else. Especially you would not see the litter rampage done by the tourist during this time. The lake and the Park needs to be expanded cos they are designed for the small crowd that it attracted in the early 1900. A massive transformation has to take place to make it attractive in the years to come.

thanks to the highway people for devising the road from kodaikanal to palani with loads of hairpin bends also the road being in dilapidated condition for most part of the year hence its virtually untakable. what could have been just a 55 kms trip from kodai to palani through that road turned out to be a 120 Km trip through kodaikanal - Bathalagundu - sempatti - Palani.