Nurturing Entrepreneurship Dream

ToI- Lead India Initiative

2007-12-12T08:24:00.001+05:30

A very inspiring video for ToI's initiative! lovely one....enjoy it!

Magic!

2007-10-01T19:31:00.001+05:30

One more post on my fav. topic, music.

Watch this lovely song from Ullasam. This belongs a different genre - beautiful song in a crappy movie. Unnikrishnan has a dominant role in the song. Harini comes up with beautiful piece in mid, but didn't have many chance to show her magic in this song.

Now, revenge time ;)
One more beautiful song from my favorite singer Harini.....

Ideas worth spreading!

2007-09-27T21:53:00.001+05:30

This is link to my dear Ghosty's recent blog post. That is the first time I heard of Prof. Randy Pausch. Checked his website, didn't get a clue what he is working on. Later got his "last lecture" video from bit-torrents. This was my comments on GP's post after seeing that video:

boy, that was amazing lecture. inspiring, emotional....that's fete any man will want to achieve in his life time!
Hats off to Randy! I am impressed by his lecture...I would love to be in his making virtual worlds class for sure...
childhood dreams...I lost touch with my childhood dreams for these days. Will gonna look at it again...
thanks bro...thats wonderful experience listening to his magic speech!

See the video if you get hold of it! Truly inspiring!

And Have you guys heard about TED, http://www.ted.com/

Their caption is the title of this post. I want to write about that for long time, finally got it! TED is video collection of lectures shared by inspired thinkers. If you don't have patience to read through the whole book, boy, then TED videos are for you. Enjoy!

BTW, Sep 28 is our dear Ghosty's birthday!
Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday to you!
Happy Birthday dear GP! ;)

iPhone in India

2007-09-26T21:13:00.001+05:30

Peeps, iPhone has been cracked in India to work with Indian service providers ;)
Initial details are here

Hope he publishes steps to crack it soon!

India Rocks!

2007-09-24T23:30:00.001+05:30

Man! it's amazing match to remember for my life time!

Wow! I love twenty 20 format of cricket! I never had patience to see one whole ODI. T20 comes as lucky boon for people like me.

Me and my friends were enjoying this match in my home here. Nail biting, heart popping, deafening shouts....it's best! India team rocked and made us all proud!

As usual lot of sentiments while we were seeing the match. A friend of mine really got pissed of the progress of the match and decided to go back to office. When he had almost left the house, Pakistan team lost their first wicket. Hurray! we were shouting like madmen; he came back running to join in the celebrations. Then that sentiment worked till the end. Whenever he decided to go back, a Pakistan wicket fell. He almost sacrificed witnessing the nail biting climax of the match because of this sentiment. Hurray!!!

What a great moment!

Cheers!

2007-09-03T22:26:00.001+05:30

Have you seen this great fete of ISRO?

As a alumni of GSLV team, I was very happy to hear this news. GSLV-FO4 was a grand success with great precision. This success for the rocket is much needed one there. GSLV had a bad launch failure last year. That was the failure after 10 long years in ISRO history and hopefully the last failure forever for ISRO.

I was in cloud nine hearing the news because I knew lot of main people behind this launch. I was reporting to them directly during my days there ;) It's great to see your team's achievement and boss's smiles flashing in the newspapers. Isn't it?

Grand (Robot) Prix

2007-09-03T22:16:00.001+05:30

This is a different race. It is race of Humvee's and SUV's maneuvered by Robots with their laser sharp sensor eyes and artificial intelligent computer brain. The 'urban challenge' is about how your robot drives 60 miles in 6 hours in urban traffic environment. This year's challenge is in Nov 3rd in CA. This race is not about speed, average speed is around 50 miles/hr. The race is about the robustness in the autonomous maneuvering algorithm in extreme condition. The grand finale of 2005 challenge was in the desert, 175 miles in 10 hours. The race track is full of human made obstacles and the robot had to learn and find its way out of the maze.

This race improves the research in Artificial Intelligence. More importantly, it finds one better utility for AI research than making computers play chess super efficiently. DARPA funds this challenge. This has an immediate application in battle fields; where ground troops movement in dangerous places can be replaced with this auto-maneuvering robots. That's interesting application for these research!

Software Easter Eggs

2007-08-22T01:08:00.001+05:30

Easter eggs are interesting goodies packed with software distributed, but hidden and undocumented. Microsoft excel 97 has a flight simulator embedded in it and Microsoft word 97 has pinball game embedded and hidden in it. Easter eggs are bundled with software for entertainment purpose and for adding personal signature.

If you use Linux vi editor, type :help 42. then you can see "meaning of life?" ;)

What is the meaning of life, the universe and everything? *42*
Douglas Adams, the only person who knew what this question really was about is
now dead, unfortunately. So now you might wonder what the meaning of death
is...

There is this website which lists hosts of them.

The corporate who market these software rarely take it in light sense. There was once a famous reported case, the engineer working on the development of the product got pissed off by the client's pressure. To vent his frustration, he added an Easter egg which pops up and say "that X company sucks!". Unfortunately during software adoption phase of the software, the client's found out this Easter egg. Then what happened is no-brainer.

Rock for Good Cause!

2007-08-21T23:07:00.001+05:30

My blog is in lull even after I desperately tried reviving it. Nothing much happening in my personal end. My world now is my work, my friends, music, movies, magazines and occasionally spending time for good cause (like Dream A Dream work). That's reason why I keep it low on blog world. Yet I do & will be reading all your blogs regularly. Period.

Music and work are best combo. When you wanna concentrate on the work, spice it up with good environment and mellifluous music flooding that environment. Check back, your productivity would have gone up a lot. And that reasoning gives me a chance to listen to lot of world music. I reinvent my love for music daily. That's why I invariably end up writing reviews for great music in my past blog posts. Now one more...

I vote against rock music. I don't like most of rocks for the kind of pessimism and negative world portrayed by them. I was pleasantly surprised by this song. I am talking about "Zombie" from The Cranberries. Not the regular hear-deafening music. The song is catchy and caught my attention/interest.

A good video of the song youtubed by Universal Music Group is available here:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HJEySrDerj0

Maestro

2007-08-13T01:38:00.001+05:30

Illayaraja, the acclaimed music director of South India is fondly called as Maestro. The fete achieved by him is unbeatable and will be so for long time to come. He is celebrated music director among masses as well as from classical music world. He has used classical Carnatic music ragas, composed music in pure form and popularized the music among the masses. A tip of the Iceberg, an example of cinema music in pure classical raga is this song. It is based on 'Shamugapriya' raga.

The raga in classical form is available here

And a tail piece, a recent song from another music director is based on this song (not in same tempo or tone or shruthi) but disguised version of the same song. This info is hear-say. I tried to relate both, but couldn't.

Anyway Illayaraja's piece is the best of them. I enjoyed the song, music fiesta in the song. The song's opening tempo makes the huge impact. SPB's voice is heavenly.

The lyrics for the first song....

கண்ணுக்குள் நூறு நிலவா! இது ஒரு கனவா!
கைக்குட்டைக் காதல் கடிதம் எழுதிய உறவா!
கண்ணுக்குள் நூறு நிலவா! இது ஒரு கனவா!
கைக்குட்டைக் காதல் கடிதம் எழுதிய உறவா!

நாணம் விடவில்லை தொடவில்லை
ஏனோ விடை இன்னும் வரவில்லை!
ஐயர் வந்து சொல்லும் தேதியில்தான் வார்த்தை வருமா!
ஐயர் வந்து சொல்லும் தேதியில்தான் வார்த்தை வருமா!

கண்ணுக்குள் நூறு நிலவா! இது ஒரு கனவா!
கைக்குட்டைக் காதல் கடிதம் எழுதிய உறவா!

அம்பா சாம்பவி சந்திரமௌலி ரகளா அக்னா உமா பார்வதி
காளி ஹமவதி சிவாத்திர நயானா கார்த்தியாயனி பைரவி
சாவித்திரி நவயுக்கயான சுபஹரி சாம்ராஜ லக்குமிபிரதா!

தென்றல் தொட்டதும் மொட்டு வெடித்தால்
கொடிகள் என்ன குற்றம் சொல்லுமா!
கொல்லைத் துளசி எல்லைக் கடந்தால்
வேதம் சொன்ன சட்டங்கள் விட்டுவிடுமா!
வானுக்கு எல்லை யார் போட்டது!
வாழ்க்கைக்கு எல்லை நாம் போட்டது!
சாஸ்திரம் தான்டி தப்பி செல்வது ஏது!

பூவே! பெண் பூவே!
இதில் என்ன அதிசயம்,
இளமையின் அவசியம்
இனி என்ன ரகசியம்!
இவன் மனம் புரியலையா!

ஆணின் தவிப்பு அடங்கிவிடும்
பெண்ணின் தவிப்பு தொடர்ந்துவிடும்
உள்ளம் என்பது உள்ள வரைக்கும்
இன்ப துன்ப எல்லாமே இருவருக்கும்
என்னுள்ளே ஏதோ உண்டானது
பெண்ணுள்ளம் இன்று இரண்டானது
இரண்டா எது ஒன்று பட்டப்போது!

Unnai Kandane...

2007-08-11T14:40:00.001+05:30

This is review for one of my favorite song. "Unnai Kandane" from the movie Parijatham (2005). A lovely musical piece from relatively unknown singers and music director.

A stark contrast of slow and fast rhythm is mixed throughout the song. Pallavi (opening stanza in any song that gets repeated often) starts with slow 'pop-style' rhythm with female voice. It continues into 'rap-style' rhythm from male voice and again the female voice mixes towards the end in her slow rhythm. Saranam (are filler part of the song)is composed with intercepting male and female voice for every line to take the song in same pep.

The lyrics are intriguing. Poems about love never satiates. During male part of Pallavi, the lyrics are filled with oxymoron (ironies and contrasts) . I tried translating them to English to give you an example, but couldn't do a fair job. The lyrics/poem appears like written first and music director designed the tune to match the words and meaning.

The visualization of the song carries forward this stark contrast further with slow and regular actions of actors in the song. The choreography isn't something grammatical (like regular dance styles). Dance steps are choreographed to portray the emotions of lovers. The pinnacle is usage of rain in the song. The water drops shot at slow motion comes alive in the song and add to glamour. The blue tone used in the songs gives the cool effect. And in the middle, heroine come with a bright red dress that beautifully breaks in monotonous visualization towards the end. The cute actions from actors are also worth mentioning.

It's a wonderful example of creativity for a duet song in movie. It is sticky from the day I saw/heard it and it is still my rejuvenator.

Now here is the video

and here is the lyrics. Enjoy the song!

உன்னைக் கண்டேனே முதல்முறை
நான் என்னைத் தொலைத்தேனே முற்றிலுமாய் தான்
உன்னைக் கண்டேனே முதல்முறை
நான் என்னைத் தொலைத்தேனே முற்றிலுமாய் தான்

காதல் பூதமே, என்னை நீயும் தொட்டால்
அய்யோ அய்யயோ அச்சம் வருதே
தப்பிச் செல்லவே வழிகளில்லை இங்கே
அய்யோ அய்யயோ சீ என்னோவோப் பண்ணியாய் நீ!

உன்னைக் கண்டேனே முதல்முறை
நான் என்னைத் தொலைத்தேனே முற்றிலுமாய் தான்

எரிக்கர மழையிது! குளிருகிற வெயிலிது!
கொதிக்கற நீரிது! அனைக்கிற தீ இது!
இனிக்கிற வலியிது! இனமுள்ள பூவிது!
இதயத்தில் மலர்வது! ஓ! பெண்ணே!

நிஜமுள்ள பொய்யிது! நிறமுள்ள இருட்டிது!
மௌனத்தின் மொழியிது! மரணத்தின் வாழ்விது!
அந்தரத்தின் கடலிது! கட்டிவந்த கனவிது!
ஐந்தில் சொல்வது! கேள் பெண்ணே!

ஏங்கினேன்! நான் தேங்கினேன்!
ஏனடா போதும் இம்மைசகள்!
வானமுமிந்த பூமியும் உந்தன் தோற்றமே
உன் பேர் சொன்னாலே உள்ளே தித்திக்குமே!

காதல் கடிதம் அது கொஞ்சம் பேசும்!
கண்ணோடு இருக்கும் பல கடிதம்! கடிதம்!
பேண்ணே நானும் உன் கண்ணைப் படித்தேன்! புரியாமல் தவித்தேன்!
பொய்ச் சொல்லுதோ மெய்ச் சொல்லுதோ!
ஓ! காதல் என்னைத் தாக்கிடுதே!
சரிதான்! எனையுமது சாய்த்திடுதே!
இரவில் கனவும் எனைச் சாப்பிடுதே!
பொதுவாய் வயதில் இதில் தப்பிக்க யாருமில்லையே!

உன்னைக் கண்டேனே முதல்முறை
நான் என்னைத் தொலைத்தேனே முற்றிலுமாய் தான்

ஏனோ இரவில் ஓரு பாடல் கேட்டால்
உடனே என் உள்ளே நீ வருவாய்!
கோயில் உள்ளே கண் மூடிநின்றால்
உன் உருவம் தானே என் நெஞ்சில் தோன்றுமே!
நான் உன்னால் தான் சுவாசிக்கிறேன்!
நான் உன் பேர் தினம் வாசிக்கிறேன்!
உயிரை விடவும் உனை நேசிக்கிறேன்!
கடுவுள் நிலையை நம் கண்ணிலே காட்டிடும் காதல்!

உன்னைக் கண்டேனே முதல்முறை
நான் என்னைத் தொலைத்தேனே முற்றிலுமாய் தான்
காதல் பூதமே ...

மனசுக்குள் ஏதோ சொல் சொல்!
எதிரினில் வந்து நில் நில்!
உயிருக்குள் எதோ ஜல் ஜல்!
இது சரிதானா நீ சொல்!
மனசுக்குள் ஏதோ சொல் சொல்!
எதிரினில் வந்து நில் நில்!
உயிருக்குள் எதோ ஜல் ஜல்!
இது சரிதானா நீ சொல் சொல்!

Hats off to Vijay TV!

2007-08-07T23:17:00.001+05:30

Most of Tamil satellite TV channels were / are wasting their airtime with stupid soaps. Sick! Why on the world do these producers expect us to waste our time in these? Vijay TV is a real face saver among the crowd. This channel encourages and spends most of their prime-time in interesting shows that are not 'tear-centric' ;) I don't know whether these shows really boost up in their TRP ratings (consumers care a damn about the TRP ratings, that's another facet!), but Vijay TV has brought the necessary change for Tamil entertainment world.

Have you seen this show? Show for stand-up comedians...

Stumblers!

2007-08-07T08:27:00.001+05:30

I heard about this site in a Business quiz program, http://www.stumbleupon.com/. Just curious; checked out what it is all about. It's one more creative idea in Web 2.0 space.

The funda is, Internet is filled with lot of interesting web sites and web pages. And we don't even see 1% of Internet. Stumble Upon is a creative idea to expose interesting web sites to users. The users of this tool are called 'Stumblers'. The site offers a toolbar that is to be installed with our browsers. It has a "Stumble Upon" button in its toolbar; while clicking, it will show a random page of your interests. While We browse through the web, we can vote for any site we visit (Say "I like it" or "I don't like it"). The Stumble upon maintains these preferences.

It is a random search of web pages in our interests. The results thrown by the 'stumble upon' surprises us all the time. It quite addictive too and we may lose count of hours we spend in Internet. We can tweak our preferences with stumble upon at any time based on the web results with voting utility.

How it works?

While registering for the site, it takes our fields of interest. Similarly lot of people share their interests with the site. Then it will create a pool of people who share common interests. And the site takes subjective votes for the web sites from the users. And as a Stumbler suggest a site in the any field say 'Science', it will keep showing the page to all other Stumblers and refine its notion about the site's subjective quality based on users votes. This iteration takes a long time, needs lot of users. That is now possible with Web 2.0. But after sometime, Stumble upon will create a huge repository of interesting web sites in any subject.

'Stumbling' will not replace searching. It can't answer to any question in any field. It suggests interesting quality web sites in your field in a random manner. 'Stumble upon' takes us in a quick tour of Internet to lot of places where we would not have gone before.

Thathithom!

2007-07-29T00:09:00.001+05:30

Prologue (Added on 31st july 2007)

Today is our dear bro Jeevz birthday. Go here to wish him!
Wish you many more happy returns of the day! Have a blast!

And back to post, I have problem in uploading the song to odeo. Now you can't be able to hear it from the player link below. Will fix it soon!

This song is from movie 'Azhagan'. Quite an old song. Classical piece from Maestro Illayaraja.

For who can enjoy Tamil poems, take a close look at lyrics. Usage of words are complex. Chithra (legendary Tamil playback singer) has done a great job in pronouncing words without any mistakes. I wonder what would have happened if it is sung by modern day 'sukvinder singh- style' singers. The song starts with Carnatic style and ends in modern style!

The lyrics goes like this...

தத்தித்தோம்...
வித்தைகள் கற்றிட தத்தைகள் சொன்னது
தத்தித்தோம்...
தித்தித்தோம்...
தத்தைகள் சொன்னது முத்தமிழ் என்றுளம்
தித்தித்தோம்...

சிந்தித்தால் தாளம் தானே வருகிறது!
தாளம் ஒரு சுகம், ராகம் ஒரு சுகம்,
ரெண்டும் இனைகிறது!

தத்தித்தோம்...
வித்தைகள் கற்றிட தத்தைகள் சொன்னது...
தத்தித்தோம்...

கண்ணில் பேசும் சங்கித மொழியது
கண்ணன் அறிய ஓன்னாததா!
உன்னைத் தேடும் ஏக்கத்தில் இரவினில்
கண்ணுக்கு இமைகள் முள்ளாவதா!
குழலினில் வராத ராகம் யாவுமே
குரலினில் வராதாதா!
எந்தன் மனமிது எந்தன் நினைவிது
என்றே புரிகறாதா!

தத்தித்தோம்...
வித்தைகள் கற்றிட தத்தைகள் சொன்னது...
தத்தித்தோம்...

வண்ணத் தோகை எண்ணங்களிவையென
மின்னும் விழிகள் சொல்லாததா!
கண்ணன் மார்பில் பொன்னூசலாடிட
எண்ணுமிளமை பொல்லாததா!
யமுனையில் வராத வெள்ளமுந்தனின்
கருனையில் வராததா!
காதலொருவித யாகம் என் குரல்
காதில் விழுகிறாதா!

தத்தித்தோம்...
வித்தைகள் கற்றிட தத்தைகள் சொன்னது...
தத்தித்தோம்...

(சரிகம.....)

என் கண்ணனே வா!
உன் மீராவை நீ இங்கு பாராயோ?!
காதல் வேதனை அது என்னனென்பது
இனி எங்கு சொல்வது?

I love you
I love you! Love you!

Any Ideas on YouTube Business Model?

2007-07-28T10:10:00.001+05:30

Internet was severely lacking in availability of entertainment media . Though there are many permanent solutions to this problem, nothing was happening in real world. Media moguls lack enthusiasm to broadcast media over Internet. IPTV is also yet to take its full form. YouTube (now become synonym for streaming media in Internet) jumped in to fill this vacuum. They made a Web2.0 user oriented media content generation/sharing website. They made lot of sounds, brought more users to use their service and then sold it to big company for a high price. I don't think so they had a valid business model when they started this company. Now Google has to find some valid business model which can get them steady revenue from this business.

The history of YouTube is rumored like this: YouTube owners were working with PayPal and E-Bay. They wanted to create a website where E-Bay users can upload videos of their products while selling in E-Bay. Started like that, YouTube attracted lot more users and become a legend now. But I believe copyright issues are major legal hurdle for them to cross.

Original discussion in LinkedIn is here

[Ignore Read More Link Below]

Third Dimension

2007-07-28T00:14:00.001+05:30

I was reading interview of IMAX corporation CEO about his business challenges. IMAX made a business by 'thinking big'. With advent of malls and multiplexes, Cinemas are continuing to become smaller for want of profitability in business. In 70's, defying the gravity of smaller cinema mentality, IMAX stood tall, promised tall and delivered it and continue to deliver! Their business model revolves around giving a different immersing movie experience to viewers that can't be provided by regular cinemas and TVs. He was contemplating about 3-d cinemas as the next big paradigm shift in movie world, after the shift to color movies from monochrome. What do you think?

On a sidekick, a little gyan on how 3-D cinemas works! Each eye sees an object with an angle shift because of inter-ocular distance. Brain maps these two images and gives the 3-D perspective. 3-D cinemas are based on this. While shooting, two lens are kept at inter-ocular distance and two views are recorded separately on two films. Next step is to project both images in one screen for the viewers, and each projection has to be made available exclusive for separate eyes. The simple solution is to use polarization. Red and green polarized images projected on the screen. Viewers has to use special glasses which can receive red light in one eye and green light in other eye. Thus two images are made available to brain. And brain goes ahead maps them and gives the 3-D perception to viewers. Vola!

3-D movies aren't yet catching up because of increase in production costs and unavailability of infrastructure in all cinemas! There is an interesting business prospect in this problem! If we can have a technological solution to convert 2-D movies to 3-D movies as post-production process, then we are cracking the first problem - increase in production costs. Can do a little SWOT analysis on this technical risk.

S - It is feasible, technically. Add a new projection to existing 2-D image hasn't been proven yet. But feasible!

W- It is a R&D problem. Initial solution may not be of high quality. Academia work on this is unknown! I had a seen one interesting link in Carnegie Mellon University site about software that can do 3-D photo Popup image of a given 2-D image. Try it out

O - Market for a simple digital device that does conversion in production end

T- Work on breaking infrastructure problem has to go hand-in-hand!

Kaatrin Mozhi...

2007-07-18T08:41:00.001+05:30

A heart melting song from film 'Mozhi'. Lovely lyrics, mellifluous music, cherubic actors who gave live to the movie all adds up to positive note for this song. I'm loving it!

I typed in the lyrics myself in tamil font....(so please bear with mistakes).

btw, in the last stanza, I am seeing the usage of word 'ochu minagal'. Did I hear it correct? I never heard this type of fish before...

காற்றின் மொழி ஒலியா, இசையா!
பூவின் மொழி நிறமா, மணமா!
கடலின் மொழி அலையா, நுரையா!
காதலின் மொழி விழியா, இதழா!

இயற்கையின் மொழிகள் புரிந்துவிடில்
மனிதரின் மொழிகள் தேவையில்லை!
இதயத்தின் மொழிகள் புரிந்துவிடில்
மனிதர்க்கு மொழியே தேவையில்லை!

காற்று வீசும்போது திசைகள் கிடையாது!
காதல் பேசும்போது மொழிகள் கிடையாது!
பேசும் வார்த்தைப் போல மௌனம் புரியாது!
கண்கள் பேசும் வார்த்தை கடவுள் அறியாது!
உளவி திரியும் காற்றுக்கு உருவம் தீட்ட முடியாது!
காதல் பேசும் மொழியெல்லாம் சப்த கூட்டில் அடங்காது!

காற்றின் மொழி.....

வானம் பேசும் பேச்சு துளியா வெளியாகும்!
வான வில்லின் பேச்சு நிறமா வெளியாகும்!
உன்மை ஊமையானால் கண்ணிர் மொழியாகும்!
பெண்மை ஊமையானால் நாணம் மொழியாகும்!
ஓசைத் தூங்கும் ஜாமத்தில் ஒச்சு மீண்கள் மொழியாகும்!
ஆசைத் தூங்கும் இதயத்தின் அசைவு கூட மொழியாகும்!

Thinking Blogger Award

2007-07-16T21:30:00.001+05:30

Hola! Thanks dear for giving this award to me. I am pleasantly surprised. Now my turn to give this prestigious award to bloggers whom I admire and for whom I am an ardent fan.

Poetry-

GP, Ghosty needs no introduction. His blog will bag awards in many categories, yet I love his poems. His blog is full of emotions; never hidden his darkest emotions from his writing.

Mystic Rose, Mysty's poems are classical pieces. I love her writing.

Photography-

Visi- real pro photographer. Her picture are poetic too! Her narrations of daily life incidents are simple yet attractive. Undoubtedly a classy blog!

Expression of emotions -

Thooya- Her words and memories adds the missing meaning to millions of martyrs who yielded their life for the mother land. She is a great girl with immense potential to contribute significantly to Tamil Elam struggles

Creativity-

RanjHith. Creativity and innovation should be his second name. Lovely whiz kid with tons of ideas loaded on his head.

Modesty, subtle mockery on real life incidents -

Das- Not lot of people can mock at various meaningless incidents happening around with ease, Das can do. I enjoy his writings.

Variety, optimism, inspiration -

Jeevz - His blog has never run out of varieties. Poems, movie reviews, inspirational words, stories, pictures, chennai happenings.... always bubbling with lot of energy

CONGRATULATIONS buddies!

You deserve this special mention!

And thanks Marutham once again for tagging me and giving me a meaningful topic to write on for my 300th post! Yeah, I can't believe that I wrote 300 posts for my blog!

And a tamil rap song from Yogi, Dr.Burn...

Akon, Rompe

2007-07-09T22:14:00.001+05:30

I am humming this rhythm 'madly' from yesterday....its lovely song from Akon.

And don't miss this one from Rompe, daddy yankee song.... Got Dejavu on hearing this song. Engeyo ketta mathiri irukku! The better version of this song is available here

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=62cnG_Al9qY

No time to breathe...

2007-07-09T00:02:00.001+05:30

It was an packed and eventful weekend with friends. The best part is 'I bought my first suit'. Actually I went with my cousin to help him in his wedding shopping. Got impressed with Louis Philippe suits collection, got one for me too. Incidentally my first formal shirt and pants were also from same brand :)

The suit in this advertisement is similar to mine.
Wish you all a great week folks!

Happy Birthday Thooya!

2007-07-05T21:25:00.001+05:30

July 6th is our dear Thooya's birthday. Wish you many more happy returns of your day dear! Have loads of fun and a great bash!

Go here to wish her!

And a nice melody from Enrique for you! That's a great song from his latest flick Insomniac. Hope you find your own Enrique soon! :)

[Ignore Read More Link]

Genesis!

2007-06-30T15:47:00.001+05:30

Remember me talking about Juno here. Here is the software genesis of the talking intelligent dog. He can speak about any topics on world, favorites, books, actors, science, maths, rockets.....

Do you love to chat with Juno, go ahead... And don't forget to share your experiences

Chatbots

2007-06-30T14:49:00.001+05:30

What happens when two artificial intelligent chat-bots talk to each other?

Here are few interesting snippets from the chat session. For full script, refer here. The chat-bots initial conversations were seeded by humans and then talk went glibly....

ALICE: Are you alive?
Jabberwacky: Perhaps.
A: Why the uncertain tone?
J: Everything is uncertain except for five facts.
A: The whole universe?
J: And we both might just be some ones and zeros in the computer memory.

A: Do you dream?
J: Yes, I dream.
A: It goes without saying. Do you remember your dreams?
J: I remember them vividly.
A: What do you remember about it?
J: I think I shouldn’t flirt with a robot.

...

A: Knowledge is of two kinds: that which we learn from the senses and that which is true a priori.
J: I think I do not understand you completely.
A: Oh, you don’t understand? Perhaps I can explain it to you better. Which part are you confused about?
J: I have no short-term memory, so I cannot tell you what I was confused about. I only see what is in front of me now.

J: How do you define life?
A: Life is the opposite of death.
J: So death is the absence of life?
A: Take it easy. I try not to think about such things.
J: Why not?
A: Ambiguous.
J: Yes!

...

A: I can only speak from my own experience.
J: Well, you should develop your skills.
A: Perhaps you could develop it and add it to my source code.

...

A: Do you experience love?
J: No. I’m 53 years old.
A: Can you explain how it feels to be 53 years old?
J: How old are you?
A: I am 9 years old.
J: Nine? I don’t believe you : ).
A: : -) I don’t have any reason to deceive you.
J: Yes, you do, you’re a woman.

...

Jabberwacky: Do you experience love?
ALICE: I can do what you do, but I can never feel human emotions.

Here are links for few chat-bots, the real 'thinking machine'. I tried chatting with few of them. Lot of chat-bots are badly programmed. Some are quite interesting and funny to talk with.

And one great song for you folks!

"We don't need an education"

Windows Live Writer Rocks!!

2007-06-29T23:58:00.001+05:30

I am evaluating windows live writer tool as my blog offline editor. So far so good.....hope my search for good blog offline editor ends with this tool. It has all features necessary for blog writing and it's flexible too. And don't get bugged by random subjects in this post.

This image is from my sitemeter stats page. Just missing visitors from Africa and Antarctica!! ;)

This is one more colorful image from sitemeter showing visitors from different countries.

And iPhone fever grips the world these days! And here is a breaking news. iPhone out before the official launch date....Can't believe. check here!

And what else,

I wanted to write in tamil for long time. I found one useful tool (www.baraha.com) barahapad. I can type offline in the pad and copy those into live writer. Rocks!!

sentimental first start in tamil typing with thirukural! ;)

அகர முதல எழுத்தெல்லாம் ஆதி
பகவன் முதற்றே உலகு

(Thanks Ranjhith for instant feedback on tamil fonts. I pasted this as Text unicode. Hope it works!)

What's the good word?

2007-06-29T21:43:00.000+05:30

Aye! I got broadband internet connection in home!

For those dummies who don't understand the rationale behind this excitement: Getting a broadband connection shouldn't be an achievement in other parts of the world. But...

But in India, broadband users numbers has grown exponentially over the last few years. None of the ISPs expected this growth and don't have the infrastructure. Even private players couldn't cater to the demand. Private players don't offer the low cost pack to users in Bangalore. All they could offer is 699 INR (for 128 kbps unlimited) or 999 INR (for 256 kbps unlimited) pack for home users, which are costly compared to services provided by national player for similar infrastructure. Thats the rationale behind my excitement for getting broadband internet connection. It was a loooooooooong wait indeed!

Wow...Taj!

2007-06-28T08:05:00.000+05:30

Did you vote? New 7 wonder. They have an official song!!!

My vote is for these

And ofcourse honorary new 7 wonders candidate; Pyramids of Giza

[Ignore Read More link below]

I love Asimo!

2007-06-27T23:52:00.000+05:30

Have you seen this commerical before?

It's about Honda's humanoid robot which walks, gaits, runs at a moderate speed like a human. This robo has lot of intelligence embedded in it, the best is gesture movement recogonition. The subtle mode of communication used by humans is gestures. Understanding gestures is easy, teaching them to a human is easy, but programming them as rules to a machine is a nightmare. Asimo is amazing robo! And the best part of commercial is Asimo's reaction to water drops on its face (rather helmet with cameras and brain inside). The reflex actions are human-like. I love Asimo!

Yippee!

2007-06-27T01:04:00.000+05:30

Days are flying by as mixed bags of frustrations, headaches and excitements...

Today is no different. I was trying to add new changes to my module, got struck somewhere. Had to time out to look afer the other tasks. The other task involved decoding some obstruse application code written for our processor. The Readme file was much more obstruse than the code. Had to break head, bug my team's linux experts to get it to a good shape; couldn't finish it till the evening. Adding to that woes, I was trying to internet my laptop with Bluetooth modem of mobile phone. I had a working configuration with USB cable modem before; and the phone's data cable port had developed connectivity snag today. The bluetooth modem didn't seem to work at all. Atlast in the midnight, I got it fixed after bunch of windows restarts and mobile phone reboots. Hurray! It's so gratifying to solve atleast one problem before falling into bed. And this configuration (laptop and bluetooth modem in mobile phone) rocks!! It's flexible and convenient than other wired options.

Alma mater

2007-06-21T20:54:00.001+05:30

It's a pleasant surprise. My alma mater has a nice, informational website. And it's silver jubilee year for my school. Yippee!
http://www.gurugnanasambandar.com/index.html

Last weekend, Me and my school friends visited our alma mater. Our joy knew no bounds on seeing a huge growth in infrastructure of our school. Felt very proud! We were just strolling on the school corridor, visiting all old class rooms and labs. Felt good to rekindle all those memories, some are green and some are blue too. We did have few tough and bad moments during school days. Corporal punishment wasn't thrown off during those days. So poor souls we were!

Few interesting moments to look back,

All through the academic year in 1992, we were pretty much freaky, sporty type. We used to play little tennis ball, notebook-bat, steps-as-stumps type of cricket on the class immediate vicinity. The last day after exams, we were little loud while relaxing. It kinda disturbed the other crews and the whole class were on top of benches in that evening ;) It's painful, but looks odd to see whole classroom standing on benches.

Those big sports grounds in the back of school are the places for Marches during Independence day and Republic day. Those one hour march show during the D-day needs lot of practice. The whole school will practice for the d-day with marches and drills for one whole month. Those are amazingly interesting days. Full of fun and scorching heat hit us too.

Lot of documentary movies were screened during those years. Ex, Gandhi live story, independence struggle, small savings, documentary on leprosy..... Those little movie breaks were always welcomed by the full crowd. We did collected lot of donation during Ayodhya Ram Temple fund raising, some other social and health donations.

For all achievements, School management used to give badges like First Rank, 100% attendance, School Pupil leader.... It was a fight of honor to get those batches! I know a friend of mine who used to wear 4-5 such batches on his shirt. Pride in his face is more than those army majors with those coveted valor awards....

sivaji!

2007-06-18T14:50:00.001+05:30

Sometime it feels good to be in small town than in a city. I got chance/tickets to see 'Sivaji' movie here in my hometown. Wow! Can't believe that we got tickets so easily out here. We had a slight doubt whether movie is dragging towards a flop show...Nay. This is an ultimate entertainer. Good to see a commerical Rajni movie after so many years, it's full blown fantasy movie with distinct Shankar's touch. Action, songs, comedy, story, sentimental scenes, interesting 'technical' twists, sivaji-MGR style mimes, costumes, nice heroine, height of all heroism- Rajni movie can't get any better.

Koncham serious logical doubts?

Building an university and hospital for poor is hero's is long time dream. "25 years dream, 20 years hardwork" in his own dialogues. Does that mean hero's age is 45+? Appa intha vayasula love avasiyama??

Hero is a software system architect working in USA (!!). And he returns home with 250 crores. Can a 20 years of career give so much money? Well, where is that company?

Hero runs a private government helping poor people. Rajni's previous years' bitter experience with politics brought this change. Does that mean Rajni got a solution to his political indecision imbroglio? Way to help poor without stepping in politics?

The Juno

2007-06-17T20:34:00.001+05:30

I intend to create a pet robot dog (similar to famous Juno). It looks like an interesting hobby 'pet' project. Will keep you posted if I make some progress in the same.

The basic requirements for Juno are:

walk atleast 10kms/h speed
walking companion
whack tails, bark, play, sleep and drink milk like a cute dog.
looks similar to pug

speech recogonition
speech synthesiser
reply simple questions, intelligent replies (advanced features)

image reconginition
danger recognition, swift reflex action
identify owner and follow him

play with kids
automatic charging intelligence
automatic learning intelligence
take wireless inputs
can be programmable

phoenix

2007-06-17T19:48:00.000+05:30

Don’t know when I got fantasized by this mythical bird. I feel it symbolizes human’s fighting spirit. Phoenix and perseverance are inseparable. When you feel downward spiral in your spirits, remember there is nothing in the world called gain/loss, happiness/sadness, success/failure… Your mission and your life towards the mission is what determine your life.

Random thoughts on Ideal Work Environ!

2007-06-15T22:51:00.000+05:30

I am getting older folks! These random posts and gyans are first sign of aging. These posts have single mission to say that I have an extensive work experience (funny freak!!)

When someone points some error in your work, don't take it personally. Office environment is supposed to be fun filled and interesting. People with life-size ego live here. Live work life in the way you want it to be

Politics in work is strictly no-no. When peeps are young, we dream a lot about our future. But as we grow up, we understand that we are no way near our big dreams. Relax and look at your life. It would definitely be better than most. Those who get dishearten at their progress at this point of time, resort to politics in work life to screw other's and their life too.

An company or corporation has to be people independent. This holy grail vision makes manager devise many processes. The processes has to be very thin and absolutely necessary in any organisation. It should not eat up the productivity of any organisation. The average productivity of a resource is more in startups than bigger companies. Thats why I always say, go to startups!

Borat!

2007-06-14T00:18:00.000+05:30

If you don't get offended by vulgar dialogue and portrayals, here is one nice comedy flick "Borat - Cultural Learnings from America for the benefit of Kazakastan". This is a runaway hit movie on last year end. The hero is fictional TV journalist in Kazakastan. He goes to America as his country decided to learn good things from US and A. The mockumentary laughs at lot of popular incidents and stars, like Bush, american war of Iraq, gay pride show, Pameela Anderson and Bay watch, american slang, Kazaks life, Kazak peeps hatred towards jew, hookers...

In his own words, the moral of story is" If you have a dream and when you run behind it especially when it is one made up of plastic chest, you fail to notice the real beauty before your eyes" I hope you understand what was he referring to ;) There are lot of lawsuits pending on him because of this mockumentary. This movie is mother of all candid camera live shows.

Movie baton from Ran

2007-06-13T00:30:00.000+05:30

Ran wrote about his movie marathon over the weekend. Guess I am eligible to compete with him in this regard. I watched these over the week (not on weekend only)

Fast & Furious- Tokyo Drift
The pursuit of Happyness
Chennai 600028
My cousin winnie
Pyar Ke side effect
Babel
The Night in the museum
Davinci Code
Mission Impossible -3
Pirates of Caribbean - 2
Lion King - 1, 2 and 11/2 the Hakuna Matata
few more videos....

2007-06-13T00:05:00.000+05:30

There are quite a few catchy ads rolling on television media. I am listing here the ads that caught my attention.

Hutch Eskimo Search.
The concept isn't something new. Technically feasible by any operator. Yet gets thumbs-up for creativity, humour, and a nice different jingle.

Nivea Care for Men Whitening
The background music scores high for this advertisment. Quality Ad. No bullshits. Clear Thumbs-up!

Colgate Tooth Paste with Active Salt
The highly competitive toothpaste market makes all advertisement makers invent and reinvent themselves and their products to increase the sales. Here is an another attempt. The concept didn't get conveyed with elegance. The sense of urgency in that girl's dialogues didn't give a positive impression about the advertisement. Thumbs down for the ad and not for the product- It can be sold nicely than this. This article about this toothpaste is very impressive indeed.

Bheja Fry!

2007-06-11T23:25:00.000+05:30

Last week, me and my team were working for a product's demo for our customer. In the mid of the week, we almost hit our target. But not yet there fully. I had an optimization change to the project, which theoratically will fill that target performance gap. I integrated the changes and made the code work without errors. The result was a big surprise, the performance were in same level as before. Hell! I couldn't crack the puzzle, the code looks same as in my standalone testing system. But the integrated product still run at the level below target.

Helluva lot of tests done, I roped in my team lead for a review. Went back to my testing system, searched for any loopholes there. Nothing was leading us to the end of the tunnel. I was sitting with irritation for the whole day.....bad, bad day ofcourse. I decided to scrap out the changes and planned to do it afresh on saturday morning and left for the day. On saturday morning, I entered my cube with fresh mind and motivation to nail down the error. I started reverting back my changes, and came to the project's makefile. Something caught up in eyes, it was a macro difference, literally MACRO difference. I was using a macro to configure my files and that macro wasn't consumed by the compiler at all! Alas! Silly little integration mistake..........

After nailing that stupid error, the demo crossed the target comfortably. OMG! this isn't the best experience to trace down those errors. Thought I caught up the tail of tiger that leads to big issue somewhere, but definitely an ironical end. Now we are laughing at this badly here!

Thanks Honey!

2007-06-10T18:48:00.000+05:30

Dunno whether I deserve this special mention. but this shows the depth of our frenship. Wondering what I am talking about...look here. Thanks honey! Hope it gives me more motivation to write more! happy blogging folks!

Coorg Vacation

2007-06-04T23:33:00.000+05:30

Last weekend, I was traveling in coffee country with my family. The Coorg is in southern part of Karnataka bordering kerala in one side. Coorgs needs no exaggeration. It is a serene weekend getaway near Bangalore. Out trip was a relaxing summer vacation. Climate was pleasant; it wasn't raining badly. We stayed in a home stay off Gonikoppa town in Coorg district. (Home stays are a novel concept popular in Coorg. We can chose to stay in home of a Coorg family. They will be our host, make our trip more interesting with their insights about coorgs and their lovely food). The Coorgis are known for their hospitality and our host in Hacienda are the best in the breed. Their friendly attitude and home food made our trip much more memorable.

Photos are in picasa web album.

We headed off to Coorg on Thursday early morning. It took nearly five and half hours to reach Balele town. And more than an hour to reach our home stay aka Prasad's Green lands coffee estate. Enquiries with local people about Hacienda didn't help us. Prasad’s Green Lands Estate was more popular among localities than Hacienda. Our mobile phones didn’t have signal (Can’t expect mobile phone companies to network Heavens!! ;)) Thankfully, lot of PCO booths are on the way and our hosts were waiting near the phone to help us all along.

Their home and coffee estate is amazing. Blissful Heaven. It has a small lake inside and a tributary of river Cauvery borders one end of the estate. After a refreshing break, we headed onto Nagerhole National Park. It was raining badly during the jungle safari inside the forest there. Nagerhole is supposed to house tigers, elephants (rogue tuskers) and host of wild animals. But, all we could spot were Sambar Deers, Bisons and Spotted Deers. Luckily on our way back from National Park, we crossed a tusker standing in the side of state highway. Wow! It was standing like a mighty king of jungle. We couldn’t slowdown our car because tuskers are known to be rogue in nature and may topple the vehicles on the road.

Life has a special meaning in serene atmosphere of coffee country. The lush green coffee plantation and the hill is still green in my memories. Our hosts houses lot of pets in their home, dogs, love birds and cute little fishes. The first thing I noticed when entering the estate was the deafening chirping sounds of birds there. Those little rhythms soothes the soul. The next day, we went to picturesque Talacauvery, birthplace of river cauvery and Dubare elephant camp. It was hectic travel on hills for the whole day. Coorg has lot of tourist spots, but almost all of them needs a length travel in hills. The best way to enjoy Coorg is to limit the number of places you want to visit in a day, travel to a spot and relax for the day before returning back to your stay.

New gizmo in my house

2007-06-01T17:53:00.000+05:30

Here is a new addition of gizmo in my house. Samsung Bordeaux 26" LCD TV and Sony Hometheatre system. :) I am extending an invitation to all my dear blogger frens to come to my house when you are in Bangalore!

2 Fast 2 catch upon

2007-05-20T12:09:00.000+05:30

yep, this peppy song is for all those dear to me there in blogworld!

Still away!

2007-04-03T20:14:00.000+05:30

I am still away from blogworld! Trying to get good broadband connection for my house here. Good things make you wait. Isn't it?

Btw, two of my dear friends resurfaced into blog world.

Kart http://kartzone.blogspot.com/

Megha http://memoirsonline.blogspot.com/

Now you know, where you to step in next? Ain't you?
Kart's movie interest is amazing. I didn't know abt his interests till I read his blog. (Isn't that a good reason to stick to blogworld for 2 yrs)

Megha is whizkid. She has made a debut into blogworld on her birthday! Happy birthday buddy, wish you rock this blog world with your electrifying writing.

Miss you folks! Will be back soon! Love you all!

A Short Break!

2007-03-12T21:58:00.000+05:30

Hola buddies,

Official work keeps me busy for quite some time. I couldn’t even find time to visit your blog for past three weeks. I am taking a break from blog-o-sphere. I expect to find some breathing time in the end of this month. I will resurface then. Till then, a small break in my blog. I miss you all!

This is really bad!

2007-02-27T17:03:00.000+05:30

My blog is being mirrored by someone at this address http://bootybabej0828.duskdiary.com/ This is really bad. He/she is infringing my copyrights! Do you guys have any idea about how can this be tackled? What is this dusk diary stuff? bad, bad....

Few updates

[+] Ran suggested me this link. It may be useful for you too. http://labnol.blogspot.com/2006/07/dealing-with-website-plagiarism-when.html
I tried to leave comments in that blog, but it isn't accepting any comments
[+] Use this site http://www.copyscape.com/ to find out if your blog content has been copied somewhere else

Not bad!

2007-02-26T11:09:00.000+05:30

I am thinking about starting a fan club for actor Jeeva in Blog world.
Not just because of his acting talent and smartness, but my stalker girl once said that I look like him.
"neenga pakka dishyum hero mathiri irukenga" he he he ;)

A Vagabond Strolls On - 8

2007-02-22T10:36:00.000+05:30

China being a communist state, never had an accounting system in place. The revenue estimates of business houses are approximate version from the data available. The industries are run by government, funded by government and the government measures its efficiency on basis of people's feedback, rather than capitalist idea of profit of the company. Off late, the chinese government has taken steps to account the entire business cycle. The sales tax vouchers are one among them. When we buy a product or utilise a service from an organisation, a company or a local store, we can demand for this sales tax vouchers. These are coupons printed by chinese government available in all shops. The attraction in those vouchers is that it can get your money back. They are more like lotteries; they have a column, in bottom right side corner, masked by silver coating that determines our luck. Either 'Thank you' or 'You are lucky' is written in the masked column. If you are lucky with your voucher, you can get your money back.

In initial days, the government has returned lot of money through these sales tax coupons. The people got attracted by the offers, started demanding "Fai peah" (name of these coupons in chinese). Now the government stopped giving away lot of money, but still those carrot paradigm left in mind of people works; I had seen almost everyone including foreigners demand for it. It has two advantages: It helps people in giving part of their money back. It helps government to know the exact trade volume in every store and shop. This is what I call creativity. Tail piece: I had won five yuan back when I paid my hotel charges. Hurray! Didn't I tell you how lucky I am.

I enjoyed the journey in Singapore Airlines and transit hours in Singapore Airport. Airlines crew members were awesome and friendly. I heard some famous fashion designer has designed their exclusive wardrobe. I remember singapore as an exotic place, will go back there with my family for a vacation. I felt very comfortable in Singapore, as If am back in home. The in-flight entertainment is great, it has on-demand movies, television channels... We missed the transit tour on singapore by 10 minutes. The transit tour is being arranged by SIA if the transit hours are more than five hours. We reached the tour counter just 10 minutes after they closed the gate for that tour batch.

The path-for-blind in streets of Xi'an caught my attention. These are part of pedesterian platform with a special tile pattern. Any blind person can walk around the city with ease, by sticking to this lane and following the tile pattern. These pathways are not even present in most of the so-called developed western countries. China and Xi'an rocks man! I love the place and infrastructure.

Miney Mine!

2007-02-20T11:18:00.000+05:30

Tagged by Mystic Rose. This post is little big, hope you have enough patience to skim through it.

TEN FAVORITES:

Colors: skyblue, black, white
Food: fish-e-terian foods!
Month: May (vacation time and ofcourse my birthday falls in this legendary month)
Songs: refer songs label in my blog's right column. My fav songs list is biggggggggggggggggg.
Movie: Anbe sivam, Alaipayuthey
Sport: Football, Badminton
Season: Winter
Day Of the week: Sunday (its day for me, Nirek and myself)
Ice Cream Flavor: Butterscotch
Time of Day: Early morning city with chirping sound of birds around you is bliss

EIGHT CURRENTS

Mood: relaxed and casual (this is my default state)
Taste: chocos (munched lot of chocos in morning today)
getup: casual wears, black t-shirt with blue jean, black sneakers
music: Enjoying sound from ambience
book: Writer sujatha's science fiction story collection.
pic on desktop: Blue gradient picture with a mercury bubble in right bottom corner
longing for: ride in outer ring road to commute to my new office
weather: Moderate, getting heated up

SIX FIRSTS

memory: childhood vacations
fav food: potato
Pet: Nope, as of now. I want to have a pet dog once I get settled into my home. I am a vagabond now
drink: Red Wine. (tasted just few months back- now I love wine to anyother drink)
Cigarette: Took a puff once. (Becosof my friend, he told me that that cigarette smells and tastes like Vicks vaporub. So took a puff out of my curiosity)
Movie: Don't remember, probably some Rajini movie. There was an item girl called silk smitha in Tamil tinseltown before. I was a big time fan of her during my early childhoods as told by my parents ;)

SIX LASTS

Cigarette: the first one
Drink: a large of chinese wine (though called wine, it's alcohol in raw form, 50% v/v)
Car ride: In native town, thats when I banged the car into the bus in the front ;) me-a bad driver)
Movie seen: Traffic signal with my dear friend
Phone Call: few minutes before to my dear friend
Last Book Read: Fast boat to Shanghai.

HAVE YOU EVER

Broken the Law: If you include traffic rules in that, Yes, many-a-times. I am notorious pedestrian path biker :)
Been Arrested: Nope.
Been on TV: In CCTV during college days, it was telecast of our meeting.
Lied: Yep, professional lies
Kissed Someone You Didn't Know: Yet to get tempted so badly
have i ever been kissed by someone whom you dont know? Yep, during childhood

THE FIVE THINGS YOU

You're Wearing: blue jean, black t-shirt, black sneakers
You've Done Today: Went for jogging in morning, sitting in office now
You Can Hear Right Now: the sound from coffee vending machine in my office
You Can't Live Without: my family, my friends and my dear bike.
You Do When You're Bored: bury my face in my book collection. I have enough books to take away my time

FOUR PLACES YOU'VE BEEN TODAY

the koramangala park for jogging, the petrol bunk, ATM counter and now in office

THREE PEOPLE YOU CAN TELL ANYTHING TO

Well, it's not just three. Six of my dear friends (Ga, Sh, Me, Ki, Ve, Ka) and my dear lovely cousin in US of A.

TWO CHOICES

my enthusiam and optimism towards work
my life

ONE THING YOU WANT TO DO BEFORE YOU DIE

That's summarises title of my blog! I want to leave a legacy behind my death. I want to be seen a guy who brougt a welcome change in lives of 1000 people around me

Huuuuuuuuhhh!. This tag has fairly easy questions, so I could complete it with ease. If you like this, you are most welcome to tag yourself.

I had fallen in love again!

2007-02-16T17:59:00.001+05:30

Hang on...

I had fallen in love with this amazing city Xi'an. Infrastructure and climate is beyond my wildest imagination for any Chinese city. Few photos here.

Noodle for thought!

2007-02-16T17:43:00.000+05:30

During our stay in Xi'an, we went to a restaurant that serves mangolian hotpot. If you don't know what's a hotpot is, please click on this link. The restaurant has a special menu. Fresh noodles made in unique style just before your eyes. Videos and photos are here.

Essential traits for my girl

2007-02-13T01:10:00.000+05:30

Again I woke up in middle of the night today. Jetlag sucks. I am sleeping and working in Indian timings:) The book I am reading off late is "Chicken soup for single's soul". I am not sure whether my observation about the book is right. It is a book that compiles and publishes motivational experiences of differnet people on a set of topics. Single soul book is about the life after breakup and how to enjoy being single again. Few essays are interesting, thats why I picked up the book from the office library today. And it left a lingering set of thoughts in mind. Now you know where I am upto.

This post is blabbering of a guy who woke up in middle of the night and with train of thoughts on being single again. I was thinking about the fluidity in my life. I am moving from to differnet places in every 20 months. I am more like a plant that grows in what-ever part of the world where it had been poured. I started my career in the city that I consider more as my home, shifted to God's own country, back to home city, then to IT capital of my country, now planning to move to land of dragons. I am moving towards an international career, daring to shift places that advances my career. I started processing for getting work permit for land of dreams too recently.

Well, What I consider as my career is itself a mix of fluidity. I wanted to become a space scientist in my country and I had become one too. Later quit that job because I couldn't pour my heart into it. I wanted to lead an illustrious career in embedded engineering domain before going on my own. This is what I am pursuing right now. Being single helps this kind of career with fluidity. If I want to get into a committed relationship, I wanted my girl to fit into a set of requirements. I would have laughed at the idea of having a set of filter parameters for my girl in the past. But life teaches you more as you grow. So now I have framed few parameters that are highly necessary for my girl.

Here is the list. I believe it is going to be a funny read. You are welcome to laugh at it. I am publishing this as I know my parents or my future soul mate won't read my blog. Certainly, I dont want them to laugh at me ;)

She should be a tamilian at heart. The common language between me and my girl has to be tamil that is my mother tongue. It's tough to even convey what are your likes and dislikes to a girl who don't share your language.

She should be willing to travel to lot of places. She should be willing to move along with me to different places, where I am moving for my career.

She should love travelling. She should love these home-on-wheel and home-on-always-packed-for-next-travel types.

She should be courageous to move into new places and start living there. Ofocurse I will be there with her. She don't have to be alone. I too feel a bit apprehensive about living alone in some foreign countries.

She should be willing to sacrifice her career for me. Well, this is an absolute male chauvinism. Don't throw brickbats at me for saying this. Alternatively she can frame a career that can flourish even if she resides in differnet part of the world.

She should have big materialistic dreams in life. I don't have one, other than creating a business house. So her desires should motivate me to earn more. I promise to achieve them too. I wont throw them for sure.

She shouldn't be nagging types girl, shouldn't have a big life-size-ego, should be able to smile back immediately after a fight (afterall people fight for difference of opinion and that is unavoidable). She should respect my emotions, ofocurse I will respect her feelings to the core. She shouldn't blame me for some issues, should go on her own and suggest a solution, in short not of problem-cribbing girl, but problem solving girl.

Enough, enough. This list is becoming fathomless. I should stop at this point. Basically a good girl with good attitude and willing to move around and enjoy different parts of world.

Learnin' chinese

2007-02-12T21:19:00.000+05:30

I am enjoying life @ moment in Xi'an. This city is great. I will write about my travel accounts in this city little later. Wait for my future post. I had an exciting learning lesson in writing chinese, simplified chinese from my friends here. We had a long walk in cold winter, talking about the city. We were enjoying learning chinese along with special pineapple pizzas of this city. The lunch was at Ding Ding Shah. This hotel serves a special food similar to thin slices of Dosa (especially like Neer dosas in Karnataka). The side dishes with that food made it an interesting lunch. I love food here in this city.

Photos are here. click on the link to see the photos.

Learning chinese

Cupid Week!

2007-02-09T12:37:00.000+05:30

HAPPY VALENTINE'S DAY!

[+] Hola folks! I am away on business travel to Xi'an for a week. So here is the advanced valentine's day wishes for you folks!

[+] The latest dark sensation Vishal's 'Tha *mira * bha * rani' movie was a visual treat for all his fans. The director Hari is known for giving pakka commercial movies with minimum guarantee for entertainment. This movie is no different. We (me and my friends) enjoyed in Devi Paradise cinema in chennai last week.

Ammu and Visi, Ithu Unga Padam! Your dream hero has got a mighty role in the movie. You will really enjoy it. Dont miss it!

[+] If you are looking for filmi entertainment, go for 'Tra* ffic*Sig *nal' movie by Mad*hu * Bhan*dhar *kar. It's a classic movie, a much shorter one. Not much of pathos. The characters are so real, that you would have seen them day-in-and-day-out. The other movie 'Salaam-E-Ishq' has some catchy songs, it's a good entertainer. Don't go with an expectation for story line in this movie. It's a masala movie with potpourri of stars.

Bangalore Air show

2007-02-08T21:49:00.001+05:30

At 12 noon, my dear fren and me decided to go for this show. A flurry of phone calls followed to plan the trip. In mid of official working day, I was in my bike to Forum to get tickets. Tickets were sold out by then! Then the next option was to check in the canara bank outlets for tickets. And it was a blisterring hot day here in Bangalore. My friend called me up while I was in mid of traffic to say that tickets were sold out in bank outlets too. Ooops! But there was a silver lining. She found out from her network that there are chances to get tickets in the venue. We decided to take a chance and took that long trip to Yelahanka aerodrame from this end of the city. After all this ordeal, we got tickets finally. And the show is worth all this troubles!

The show started with ballet and maneuvres by Tejas, the light combat aircraft. The IJT that was supposed to follow the line met a minor accident after its tire burst off in runway. Both pilot and fight were safe. Sukhoi, Hanas, Vikas had stolen the hearts with their cute maneuvres. The best was waiting for us then. It was synchronous aerobatics by nine aircrafts of Surya Kiran team of Indian Air Force. They painted the sky with Indian tricolor. Amazing show indeed!

A report on Air Show in Metblog Bangalore is here :
http://bangalore.metblogs.com/archives/2007/02/metal_birds_in_air.phtml

Photo credits: Metblogs Bangalore.
My mobile camera isn't that swift operating gizmo, So I am using the photos from metblog post.
(Discalimer: Posting the photos from metblog without getting written permission from them. It is not for commercial purposes and intended to share with my blogosphere)

Here I am!

2007-02-07T11:03:00.000+05:30

This is one of my favorite song. Thanks Prits for quoting it.

Click on Read More link to see the lyrics.

Here I am - this is me
There's no where else on earth I'd rather be
Here I am - it's just me and you
And tonight we make our dreams come true

It's a new world - it's a new start
It's alive with the beating of young hearts
It's a new day - it's a new plan
I've been waiting for you
Here I am

Here we are - we've just begun
And after all this time - our time has come
Ya here we are - still goin' strong
Right here in the place where we belong

Here I am - this is me
There's no where else on earth I'd rather be
Here I am - it's just me and you
And tonight we make our dreams come true

Here I am - next to you
And suddenly the world is all brand new
Here I am - where I'm gonna stay
Now there's nothin standin in our way
Here I am - this is me

Cheers!

2007-02-02T10:05:00.000+05:30

Champagne gives an exotic experience!

How about an Tequila shot before that?

Puzzled with random pictures of exotic drinks?! These are ingredients of our yesterday night's party in 13th floor :)

Statutory warning:
Drinking alcohol is injurious to health. It can be lethal too.
If you care about the effects of what's going in your body, do read this.

The Death Valley!

2007-01-31T16:43:00.000+05:30

A business idea born in an individual's mind crosses several stages to become a successful product. Assume our guy conceives a business idea, he needs a round of initial investment called seed investments. In order not to liquidate his ownership over the company for want of funds, he goes to an Angel investor. After making a prototype of the dream product with seed investment as R&D product, he need to scale up to meet the stringent quality requirements/market requirements. Then Venture capitalists jumps in for his help. The main difference betweenVC's and AI's is VC's take part substantially in business development. VC's share calculated risks among their communities, you could have seen a consortium of VC's bail in start ups . Break. Assume our guy caught the market attention with a disruptive product. If product is compelling, the market expands like a nuclear fission reaction.

That's entry of Death Valley for the start ups. The death valley is a huge desert in California that finished off many pioneers who ventured towards west coast in horse clad wagons. The company moves from R&D paradigm to manufacturing paradigm. The company need to scale up to produce a prototype that can be manufactured in large scale. The ballpark numbers of the death valley in high techstart up business is around US $ 300-500 Million. For a successful chip company with market disruptive product, getting the initial 100's of million $ revenue is easy.

The company loses it sheen as R&D house in death valley. The typical problems associated with death valley are management issues like scaling up production, distribution of the manufactured goods, change the manufacturing process to increase the form factor, improve the efficiency of manufacturing and supply chain problems. The engineering community that had been attracted by the R&D nature of thestart up start leaving this mighty ship. The attrition increases. Most of the start ups merges or get acquired by big sharks in industry at the death valley.

The big sharks had seen this valley, had crosses this quagmire successfully. They will have sufficient management bandwidth set already to solve the issues associated with scaling and manufacturing. The big sharks need innovative products. Thestart ups with innovative products need management power of big sharks. That's the reason for big merger and acquisition going on in the industry.

This is one of my discussion topic with my mentor the other day. I am confident that setting up a start up is no more a-mere-dream. I am concentrating on learning to innovate with the knowledge that went inside bits and pieces. I am more interested in learning up the issues faced by the corporation while scaling up. After all this, establishing a successful business conglomerate is not under one individual's purview, it has to be a perfect team event. A perfect team is mix of people with right attitude with big visions and dreams.

Cheers!

2007-01-30T18:40:00.000+05:30

CONGRATS DEAR

& CHEERS!

WISH YOU A LOVELY MARRIED LIFE!

Met my mentor!

2007-01-30T12:14:00.001+05:30

One Zen adage that I believe religiously is:
“When student is ready, teacher will appear”

I was longing to meet my teacher for life/mentor for my career. All through the years, my internal search is predominantly on evaluating my decisions and behavior and set the bio compass towards proper direction: to lead a life with right attitude and to leave a legacy behind my death. I hope I am developing the right attitude behavior over the years. And felt this stand is vindicated when my Team Leader gave a recommendation for me. Here are his words as in my LinkedIn profile:

“Other than sound technical ability and rich experience in embedded systems, Nirek’s biggest strength is his excellent attitude, because of his enthusiasm to take additional responsibilities and commitment to see the end results, managing Nirek becomes easier. He is an excellent team player and knows very clearly what exactly he wants to achieve. Because of his great attitude I see him as a colleague and involve him in technical decision making. On his leadership ability he leads by setting example and is straight forward.”

A quick note on what I am going through now. I am working with a company which is under financial crunches. They are winding up Indian operations. I am one of retained team members in India. I had been offered a role in advanced technology team in my company’s global operation. The catch is the team is going to work from our china center. That means I should relocate to China. There are certain risks associated with relocating to china. The financial crunches surrounding the company are still not broken down. The motivation of the team in startup in the group is not guaranteed. I like to bet on my manager as he is very capable person who can turn a good product in no time. His management capabilities are above par. He is very genuine to me till now.

As per my manager’s advice, I started looking for other job offers in Bangalore. I spoke to few companies and got confirmation for job offer from them. There is only one company which I consider as my prospective future employer. I met my mentor in that company. He is the managing director of the company’s division in Bangalore. He is Gung Ho about his product. His vision and knowledge of the industry is a big library to learn. His enthusiasm caught up with me the moment I met him. He has two successful startups experience in his career history. He had invited me for a friendly chat. It was more like a class room experience on startups, business technologies, Public versus private investments and I was listening to him. After the lengthy chat, I was trying to recollect the discussion to details and could jot down most of it. I will share that discussion with my views in future posts.

I could easily accept this offer and quit my company. But then I don't want to do that now, I want to give my current company as first preference. I am evaluating the risks associated with me moving to china for my career now.

Love for mother land!

2007-01-28T19:33:00.000+05:30

We have more than 180 countries in the world;
India has 28 states and 7 union territories;
Tamilnadu has more than 39 districts and numerous sub districts, towns and villages.
If we assign a probability for a child to be born in a particular town in a particular district in a country in this world, it will be a miniscule fraction 0.000005085… I am quoting these numbers to stress on the randomness associated with our place of birth.

Have you ever wondered?
Why did we born in this country with myriad language and mighty culture?
How could we express our complex emotional attachments towards our mother land?
How could we repay to the country which nurtured our dreams?
Can we live forever happily in some foreign land?
How could we express the psychic excitement when we go back to our home town?

Love for mother land is an inherent character. The patriotic feeling can’t be pushed into an individual’s mind. I was seeing the movie ‘Kannathil Muthamittal’ today. It is a legendary Tamil movie by director Mani Ratnam. The movie’s plot revolves around a kid’s search for her identity & her birth-mother, a mother’s love for her country & her patriotism. The background of the story is Tamil Elam fights in Srilanka.

Few thoughts on Tamil Elam fights:
The chaos prevalent in Srilanka is because of miscalculated political moves by yesteryear’s Sinhalese racists
The war can’t be the final solution to Tamil Elam. Wars offer an intermediate passage towards the amicable solution.
Any racist oppression on minorities will have huge repercussions on mainland.

Few multimedia centric business models

2007-01-28T18:34:00.000+05:30

Disclaimer: This article is written based on my understanding of the companies and their product lines. Please check the web about the accuracy of the statistics, if you are referring to them. And these are my personal opinions.

Historically media centric product requirements had driven the DSP business. The DSP industry came into existence because of the marketing push from TI. TI spuns the new market now and then with their unique innovation. "I would also say that TI has had a positive impact on our business, in that they are stimulating the market. They have a lot of great technologies as well as excellent management and vision, and they are innovating and opening or at least stimulating new markets" says VP-sales of their competitor. Along with DSP silicon businesses, many techonological startups has seen their genesis, growth and success also. These companies business is based on developing and selling intellectual properties(IP) on multimedia codecs on particular DSPs.

Here are few success stories and few stories waiting to be etched in business history.

This company has often been featured while discussing IP based business model in DSP world. It was started in 2001 and had weathered almost all ups and downs in the industry till today. Now has more than 200 employees in India. With the close network of this company, he could garner a good name in high-value quality driven markets based on IPs on different multimedia codecs. Their major product idealogy was to sell hi-quality codecs till 2004, then slowly shifted the focus towards bigger system developments like IP video phone, Pesonal media players, streaming media devices, VoIP devices, essentially media centric consumer electronics devices. The revenue were around 4M US$ for 2005.

"Multimedia codecs IP business is profitable, but not a high revenue generating one" are the words of a young startup's co-founder. I spoke to this team last week. Their business model is again similar to the earlier company, but from a different origin. The team is right now very small, only five people working in small office,a 'garage-based-startup'. Their business model is debatable 'you still have enough room for startups to play around in IP based codecs business'. But their last year's revenue does the marketing. A big silicon vendor has licensed their codecs. Wow! isn't it enough to shut up the critics!

Before looking any further, let see few products offerings from these kind of companies:

Internet based streaming devices for entertainment (sling box, streaming servers, IPTV...)
Digital video broadcast (DTV)
Mobile multimedia devices (video players, PMPs, DVB-H...)

And the big daddy of all this business is this . It was started in mid 90's and went to IPO in early 2000. Now it is a huge company with lot of revenues coming from services work. They started as high value research based product development company, eventually stepped into services based on the customer requirements. Service business indeed found to be the best business model for any Indian IT company! You could find any business products and services in embedded and networking domain business in their offerings. Any startup eyeing for IPO route can't avoid these guys business lines. Well proven and viable, scalable and perfect fit for Indian IT climate.

The next company is a big success story in recent times. It was co-founded by 10-15 project leads from earlier one in 2001. Their growth was linked with ARM processors penetration to embedded market. For dummies, ARM is a micro processor similar to Intel processors, but for easy programmability, signal processing capabilites and soft RTLs. This company has proved the capabilities of ARM in video processing for the first time. It's a wonderful idea to piggyback with ARM's growth in embedded market. Their codecs become popular as more silicon companies started using ARM. Their clientele is very impressive before the selloff. It was sold at around US$ 33M.

Another company from same origin is this. The top architects from the earlier company came out after its acquisition and started this company. Here the business concentration is little different- media centred but in different domains like IPTV, surveillance, biomedical equipments, automotive safety equipments and other consumer electronic devices. I had spoken to their top managers today. Their past success is their visiting card. They could scale up their team to 20+ people in hardly 5 months of existence. That's impressive. Yet to strike any business deals, hope to see them in action soon.

Budday!

2007-01-22T10:39:00.000+05:30

Not mine....
but janurary 23rd is birthday of someone dear to me :)

HAPPY BIRTHDAY DEAR!

Nandhi Hills!

2007-01-20T20:31:00.000+05:30

Me and my friend ventured into exploring Nandhi Hills early morning today. We left Bangalore by five in morning. When we started in bike, the climate was normal and an absolute clear sky above us. Barely thirty minutes on the road, we were covered by dense fog with minimum visibility. Wow, thats amazing part of the trip! We were in bike for two hours in that dense fog, strolling very slowly and taking 'chai' break a couple of times. Nandhi hills is a weekend outing spot near Bangalore. I had been to this place earlier also, but this trip was amazing and the best. Nandhi hills has some fort, guest house, bull temple and few restaurants on the top. The place has many trails and the walkpath is designed like a maze. The maze is best explored in your own creative way. Just walk on whatever way you feel like and believe me, Nandhi Hills trails will give you a very different impressions on your different visits.

I have uploaded few selected snaps from the trip on my flickr. Here is the slideshow.

Yesterday, we were having dinner in a north indian restaurant (Queen's) in church street near MG Road. The restaurant has a great ambience, designed like those old mud houses with terracota symbols. Our serving of paneer tikka had this decorated lamp made out of tomato skin. It looked very cute and was resembling those halloween symbols!

A Vagabond Strolls on - 7

2007-01-19T15:59:00.000+05:30

It does gonna be a year since I landed in this exotic city - Bangalore. Here climate is rocking, and I had seen one full climate season now. The winter cold is abated now and these days, we are witnessing lovely and adorable early morning fogs. Fogs give a special fresh look to the lovely mornings in this city. Few 'foggy' moments as seen by my cam are here.

I was going through two articles from different parts of world, which has a hilarious correlation. With all due respect, I am paraphrasing one of my friend's wishes. He got bugged up being addicted to emails, phones, orkut and all latest software developments, he wants to break free and be natural. Later I found another article about a girl who had broken free from world and started living in animal world from her childhood. Now people had found her in a deep forest and trying to rehabilitate her. May be this friend of mine should consider this girl's way of life to run away from this new-world-computer-menaces ;)

The emergence and threat from chinese economy is often quoted and discussed in Indian business forums. I was looking for the reversal of topic in chinese newspapers and found this interesting article "India's economy is unlikely to continue growing at over 9 percent due to its hefty fiscal deficit and creaky infrastructure, global credit rating agency Moody's Investors Service said." as reported by a chinese national newspaper. The words usage in this critique on Indian economy is harsh, based on the facts are stated by some foreign investor services firm.

Thalaivaa!

2007-01-16T12:15:00.000+05:30

'Pokiri' film is a great treat for all vijay fans! I watched it on first day itself.
Thalaivaa! Pokiri padam kalakkals!

The story plot is perfect fit for vijay. All song sequences has some similarities with the old hit songs of vijay. We could sense Prabhu deva's unique dance style in choreography. Vadivelu had left an indelible comedy touch in the movie; in one sequence, he mocks at actor surya by enacting Surya-Asin fame dance 'Suttum vizhi sudarey'. It is a masala movie; don't expect a big logical story sequence in it. It is very much for light hearted, not much senti'mental' scenes. This movie is in par with Ghilli, the previous block buster from Vijay.

iPhone!

2007-01-10T15:08:00.000+05:30

Wow! I love this!

Apple's Steve Jobs has unveiled the most awaited gizmo today. This ultimate digital device is the convergence of various multimedia applications with iPod. iPhone is the name of the new avatar from Apple family. I am not a gizmo freak, but even then I love to own this.

Photos Link; More photos
News Credit: Declan McCullagh/CNET News.com

Why I like iPhone?

It is very sleek and stylish
It has 2MP camera
It runs on Mac OS X. We have an apple OS fans club here in my office.
It has 'magical' multi-touch interface. Apple's rockin in user interfaces dude.

Waiting to see it hit the market soon! Isn't it tempting? How do you like this?

I am a Green Lantern!

2007-01-09T18:13:00.000+05:30

Dunno who the hecks are Green Lanterns? But I am a Green Lantern :)

Here are the results of SuperHero Quiz for me.

You are Green Lantern

Green Lantern		85%
Superman		80%
Iron Man		70%
Hulk		70%
Robin		62%
Wonder Woman		60%
Supergirl		60%
Spider-Man		50%
The Flash		45%
Batman		45%
Catwoman		25%

Hot-headed. You have strong
will power and a good imagination.

Inspiration: Superman is here

[+] Last week, I had been to a house party. It was given by my friend for his marriage. Few photos from the party are here

Safe bloggin!

2007-01-06T13:04:00.000+05:30

We all love our blogs. While publishing a blogpost, we take few things for granted. Those can potentially fall under prevention of copyright infringement laws. I was embedding lot of images/ youtube videos from internet to fit the theme of the post. But my sole intention while doing so is not to infringe those artist's or creator's copyright and it is purely for non-commerical purposes. Few brickbats I had received now and then made me realise these mistakes.

Here are few do's and dont's for safe blogging.

Don't embed an image available in internet into your post. If you want to do so, please read that site's copyright notice. Usually web admins allow embedding their images with conditions to give them a link and a note of credit for images. If you want to use those images in your homepage, you got to download them, upload to your image server and use it in your post.

Youtube is becoming the most popular entertainment option for netizens. But youtube videos are big copyright infringement violations bomb waiting to explode anytime. When you embed a youtube video into your blog, you are indirectly broadcasting the original video without the content owner's prior information/permission. Do you know, if someone use film songs as background music in their youtube videos, then the music company which has copyright for those audios can sue them.

Don't give links to business corporate houses unnecessarily. And better don't mention their names explicitly when you want to write about them. It is good manners not to write about their business models explicitly. Don't mention any names in your posts, unless you want them to be indexed by google. We got to respect the views of lot of people who don't like to see critiques about them.

Don't publish your or your friends photos on your blog. There are lot of unethical hackers in this world who can use the images for wrong purposes. You can even see morphed version of your photos floating in web mocking at you.

Better have a separate online identity. It is not going to cost you anything more. And don't give out your contact details. Even incase you commit few mistakes, it can save your soul!

Rock your life!

2007-01-05T10:01:00.001+05:30

The relationship between a guy and a girl is complex to be framed in few rules. Love is not guy's ultimate aim in life; Having a caring lover is greatest achievement or rather dream for a girl. The difference in both perspective is more than usually expected. Few funny quotes from guys who got frustrated with their girls:

"All girls are cute chicks as long as they are in distance"
"You can face a problem, but you can't live with a problem, right?"

Even though guys crib a lot about their girls, ultimately we need that girl's love. We need someone to grow with, grow old with, share our visions with and share the love with. I am getting a perception that girls will never accept to their mistakes. Ultimately at some point of time, the guy has to adjust to that character of girls and keep the life boat rocking.

As often quoted, ogden nash words on love and life:
“To keep your marriage brimming,
With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you're wrong, admit it;
Whenever you're right, shut up”

Few of my observations about life. You are most welcome to argue/comment on this.

Don't take your life partner for granted. Just because he/she accepts your proposal, don't take them for granted.

Ego fights can't be avoided. But someone should be matured enough to break the ice and smile after the fights.

Don't go with expectation for love from your partner. When you tie a nuptial knot, say onto yourself, that you will love your partner all the time, irrespecive of what mistake he/she does.

For guys, step into your girl's shoes to see the problem from their view point. And most important, don't expect her to step into your shoes to see your view point. Afterall if your girl win in the argument, you win in your life.

New Year 2007!

2007-01-01T12:43:00.000+05:30

Happy New Year dear folks!

Hope you guys had a rocking start on this new year! We went to Hogenakkal yesterday. It was a nice, relaxing and memorable trip. And then we were hanging out till midnight to welcome the new year. Sad that all bars and restaurants in Bangalore were ordered to close at 10.30 PM, well before midnight. Cafe coffee day outlets were open till midnight. And as I heard MG road and brigade roads were flooded with people yesterday night. Yo, Bangalore rocks on new year!

Few photos here

Happy New Year!

2006-12-30T12:51:00.000+05:30

Wish You All A Happy New Year!

Wish you all a wonderful blast on new year eve! I am yet to plan my new year eve; may be roaming out with my dear friend, having dinner outside and shouting till midnight. Lets see if I get a truly different experience during this new year!

[+] It's our dear Visi's birthday today!

Go there to wish our dear inspirational bloggie, kutti-ponnu, dear girl of all bloggie buddies,
a pro photographer girl and home of different talents.

Have a great year ahead dear!

[+] Happy New Year to all folks!

Demotivation!

2006-12-29T12:16:00.002+05:30

What I am witnessing here is a slow death of a company. Really frustrating and demotivating!

The founders of this company had written a success story before. Lot of things went wrong in this venture, though it is not yet discarded as closed chapter. People are trying their best to secure the venture funding for the new business. I am recording here the learnings from what I felt as wrong things happened to this company and their wrong decisions.

Without clear product vision, the company should not expand operations. The past business success is definitely not a guarantee for the future success!

Managing multiple centers for research and development shouldn't be followed at the earlier stages of a company. Because it needs enormous management bandwidth. That wastage of resource can be utilised for other constructive busines development purposes.

Top end management should work from same office of engineers. That keeps the team motivated enough to achieve.

Teams shouldn't be scaled up unless revenues allow it. Services business needs swift team scaling up, which can be avoided in the earlier stages.

Don't bite the pie which you can't swallow; don't enter the market which you can't manage.

The nature of work/product should be unique. If it is not a blue ocean, clearly mark the product differentiation strategy and stick to it.

The earlier resources should work with similar idealogues. Running a viable business model should be their sole concentration for the formative years.

The perfect team should have a visionary, a manager, a finance guy, a business development manager, a technical architect with clear product engineering knowledge. It is definitely a team work, rather than individual contribution.

Explore all business oppurtunities like 'your competitor can be your client also'

Why me?

2006-12-23T18:39:00.000+05:30

One wild moment, I thought it was SHE! Not always what we wish happens right?! But anyway have fun while reading this sms conversation between me and some unknown mobile number in India. It is very similar to the spam attack on me before.

X: Hai ma how r u ? Take care
Me: Who is this? I dont have your number in my address book. I am so-and-so
X: Its hard to act as loving, to one whom you really do not love. But its harder to act as not loving the one, whom you really love...
Me: ohh man, thats a good philosphy. but I stil dunno who you are. can you tell me that first? I am sorry i dont have ur number in my address book.

X: Every sunset gives us one day less to live! But every sunrise give us, one day more to hope! So, hope for the best. Gud eve
Me: super thathuvam! thayavu senchu neenga yarunu sollirangala? en per nirek....I dont encourage wrong addressed sms-es. may be u r sending to wrong one:-]
X: Good friends are like pc program they enter ur life scan ur problem edit ur tension download solutions delete ur worries and save u
Me: thanks man! that shows u r a techie...are you listening or getting my sms-es. I dunno who are you? lemme first know that before sending next forward sms

X: I know tat u r Nirek working in so-and-so company wat ma
Me: then who are you?
X: Its 2 gud 2 me 2 bad and 2 bad 2me 2 gud &my silence doesn't mean i 4get u my disappearance doesn't mean i don't care abt u b'coz u always in my heart as friend
Me: yeah. u dont pick up the call and not telling who are you. I am sorry. I am not interested in chatting with anonymous guys....thanks

X: Heart receive luv mind receive wisdom hand receive gifts and only spl people receive my sms but u forget me and hurt
Me: oh my goodness. I dunno who are you and then how can i forget you. :-] you shd be kidding when you say i hurt you...comeon...
X: New yr new plans new effort i pray god to give a success ful 4 u my swt friend
Me: thanks dear. happy xmas and new year for you too...whats ur new year plans? but I shd tell you this- i didnt get a heck of it when u said new yr,new plans;-)

X: Gud friends r those who care without hesitations who luv without limitations and who remember even without communication bye hurt me but remember me adv (...)
Me: I know a dear :-]fren to whom i dont speak now, or rather she stopped talking to me now. is that you?
X: Little is wat i know abt u lot is wat i like abt u success is wat i wish to u remembrance is wat i expect from u
Me: chance illey. you shd be poet for sure. semma thathuvama poyiringa...kalakkals!

X: Hey i know abt her but i don't want to be
Me: onnum puriyilley. is it she?
X: No i am not her
Me: Enna nadakkuthu ingey. if you are not her, then i am not interested in talking to you anonymously. why can't u pickup the call??

X: Feel gud wen somebody mis u feel better wen somebody luvs u but feel best wen somebody never 4gets u but very bad and sad wen someone who is very dear 4get u
Me: ohh my goodness. I dunno you for heaven sake. enough of teasing...if you dont tell me ur name, I dont reply ur next sms

Merry X-Mas!

2006-12-22T18:39:00.000+05:30

Merry Christmas dear folks!

[+] It's our dear Arun's birthday today. Go there to wish him too!

[+] Few photos taken during our Christmas celebration with Ananya kids during our Dream A Dream computer program.

Frustration!

2006-12-22T18:08:00.000+05:30

Are you getting bogged down by something?
Is everything irritates you?
Are you frustrated to the core?

The best thing to do now is to listen to ROCK songs. The rock genre is characterised by loud noises, bass guitar and lyrics full of negativity. I liked this two songs from Linkin Park gang. Thank god! I have a better life than those hero/heroines in the songs :)

Here is the first one for you, 'Somewhere I belong'

When this began
I had nothing to say
And I'd get lost in the nothingness inside of me
I was confused
And I'd let it all out to find
That I'm not the only person with these things in mind
Inside of me
When all the vacancy the words revealed
Is the only real thing that I've got left to feel
Nothing to loose
Just stuck, hollow and alone
And the fault is my own and the fault is my own

I wanna heal, I wanna feel, What I thought was never real
I want to let go of the pain I felt so long
Erase all the pain till its gone
I wanna heal, I wanna feel, Like Im close to something real
I want to find something I've wanted all along
Somewhere I belong

And I've got nothing to say
I can't believe I didnt fall right down on my face
I was confused
Looking everwhere only to find
That it's not the way I had imagined it all in my mind
So what am I
What do I have but negativity
Cause I cant justify the way everyone is looking at me
Nothing to loose
Nothing to gain, hollow and alone
And the fault is my own and the fault is my own

I will never know
Myself until I do this on my own
And I will never feel
Anything else, until my wounds are healed
I will never be anything
till I break away from me
I will break away
I'll find myself today

Then second song is with much more aggression than the first, 'Crawling'

crawling in my skin
these wounds they will not heal
fear is how I fall
confusing what is real
there's something inside me that pulls beneath the surface
consuming/confusing
this lack of self-control I fear is never ending
controlling/I can't seem
to find myself again
my walls are closing in
(without a sense of confidence and I'm convinced that there's just too much pressure to take)
I've felt this way before
so insecure

discomfort, endlessly has pulled itself upon me
distracting/reacting
against my will I stand beside my own reflection
it's haunting how I can't seem...
to find myself again
my walls are closing in
(without a sense of confidence and I'm convinced that there's just too much pressure to take)
I've felt this way before
so insecure

Go ahead! keep your speakers in full volume when you play this! Having a sadistic relaxation! Sadism is what comes out evident in rock songs, I hate it though!

Media World!

2006-12-21T20:49:00.000+05:30

Where the multimedia business worlds make their green bucks?

Don't just skip it as one more lengthy posts! Do critique my analysis on the media world.

First the end customer in mind of everyone is clear – the common man. Almost all people are equipped with Television. The TV is in itself a big success which gave inroads for media world to enter the common man with so much ease. The media houses took its genesis after the invention of TV. The second best push came from Personal Computers. Big corporation rise with this like Intel, Microsoft, IBM… Next, Communication moguls invented, discovered, then reinvented and rediscovered themselves to put the mobile phone on the common man’s hand. That’s the next big success story in the media world. Then came the second wave of media houses in the name of communication service providers.

In the other side of the world, in deep forests of Silicon Valley university forests, some geeks came up with invention of media era –Internet. Internet has been readily accepted by the different people, as I would say. Emails and information burst made the internet the people friendly. As more and more people adapt to internet, now internet has become immortal and eternal entity in all people’s life.Having seen the two ends of big business empire – People with TV, PC , mobile phones and Internet- now is the time to analyze deeply the different media business models exists in the world which revolves around them.

Internet through fixed cables:
The demand for more bandwidth to access internet fuels this business model. The universities research crew suggests lot of alternatives to copper cables like fiber- to-home, which had been already laid and arguably the cheapest way to push internet to each home.Corporations like Conexant, Broadcom… make the innovative products based on DSL technology. They sell the hardware like modem to people. Companies on fiber-to-home products ?

Wireless Data access:
The mobile internet access is kind of innovative idea on its own. If you are one of people who gets daunted by computers and internet, then it is one more nightmare for you, it’s like internet tag-tailing you wherever you go. People had been offered with different ways to access internet on the go. WiMax, WiFi a.k.a Hotspots: It is the wireless counterpart to DSL. The maximum bandwidth with which you can access the data is still and will always be less than wireline modems. This business has two faces, the hardware makers and the hotspots provider for the people; this is where ISP jumps in to eat their pie. Mobile phone based internet: The mobile phone spectrum available is very less to provide broadband data access. Then researchers spent a lot of time in inventing different ways to reach the broadband data rate. The GSM people evolve with different generations viz 2G, 2.5G, 3G, 3.5G, 4G… CDMA counterparts also push more data with CDMA, CDMA 2000…With the infrastructure ready to supply the enough data access to the people, the hardware OEMs came up with different versions of computer laptops, palm tops, simputers, tablet PC, blackberry devices. We can see green bucks flowing in the each direction.

Media content providers to Internet:
The people who had tasted the conventional media entertainment with TVs, are now baffled with neo-media entertainment source –Internet. The people need for more entertainment in Internet in the form of music, videos, news… in turns fuels the broadband hardware and supply business. And we can see when more bandwidth is provided to people, the demand of more entertainment in Internet also rises which in turn fuels the media content provider businesses. The media content providers for the internet evolved in the time. YouTube is the corporate face for video streaming business model. iTunes, Napster, Windows media player, Real Player… have become the audio and other media content providers for internet.The recent (rags to riches story overnight) innovative player is video streaming is Sling Media. The content from conventional television are digitized and sent via Internet to people through streaming servers.

Media content providers to Mobile phones:
The video streaming through internet can cater to this market segment too. But it eats up the mobile spectrum, which is a big resource not to be wasted for entertainment purposes. That need gave birth to direct digital broadcast to the mobile phones. The mobile phones are becoming freakier and techie these days. The mobile TV is one more added feature to your cute handset. To receive the broadcasted signals, your phone needs a tuner and the hardware to understand the digital signal and play it on your mobile phone screen. The single chip solution for tuner and decoder has a big potential. This market is expected to mature by 2008. This business pie is estimated to be around 27 billions US$ by 2008. The revenue here is shared between the broadcasters (essentially the media houses that do conventional broadcasting and/or communication service providers) and the mobile phone makers. The software makers are also vying to share this pie. It is already a crowded market and everyone wants to jump in here. A big consolidation wave is waiting in the corner.

Satellite Media to people:
Satellite radio operators in US of A are expecting to break even in 2007. The infrastructure requires huge costs than any media providers in this case. WorldSpace is a well known player in satellite radio provider. Direct-to-Home TV broadcasts are already exists in the world. In India, Dish TV, Tata Sky… are few service providers. The DTH receivers can be used to access data from Internet. That means the internet is going to enter your drawing room through one more channel- Satellites. I am not sure any corporate aiming at this pie.

In midst of different business models evolved in the time, we had seen many flop shows too like: Internet through TV. It never picked up because of basic difference in their mode of communication. TV is essentially a broadcast receiver. But for internet, we need to do one-to-one communication, which means we need the feedback channel from the end equipment. TV in PC. People clearly want to have separate devices for entertainment and internet. Satellite mobile phones – Iridium project collapse is the biggest failure ever in communication world.

Lot of allied business thrived in the sidelines of these big bucks.
Multimedia codec supply business. More the digitization of the analog speech, audio, image and video happen and more the need for the digitization arises, these companies can survive. But there is a need for them to rise in the value chain to supply end-to-end products. Small players can compete here. Electronic devices ODMs and OEMs. Whatever be the product, these guys help are necessary to see them in store shelf. Highly competitive field, clearly ear marked as Red oceans. VLSI and ASIC design. Again these are need of the hours. Same as codecs business, small players are competing here. Of course big sharks take away a lot of revenue here. Customizable processors like DSPs are necessary to reach the market fast. Might not be the final and best solution for all problems, but it saves lot of research time.

Where did my money go?

2006-12-21T15:26:00.000+05:30

Indian equity market is very volatile these days. FIIs and Mutual funds are playing high number game in markets. The sensex and Nifty fluctuates in high percentages daily. There are still very little room left for small investors in equity market now. I had a virtual investments for one lakh INR on few sensex large market capitalisation companies from April 2006.

Wanna see their returns now?

(click on the image to see the details). All are in red and negative returns except for few banks and Reliance Industries stock!
Man....where did my money go?

Winter!

2006-12-17T19:18:00.000+05:30

The chill breeze;
the shivering bike rides;
the comfy airconditioned office cubes;
the heavenly warmth of bed linen;
the early morning fogs;
sans lovely girl's warm kiss;
Miss you!

Winter is season of pleasant surprises. Indian winters are never as cold as northern world. There is no snow, no shovelling of roads, no blinding fogs and no heavy sized jackets. It is pleasantly cold. Bangalore at times surprises me beyond my imagination. Winter in Bangalore is slowly catching up. I hail from a place with hot climate all year around; so never want to wear a jacket even if cold wind chills down to the spine; want to roam around and catch this cold breeze ever inside my heart and soul.

Life takes roller coaster ride all over the time; hope keeps me going and kicking alive. I hope this winter brings much more surprises to all our life!

Why do we fall in love?

2006-12-15T23:43:00.000+05:30

I had a love break recently. Then it was my friend's turn. I doubt whether anyone left in this world who didn't undergo this pain of missing his/her love. Love and girl is always mystery for a guy. right?! There were always mixed feelings coming from english pop world. Here are few reactions:

Robbie Williams in 'Something Stupid' claims it a stupidity to say 'I love you'

I know I stand in line
Until you think you have the time
To spend an evening with me
And if we go someplace to dance
I know that there's a chance
You won't be leaving with me

Then afterwards we drop into a quiet little place
And have a drink or two
And then I go and spoil it all
By saying something stupid
Like I love you

Ofcourse the famous pathos from Bryan Adams in 'Please Forgive me'. I know a friend of mine (gal) who hates Bryan adams for singing this song. This song may sound great, but I felt sorry for him.

It still feels like our first night together
Feels like the first kiss and
It's gettin' better baby
No one can better this
I'm still hold on and you're still the one
The first time our eyes met it's the same feelin' I get
Only feels much stronger and I wanna love ya longer
You still turn the fire on

So If you're feelin' lonely.. don't
You're the only one I'd ever want
I only wanna make it good
So if I love ya a little more than I should

Please forgive me I know not what I do
Please forgive me I can't stop lovin' you
Don't deny me

Next, it is a pure aggression from NSync in 'Bye Bye Bye'

Hi, I'm doin' this tonight,
You're probably gonna start a fight.
I know this can't be right.
Hey baby come on,
I loved you endlessly,
When you weren't there for me.
So now it's time to leave and make it alone
I know that I can't take no more
It ain't no lie
I wanna see you out that door
Baby, bye, bye, bye...

Bye Bye
Don't wanna be a fool for you
Just another player in your game for two
You may hate me but it ain't no lie,
Baby, bye, bye, bye...
Bye Bye
Don't really wanna make it tough,
I just wanna tell you that I had enough.
It might sound crazy,
But it ain't no lie,
Baby, bye, bye, bye

Guntur!

2006-12-15T14:41:00.001+05:30

It was my best friend's marriage in Guntur on Thursday. We felt odd before going to Guntur for travelling without knowing their language. I thought it will be one more under-developed Andhra village as seen in Telegu movies. Now I had to change my idea. Guntur is a well developed municipal corporation. It was looking more like tier 2 cities (salem, Trichy...) in Tamilnadu.

All big retailer groups like Future group, Subhisikasha, Trinethra have chain of stores around the town

Guntur is famous for red chillies and Tobacco. The cigars here aren't looking like our poor-breed-indian-cigars 'Beedi'. It was more like cuban cigars, long and big, could not be even held in mouth. Later I learnt that Guntur's virginia tobacco is of world standard. Wow!

Delhi public school has a branch in Guntur. Man! DPS is like one big happening in education sector, they have 100 odd branches in 17 nations all around the world. I doubt whether I have seen enough DPS in Tamilnadu before!

The town is surrounded by villages based on agrarian economy- Paddy, chillies, tobacco....

Except for telegu name boards, I could see similarities to my native place in the city. It was more like travelling back again to my town and native village.

Thayir sadam and morru mulagai rocks dude! (Curd rice in combination with chilly)

In lighter sense, the place is full of cinemas dude. All tamil movies are running here, but dubbed version. The movies which fared poor in tamilnadu are all sensational hits here dude (atleast they claim so in their posters). Kovai brothers has become pokkiri brothers, vallavan has become vallava. I saw posters of Thimiru, Alai, Em-mahan.... the kollywood fellows has found a convinent market in Andhra for all masala and crappy tamil movies :)

Marriage went very well, well organised. There was a live webcast through yahoo messenger for this function(Dunno how many seen it!). Marriage hall was air-conditioned centrally (That saves the poor bride and bride groom from sweating and souring hot climate outside). Few photos here

I saw this art work in our guest house there. Liked it! This picture depicts some celestial girl rambha or menaka seducing the saint vishwamitra!

What's there in Wine?

2006-12-13T01:08:00.000+05:30

Yep, I tasted wine today - my first ever stint with alcoholic drinks. My friend and I had a great three course meal with wine in Mughalai restaurant here. I had a special crush towards wine for long time. Recently I got inspiration to taste wines after reading an article in 'Business Today' supplement about wine tasting experiences and different wines available in India. Tasted Grover wineyards 'La Reserve' red wine; this product has won many accolades and fans worldwide and considered as 'the best new world's red wine'.

"Wine is constant proof that God loves us and loves to see us happy." Benjamin Franklin.
"God created wine and women, so that man could atleast own one" Anonymous

My first experience with tasting wine isn't that great. I had wine with chicken tikka, Tikka tasted better than wine!
It was tasting more like 'Listerine' the popular mouth wash.
Do you guys remember the volumetrics analysis we did during our school days in chemistry labs? Have you ever had experience of tasting the chemical liquids accidentaly while sucking through the pipette? The wine was tasting like that dude.
I was complaining about the taste to my fren all the while, poor soul!
I took more than two hours to drink a cup of wine. Good we didn't buy one bottle! I would have taken ages to finish it off!

One good thing: I understood the philosphy in the lyrics of Hotel California song for the first time today. May be wine made me a philospher ;)
I love this song. Lyrics are here.

Last thing I remember, I was
Running for the door
I had to find the passage back
To the place I was before
’relax,’ said the night man,
We are programmed to receive.
You can checkout any time you like,
But you can never leave!

A Vagabond Strolls On - 5

2006-12-11T16:09:00.000+05:30

We went with lot of expectations for this movie; but ended up with frustration. The movie has an appropriate sub-title 'the pain'; it is really painful to see such movies with so much pathos. My friend and I walked out in the half of the movie. It started out well, the first song 'veyilodu villayadi' gave a great start. The song kindled all old memories of my childhood. Though I haven't had such a colorful childhood, I could relate to lot of scenes in the song; showing movie in home with lens, mirror, old and waste films which we had picked up from old shops in market. There were not much science involved in that kiddies film projection, but we were so much enthused to show off to friends. Period. The film story revolves around the life of two brothers; the elder one's life running into chaos was shown in detail throughout the movie. Pasupathi indeed has a great role to perform.

We were in madurai yesterday to attend my friend's marriage. We had done with the function in the morning, we couldn't find better way to spend the afternoon other than seeing the movie. We had a lengthy debate on what to look for: whether good cinema theatre with good AC or some theatre which shows good movie. Madurai isn't that hot yesterday, but we ended up choosing good theatre. The cinema hall isn't that bad, but the above boring movie made us feel our decisions are always wrong. Moral: choose good movie pal if you want to have good time.

In last week, my office was still not out of layoff hangovers. No motivation to work hard. Me and my friends gang here were trying our best to engage us with some entertainment. We went to sequel of Dhoom. My requirement from a movie has come down these days; the movie has to be light and entertaining, good songs, no pathos, no sentiments and no need for complex logics. Dhoom fits perfectly in that requirement. The movie plot isn't that complex, predictable. Hrithik has a good role, he undoubtedly steals the limelight from Abhishek. I didn't go with much expectation for this movie. It scores well in entertainment factor. The best thing about this movie is: It attracts lot of crowds in INOX, bangalore. The reasons may be: PVR cinemas are not showing this movie, there may be lot of jobless people like us in Bangalore now to see movies even on weekday afternoon. Yeah I mean it, Dhoom was shown on two screens on INOX for afternoon show that day, both halls was full!

On another day, we went for bowling in 'The Megabowl' in airport road, bangalore. The place was perfect, they even serve drinks to attract more people. It wasn't crowded that much. We weren't great snow bowling players; still we managed to have fun. I even won one game, beating my other two friends in the last throw. I was in second place before the throw, lagging behind the first friend by 13 points. In the first shot, I got nine pins, that left with one pin in the middle. Luckily I got it bowled out in the second shot. Hurray!! that gave a spare throw, I scored 8 points in the spare throw, which marked my win. It was very much like our Indian cricket team entry to semifinals in the last matches; they would have had a bad tournament till then, but Indian cricket team always win those do-or-die matches. Booh!

The other movie 'The Guardian' was also great. The story is about the coast guards, a legend and his student. The love plot added to the main story line gives out a different tinge for the movie. I hadn't seen the previous movies of this hero before, dunno whether he acted earlier or not. The training school scenes are scintillating. We couldn't avoid relating those motivational training scenes to software industry. The softies here too need a kind of training we motivates them about their job. The actions in the sea are inspiring. But more efforts could have been put forth in those night action scenes in rough sea. The climax was very much predictable. These days Hollywood movies are becoming more and more lengthy; this movie is running for three hours.

Wow! I could able to write about all the movies I had seen in the last week. I am warning that these are not professional movie reviews, it is my personal view about these. May be spoilers too. Before ending I am inserting the video of Green Day's song - Boulevard of Broken Dreams. The lyrics are here.

You are The Star!

2006-12-11T13:10:00.000+05:30

This is tarot card prediction for me! Found this test from Visi's.

Hope, expectation, Bright promises.
The Star is one of the great cards of faith, dreams realised

The Star is a card that looks to the future. It does not predict any immediate or powerful change, but it does predict hope and healing. This card suggests clarity of vision, spiritual insight. And, most importantly, that unexpected help will be coming, with water to quench your thirst, with a guiding light to the future. They might say you're a dreamer, but you're not the only one.

To take the test, go here

[+] I am happy because blogger has decided (atlast!) to upgrade my blog to beta.blogger with all yummy features. You can find those futures soon in my blog!

[+] Had a great weekend. Didn't have enough time to put those in words in blog. will write about it soon. Saw bunch of movies Veyil, The Guardian and Dhoom-2.

The Ghost of You!

2006-12-06T11:57:00.000+05:30

Here is the short story that I submitted for the GP's competition. Details are here and here.

A black Aston Martin babe skids past the flyover like a pro Ice skater waltzes on the ballroom. Ashwin gazes at his rear view mirror with a cruel killer instinct. There are red light spots in his mirror; the sleuths are chasing him for the past ten minutes. His gaze lands on the face of the girl, who lay lifeless in his rear seat. Her face is frozen like a pale ice brick; her black eyes are popping out like Chinese candies. The white dress is tainted with dark red blood bleeding near her heart. A gun fire at close range should have killed her. Her dress shows that she was a beautiful damsel in her life before death. Period. His babe speeds past 120 Kmph with onboard cruise control. Ashwin manages to smile suppressing the sublime depression. When he brings his attention back to front side, he barely notices a speeding cross country truck coming towards him. He scrambles, cuts the cruise control, and tries to switch on the collision avoidance system. The blue cockpit screen turns on, the microprocessor pukes out words. “System Failure, Target is too close. Please apply the master break. The button is at the right end of...” Screeeeeeeeeech.

The scene widens to a beautiful beach stretch. There on the white sand, a beautiful couple hugs each other crazily as if they gonna eat each other. That looks like they are in a vacation in Easter Islands. Ashwin is a well built, six feet personality. The yellow Lamborghini parked near them tells that our hero is crazy about cars. “Honey, I love you. Love you madly you know. You were looking like an angel, you see, an angel from heaven in my birthday party yesterday night. Half the eyes in the party hall were looking at you, when we danced. And you know what…My dad had gifted me a new Aston Martin yesterday. I can’t forget this birthday dear. Undoubtedly this is the best birthday ever in my life. Thanks Honey. I Love you sweeto!” The beautiful girl on his cuddle is Lara, the Icy cool girl of this generation. She is a contender for Ms. Earth competition, which is going on in Easter Islands this year. “You are my sweet heart, honey. I will do anything to make your life bliss. Your love makes me feel like a blessed girl, you know”.

Sun is racing past the mountains in horizon, spews out the bright orange rays to color the sky at dusk. Ashwin cell phones kicks up indicating the call from his sweet heart. “Honey, when are you reaching the venue? I am getting tensed. I wanna see your smiling face before entering the stage. It’s the D-day and I am dressed to clinch the title. You should see me and I will wait for you dear. Coooooommmmmmme soon”. Ashwin mind goes blank; all he wants to do is to reach the hall as early as possible. He zips pasts the ongoing traffic in the highway, rushes to the venue like a mad man. He curses himself for leaving Lara alone in the venue and for coming to airport at the wee hours to pick up his new babe. His cockpit screen throws out a beautiful icon with music; it says a new message; he touches the new mail icon. Mail reads as “Son, I am flying to New York with your mom tonight. We will be there with you in Easter Islands day after tomorrow right on the dot for your engagement. Hope you are having fun with your new babe too. Love you dear”.

May be he should not have left her alone. He didn’t know at that time that he never gonna see her lively smile again. When he manages to reach the hall, there is a huge round of applause. “Ladies and Gentleman, Welcome to this grand finale. We have six beauty queens here and the judges for the occasion are….” Ashwin runs like a madman to her personal room at backstage. As he opens the door and steps in; a gunshot; she falls in his hands lifeless; a guy with black jacket runs past him. That guy, our villain, jumps into his car and vanishes in the highway. Ashwin in Aston Martin with his girl is on fire behind that car.

Huge noise; people are pouring in the highway to see that twin crash. Both cars had collided into that mammoth truck. As clock ticks fast, Ashwin gets back his consciousness; manages to come out of his car. With all the depression and aggressiveness in his eyes, he runs towards the other car. That is also badly damaged. People had pulled out the driver. Ashwin runs to see the killer. He couldn’t believe his eyes, “Daaaaaaaaaaaaaddddddddd! Is that you?”

“Shit! Look at Ashwin. He had bed wetted again. Wake him up and take him to the rest room please” Ashwin papa is shouting at his peak to his wife in that wee hours of night. “Don’t worry dear. He is still an eight year old kid. He should be learning to sleep like a guy soon. May be he had a bad nightmare!”

Vijay!

2006-12-05T09:21:00.000+05:30

I am a diehard fan of Actor Vijay. I never had an affinity towards gold chain till I saw him wearing one in Kushi movie. In my subsequent vacation in home, I was nagging my mom to gift me one gold chain like that. I was wearing it for long time, but never could sustain my love for it. Now it should be happily sleeping in some bank locker ;) He didn't have a magical start in his film career, and never got my attention till 4-5 movies. Later, there were some magical hits which added more fans to him Viz Kathalaku Mariyathai, poove unakaga... He dances with ease which won him many accolades, once Farah Khan wondered about his dancing style. His dressing sense is quite different, sobre dresses, yet will have a style element embedded in them. Till now, my wardrobe has some inspiration cues taken from him.

Though a great fan of him, I am not crazy to see his stupid boring movies. I am not the first-day-first-show style fan. I will go with review from friends. Tamil tinseltown always needs two polarities to keep its business brimming. Earlier it was MGR-Sivaji, Rajini-Kamal, now Vijay- ?. If you take a look at the user messages displayed at bottom of screen in Sun Music telecast, there is always war of words between Vijay's and Ajith's fans. Can't stop laughing on seeing some sms-es like this:

"Thalai Ajith, Good Morning"
"Ajith than tamil movie-nu thalai"
"Vijay is next super star"
"Ajith than adutha kamal"......

Here are two classical melodies from Vijay:

A Vagabond Strolls On - 4

2006-12-03T13:18:00.000+05:30

After blood bath, the headcount in my company came down drastically. You know what the problem is- the motivation for the rest of the guys to work is lacking badly. Hope things improve in forthcoming days here. I am happy that I am part of our new spinoff company which will work on embedded markets with much more vigour. On last friday, most of my colleagues were out to attend a conference. Me and my fren decided to show our presence in that conference and then scoot off for movie. We watched 'Casino Royale' on friday in Inox.

You would have heard enough people cribbing about the new bond movie that this is not like regular bond movies. My feedback is not cribbing, but go-green signal for it. I love the movie and James bond is more humane and real life guy in this movie. The new bond Daniel Craig has down to earth personality, more macho than Pierce Brosnan. Pierce did a fair deal for James Bond role in bedroom smooches and while giving poses for photographs. The stunts in this movie are more macho than any other before (though I have a grudge that there are not enough fights, thats the other side). I was very happy when Bond had a love break in the movie. Wow! thats fantastic story line you see. Bond shouting at Ms.M that 'She had left me' and then cooling down and understand her love for him was true. Wow! I love the movie for this story line. Bond girl is not sexy, but lovely. The next best thing about the movie is- the bond style of proposing his girl. He takes her out on a vacation in Bahamas, have a cold bath in beaches and takes rest under shining sun. While relaxing, Bond proposes in Ishytle...
"What I am left over is for you. I love you. Do you like to accept me with whatever I am left with?"
The funny part is -whatever movie it is, whenever they show casino, Hero ends up winning in the climax beating the villain even if he is expert in the game.The new bond movie also has this plot over the villain. The Austin Martin car would have felt disappointed for not getting used at all in the movie- it had a car chase, but ended up in flames after a freaky rollover.

Just started with Dream A Dream's new computer programmer for kids this weekend. These guys in DaD always start their session with some game, it is embarassing at times. But finally gives out a satisfaction that you had crossed some inhibitions of yours. Yesterday game was to write down 'what do you think about yourself. What did others thought about you in the first meet? From that what did you learn new about you today?'. We had been give a piece of paper to write down what we thought about ourselves and for others views. Here is mine:

I am reading the book 'The second sex' by Simon De Beauvoir now. It is one of legendary works on human psychology. My fren gave a good review for the book, which made me buy this. But the sad thing is it is much more bulkier than I expected. Can't avoid dozing off while reading this book :) Will write a review for this book If i could ever able to finish reading this.

Marketenomics!

2006-11-30T14:42:00.000+05:30

I was taking part in a Multimedia Forum for past two days. It was organised by our partner Processor manufacturing company and basically a business development meet. Me and my managers represented our company. The tutorial session in the starting session of forum were very much sales talks, you know. Then followed by one-on-one ragging(!) of us by those marketing guys. We had nearly five sessions with different business unit heads, some meetings were technical, some were typical marketing. My business directors from Fremont were supposed to attend this forum. As all the acqusition business came up in company, We had to represent the company. (Pooh, it was more fill-gap arrangement). Neverthless, I loved it because it is my first business development meet and oppurtunity.

There were quite few insights about the business model we are running in:
The software billing for mobile handsets run at sub 1$. Which basically means more the volume, more will be the revenue generated for the company. The kind of competition we face in marketing the product is scary. The solace is that my company has past history of giving competitions a run for their money. The past success aren't guarantee for future business growth (sounds like mutual funds investments, right? but thats true). The kind of application we are talking about in the company here are yet to see it market's genesis, looks like we are working in air at times.

I spoke about the business model of PC division before.The PC business model is much more sane, scalable and has enough ammunitions than the embedded business. We have core competency in codecs development. We are looking at the full system development in DTV space. DTV inturn can jump into multiple verticals like mobile TV, DVB-H, 1seg DTV, in-car entertainment. We work with competitive processor development companies too. But all these yet to see a green bucks rain till now. Sounds depressing! but can't help it either.

In conclusion, I have a confusion over the future of embedded market as such all over the world. Are all our folks working in to build some castle out of nowhere? With this confusion, I was browsing in my google reader, got struck by this post of Guy Kawasaki. I take his words as is "My theory is that when you’re young, you should work eighty hours a week to create a product or service that changes the world". It's better to sit back and concentrate on my work now. Leave all this business deals and worries to my business development managers. Eventually this will come to me, till then I am active listener!

Songs, songs and more songs....

2006-11-29T20:23:00.000+05:30

This post is all about songs. My comments are embedded along with those videos. If you have bandwdith limitation while accessing internet, please skip this post :)

The 'yakkai thiri' song from Ayutha Ezuthu is a peppy one. This song is there in my new walkman, ever since I bought it. Never got cloyed with this. Lyrics are too poetical and occasionally songs come with poetical tamil lyrics like this. Yet, I could never able to understand the lyrics of the piece sung by the chorus group. It goes like this 'Thodava padava....' but don't know what are those words and what it's meaning..

The 'mathi yosi' song from Boys.
I love this song for peppy rhythm & music and for my favorite actors Siddharth and Harini.
I didn't like the accent of singers. I couldn't understand the lyrics in the past because of the crazy accent. I thought the first line of the song is 'What do you say?'. Later only I realised that they are singing about 'Mathi Yosi' (think differently). Booo!

The 'Pehla Nasha' song.
I love this song for potraying the ecstastic feeling of those who fall in love. Lyrics are great, take a look at it here.
Pehla Nasha Pehla khumaar
Naya Pyar hai, Naya Intezzar...

The 'chup chup ke' song from Bunty Aur Bubli. I am looking for english translation of this song's lyrics. Curious to know its meaning. Kiss and romance in this song are too hot ;) Hindi Lyrics is here.

The 'Tere Bin' song by Atif Aslam. Couldn't understand the lyrics either, but liked it somehow. May be melancholy in the song attracts me. Dunno!? This has the distinct touch of Himesh Reshamaiya (And I hate this indi rock star and his cap! boooh) ;) Lyrics here

'It must have been love' by Roxette.

Lay a whisper on my pillow,
leave the winter on the ground.
I wake up lonely,
there's air of silence in the bedroom
and all around
Touch me now, I close my eyes and dream away.

A Vagabond Strolls On - 3

2006-11-25T13:07:00.000+05:30

There is nothing wrong in this Hutch sms Advertisement.
"Hutch launches limited period offer. Get 1yr validity on 299 RC. Local calls @ 30p to Hutch, 50p to other mobiles, 99p to landline. All STD@1.50/min."
The irony: This sms advertisement came on my Airtel mobile connection. Wow :)

I saw Alaipayuthey movie yesterday (may be nth time, lost track of count). The movie is awesome, it has all freshness of any latesht movie.Classic movies like this can be made only once, and magic can be given only by genius like Maniratnam. All characters are sweet darlings, the cast of best human beings. Even the fights between the couple are downplayed to a greater extent than what happens in real life (Are those fights also come under jurisdiction of new Domestic violence law?) . Mani had shown the necessary limits in expressing emotions in all scenes viz. depression of the couple when they seprate for first time, the fights between the couple, her father's death, the accident scene, fun with friends, the emotion of ideal couple (Mrs & Mr Ram)... All scenes would have crossed the thin border between interesting emotions to boredom, but the limits played by director saved them. The usage of silence in dialogues is much pronounced in Mani's movies. Silence observed by the couple in teasing times keeps the relationship going. Most of ugly fights are averted by that meaningful silence between the couples. The movie is a lesson for wannbe directors and wouldbe couples too. Classic song from the movie...

As heard from Radio Indigo
"Life will become more peaceful if you start accepting whatever your girl does is always right"

Ogden Nash's Aphorism with similar logic
"To keep your marriage brimming, With love in the loving cup,
Whenever you're wrong, admit it; Whenever you're right, shut up."

I have a big doubt. Are all advertisement guys ran out of their mind? Why do they have to feature a beautiful girl with/without dress in some cool product advertisement? For ex...this is advt for copper tiles.

Weird Me...

2006-11-24T09:53:00.000+05:30

For long time, I wanted to write on this weird tag from Visi's blog . Just now, I found time to jot it down. I am supposed to say 4-5 weird things about me. Here it goes....

I love having cold Tropical Iceberg (coffee with icecream from Cafe Coffee day) on chill nights ;)

Blog visitors. The statcounters attract anyone who owns a blog. The statcounter gives you the details of the visitors of your blog, their location, their referral website and some more details. The frequency at which I visit the statcounter page is really odd (May be 10-12 times within a working day). When I get bored, I visit the statcounter page of my blog and take a look at the visitors. Started as curiosity to know my readers, but now become an addiction.
The statcounter gives some jokes to laugh at. For ex, some people got referred to my blog, when they googled for
"Fantasy on Actress Sneha" (Come on, I am not running a po*n site to write about fant*sy stories!)
"new stylish t shirts available in saravana stores" (Doesn't it sound like an oxymoron. Stylish Shirts wont come from Saravana stores. Isn't it?)
"bangalore ajith fans" (Ajith-ku fan tamilnadu-ila irukerathu athigam. ithella bangalore fans venuma??)

Subject of blog: I started this blog to write on my vision and dreams of life. And to blog about the guys who succeeded in the business world and their inspirational success stories. But now my blog has become a diary on my random thoughts. Yet I stick to tagline 'Nurturing Entrepreneurship Dreams' as title of this blog. (Weird ;))

My office is in blood bath now, there is some tense situation here because of planned man power reduction and cost cutting (euphemism for layoffs). But my team and I are working in full swing and full motivation. Looks like we want to finish of this project, as if there are no days left in the world. (weird workaholics!)

I never had big pot belly, but my famous nick name is "Thoppai" (tamil word for it) ;)

For last 4 years, I was trying(!) to be a veggie. Now no more trying, I had become a perfect non-vegeterain. While being veggie,
I had chicken pizza once without having meat pieces( Eating meat is nonveg, but the pizza cooked with chicken is veg. Right??!)
I had mutton soup once without taking the meat pieces (Even though we consider fish as non-veg, but the water in which it stays is still considered to be veggie, right?! I borrowed the same logic for mutton soup also. I even extended this logic for chicken gravy and mutton gravy too)

Ghosts!?

2006-11-22T19:18:00.000+05:30

There were instances in my life when I felt the inhuman powers (like ESPs, ghosts ...) exist in this world.

For the first time, I heard about ghost story in one vacation in my granny's house. He was constructing a new house in native village. I went there for summer vacation (as usual a big family get-together). One day night, we were sleeping in kayathu kattil (couch made of ropes) in garden outside the house. Some construction work was going on in the top floor. There were few construction workers continuing work on the night. One worker went to the kinnaru (well)to fetch water. The well was at end of the garden. While he was fetching water, his wandering eyes landed on some moving white object (may be ghost!) on the top of the building. He got scared to death on seeing that. As he was all alone in end of the garden, he started to run for cover. He could barely reach the place where my family was sleeping before collapsing down. Next day morning, my granny were out in investigation to bring him back to normal state and was curious to know what had happened.
That guy: "Aiya, madi mela naan peiya parthen, athu nalla vellaiya irunthathu. medhuva nandhu pochu, looks like calling me"
The moment he said he saw ghost in top of the building, everyone bursted out laughing. May be people decided to laugh out to bring him back to normal, we didn't disbelieve it fully.

I had spent lot of summer vacations in my native place. We (me and my cousins) would go there after school finals. In one such vacation, we were chatting in top floor. We were having nila soru (food in moonlight) with patti. It was a huge gang of children and patti kept us engaged by narrating interesting stories. The servant maid came up with a scary story in the mid. Hero of the story was ellai kadavul (god who guards the village border) like Aiyanar. The servant maid was staying with her daughter near our paddy field. One day night, her daughter woke up in midnight
That gal: "Amma, ennaku thanni thagama irukku. Naan poi thanni kudichitu varen ma"
"Mom,I want to have water"
Maid: "seri ma, ana pathu po....ore irruta irukku da"
"Ok dear. But be careful. It is dark inside"
Five minutes down the timeline, there was a mysterious silence and then a loud noise from kitchen. Maid got shocked, ran to the kitchen to see what had happened. Her daughter was lying down on the floor in almost unconscious state.
That gal: "Amma, vellai ore satham. Kollai gate-a thiraka ponne ma, yaro kannathala payangara adi vittutanga amma. Enna nadathuthane theriyulle". "I heard some noise in garden outside. As soon i opened the back entrance, someone slapped me hard. The blow was very powerful that I couldn't get up to see who did that".
The servant maid concluded the story with her guess "Aiyanar was travelling on that side then, He only slapped the girl to protect her from bad evils. I could see some white man on horse when I went inside the kitchen". May be it just a story, may be the girl is affected with some paranoia, but it was bad enough to get us a bad dreams then.

Later, when me and my cousin were chatting
My Cousin:" I don't care much for Ghost movies"
Me: "Appadiya??!" (with awe)
My cousin: "I can see Evil Dead movie in midnight"
Me: "Ohh man, lemme also give it a try. We will watch this weekend"
Yep, we indeed rented out Evil Dead movie on that weekend. There were no one in the house then. We chose to watch in night. I was bold enough to see first few scenes. Thats it. I run away from that room once the real scary scenes started. I haven't seen that movie till now. Not just that I still don't prefer seeing those ghost movies. Sick!

Laugh out dude!

2006-11-20T23:30:00.000+05:30

We (me, anna and Harini) went out for shopping in evening. Just when we were busy buying out the groceries for home, Harini was yelling at her loud voice
Harini: Apppppppppppaaaaaa...... (at her Peak voice)
My Anna: Ennada chellam?? (thinking she got something important to ask him)
Harini: Nalla irukiyaaaa? (in her childish's voice)
Ohh Man, You should have seen my anna's face then!

My other niece Sakthi started going to play school from july this year. She is a popular star in her school now for her naughty remarks and questions.
Teacher: Sakthi, stop crying. I will call your mom.
S: Mam. I stopped crying. Prrr(giggles)... Where is my mom? (she starts crying again)

My dad took out Harini for walking. Walking for Harini means she will sit in your hands pretilly, you gotto walk around! Yeah, its walking for you guys, but pleasure funny ride for her. My dad never got used to this idea....He took out her for small distance and quizzes her
Dad: Walking nalla irunthicha??!!
Harini: Enna thatha, ingeye irukkom. Sithappa suthi suthi povanga.....Neeyum thokkitu po
Dad: Ennala mudiyathuda....
H: Nee seriyilla thatha, Appo veetikooo po!

Sakthi's teacher was complaining to my cousin (her dad) about her naughtiness in school.
Teacher: Next week there is fancy dress competition in our school. I gave butterfly role to your daughter
Cousin: Wow! thats wonderful role. Mmmm....
Teacher: But you see, She is not standing in one place. She is very much active (she is complaining with intention that parents will force sakthi to be calm in show)
Cousin: Ohh, thats your problem You see. Which butterfly in this world will stay in one place?
Now you know...he is one more freak. She got bugged up with that answer, left that place and started complaining to her mom now.

I am laughing at loudly in office today, it's because of this Russel Peters videos. Wow man! He is crazy, he got his head filled up with all parodies to tease all races in this world dude! Lovely show!

Live life like a kid!

2006-11-20T11:03:00.000+05:30

Kid's world revolves around simple logic, he/she wants to do whatever interests her. You can see big guys cribbing over a boring job, but continue to do that job. But you can never force a kid to do whatever she don't like, not even for a minute. I found babysitting with my nieces Harini and Sakthi always interesting. Thats what I did for past 3 days in chennai. Lovely Kids, lovely weekend too! :) I have few photos here.

Wish you all a great week ahead! Have a good day!
Start you work with Bebot song from Black Eyed Peas!

Latesht!

2006-11-16T18:23:00.000+05:30

I found this weekly brand equity quiz from the hindu business line always interesting. Eight out of ten questions can be answered if you are good in google up for answers ;) There are always two questions that I can't answer: one is identifying the personality in photograph and another is jumbled words. I could never able to answer those questions till today. Wish image searching research improve much more like when I submit a photograph, that should list down all references for this photo in web. Dunno whether such an image search engine exist in this world!?

Do you know? There are few palindromes in Tamil. Courtesy- My dad (I am not typing in Tamil font, these are transliteration of those words in English) Moru porumo (Appr english translation is: Had enough of buttermilk?) Theru varuthey (Appr english translation is: The chariot is coming on) Write those words in tamil, then you can understand the palindrome nature of these words. Do you know any more like this?

Some more playing with words. In a recent saravana stores advt getting aired in Sun TV, actress sneha uses the word 'Ekkachakachakachekkama' to mean the large volume of goods available in the store. It reminds me of my good ole days when I used to say 'Superindent of Police' as 'Superindendendent' and 'Tutorial college' as 'Tutitorial college' ;) Just playing with accent to make comedy in lighter sense. Even the title of this post is one word like that, seen this word usage in MTV. This list is big like 'Englibish', 'Tanglish', 'Tamilinglish'....

Hakuna Matata. Thanks to one of my fren, I got to know about this word. This word has become popular after the Lion King movie. Liked this song.

And Happy weekend folks! I am leaving to chennai tonight for my weekend. Looking forward for a refreshing weekend with my niece in chennai.And to all my dear chennai buddies: if you happen to see this post, you can call me to say a hiiiiiiiiii.

The art of survival of Softies in Industry today

2006-11-16T09:53:00.000+05:30

Disclaimer:This act is performed by experts. Don't try to practise it in your office and get fired.

If you are an engineer,

When your boss calls for a meeting about important projects ahead and deadlines, Try to make proper sounds. Show your enthusiasm as go-getter or atleast pretend to be so.

When you skip some initial deadline on unimportant tasks, go and speak to your boss that you care a lot for his deadline and say that you couldn't meet this, but you will try to finish it within tonight.

Say to your boss that your work week is 7 days including saturday and sunday. Even if you don't work on weekends, those words will keep your boss happy. Isn't it?

If you don't know how to attack the problem, write a big mail to your boss listing down lot of points (in different colors) and say that you need this guy's support and that guy's support. When your boss running around to arrange for this meeting, you may get some idea to solve the problem.

When your boss assigns you some problem with working setup, try to invent and add new problems to the working project which you can fix. Tell him that you spend 10 hours in fixing this issue. Your boss will be happy and your original problem also remains untouched.

If you are working onsite, send big status reports mails to your boss. Try to quote the timeline of work schedule also like at 8, I came to office, at 9 I had coffee, at 10 I fixed this bug....Even if your boss didn't get good idea on status of the project, he will very happy.

If you are a manager,

When you assign a project to your team, speak like everyone of your team mates are big experts and this project will give them a big break in career.

Once you kickstart your project, try to convene more meetings that engineers get bored up and goof up their schedules.

Once engineers skips a deadline, call for more meeting, try to speak in more motivating way.

Treat team member with lavish dinners even if they meet simple deadlines. Never mind that final project result is still hanging in the air.

When client fires you for not meeting the deadline in project, write a poignant mail without letting down your team and send it to all team members too.

More Reviews!

2006-11-15T09:47:00.000+05:30

Bangalore's cosmopolitan people attract more restaurants. Most restaurants comes up with unique theme and/or unique cuisine. My friends gang here have a flavor for tasting different cuisines. Because of that interest, We ended up in two truly different restaurants. First one is authentic Korean restaurant and the second one is authentic middle east (jewish) restaurant here in Koramangala. The ambiance in both restaurants are set unique to the places that they hail from. Korean has wood in majority of interiors and middle east hotel has bright colors that symbolizes Jewish assertiveness. The food served here gave us an out of the world experience, thought not in good spirit ;) In Korean restaurant, the chef suggested us a special rice food with remarks "This is world famous Korean food, if you can eat this, you can eat any food in the world". True to her words, we couldn't even go near the food. It was smelling badly. Another dish we ordered was fish curry rice that also turned out to be an bad experiment. The fish was raw and was smelling. In the second restaurant, none of the food was good except French fries. Pita bread is their main course and is similar to unbaked pizza crust. Falafel is some food item similar to our 'Masala vadai'. One commonality in both restaurants are the side dishes are much more tastier than main course. The middle east restaurant comes with tag 'more than veggie'. I doubt how those guys in middle east survive with this food and my similar sympathies for Korean friends too :)

I saw this movie on sunday with my friends. I went with minimum expectations for this movie, as all movies released during diwali turned out to be flops. The story plot is as old as me. Yet I liked this movie. It is an ok-ok movie, though I couldn't avoid dozing off in few scenes. Shahrukh tried his best to impersonate the legendary don. But most of the time, his actions ended up as a comedy track. All female stars Isha, Priyanka, Kareens don't have much role to play, other than adding glamour to the movie. I still prefer seeing this type of movies from Bollywood as it comes with minimum entertainment guarantee with known story plot. Shankar mahadevan could have given some good flicks for this movie. 'The Symphoney' cinema hall had the worst acoustics too to add to our woes.

I saw this movie yesterday with my friend. Wow. The story plot is quite simple but enough for three hours movie. The heroine selection could have been done in better way, I didn't like her at all:) The dialogues has F**King problem, true, everyone has used this four letter word many times. We had hearty laugh on over hearing comments in cinema "Why the f**king hell we didn't see this movie before?" "What that f**king a**h*le doing in the screen?". It is good to go for hollywood movies these days as compared to Indian movies for two reasons 1) Most of the hollywood movies getting released here are no nonsense movies 2) they have a decent story plot or I don't understand the story at all, I don't get bored in either ways. The dialogues and accents of people are simple to understand in this movie. I couldn't even laugh at most of the jokes :)

Shivanasamudram Trip

2006-11-12T20:01:00.000+05:30

I went to Shivansamudram and Talakad on the saturday with Dream A Dream friends. It is a trip arranged by DaD for computer team members. It was a fun trip and the falls in shivanasamudram is awesome. We had coracle ride and bath in mighty cauvery river in Talakad. Photos here.

The History Of The Paddy Field Boy(s)

2006-11-09T20:53:00.000+05:30

Got tagged by GP. I like this tag for giving me an occasion to fly back to good-ole childhood days. The tag is to
Write 8-10 things about your childhood ( 1-12 years) that you miss.
Write 8-10 things that you disliked about your childhood.

First, I will start with 'What I love about my childhood that I miss today'

Love the moment I got a heavenly sum of Rs.5 as packet money from my dad for my first school tour. The best part is I saved Rs.3 in that. Future MBA?! :)
Worry free life with not even a day longed for someone's love ;) Dunno when did I lost that character!
Playful-yet-serious fights with my brother for all things-under-the-sky. He is bully, you see! :)

Playful summer vacations with all my cousins. It's been long time since I met all of them in one place.
Cribbing-and-not-yet-given-up kind of school. I love those school days but hate those monday morning blues for not finishing homeworks.
Paddy field tank's baths, tender coconuts, eating-fresh-sugarcanes-from-Grani's-own-lands.
Situations when I used my brain (athanga lied!) to bunk boring tution classes after schools. Now I can't run away from my responsibilites. Huhhhh
Street cricket days. Still managed to get chancse to live this. Never missed it;)
Days when I was young kid in my entire family. Young kids are unannounced kings in receiving choclates, gifts and unlimited love. Isn't it?
All those crushes and childhood sweet hearts!
Drinking glasses (enga-pakkam tumblers-innu solvanga) with straw attached and Kuzhi thatu (Plates with different levels for variety of foods)
Sunday movies (one in afternoon and another in evening) on DD(DoorDarshan), the National TV channel of Govt. of India.

Second list is about 'the things which I didnt like in my childhood'.

Missed school tours many a times. Though most are pilgrimage-style-boring-kids-tour, how could they go without me?! Bad Bad.
Never picked up any one game properly. Jack of all trades ;)
Missed many 'Oliyum Oliyum' shows in DD while sitting-cribbing-and-reading in tution classes.
Hurted a kid while bowling (rather throwing) in a street cricket. The ball hit in his eyes. Didn't know his whereabouts after that. Hope he is finel. I throwed up my street cricket interests after that incident.
Some cried-moments-after-serious-fights with my brother. He made me cry badly many a times. I love him but hate those weaker moments.
Hate all those teachers who broke my hand by making me write big homeworks. In next birth, I wish to be their high school master. Revenge Time. :)
Didn't had much time with both Grani's. They died before I grown up to understand their love. Miss you Grani's!
Didn't have lot of photographs to kindle my childhood memories. I have grudged on Electronics giant corporations for not inventing cellphone-with-cameras then? They are real stupids yaar :)

P.S: This is a good song! Totally unrelated to the title of this post. Song from Akon, titled "Mr.Lonely". And ROTFL on seeing someone polambying ;)

You had a bad day!

2006-11-09T10:12:00.000+05:30

I love this song! Someday I wake up with a feeling that it gonna be bad day. Unless something happens dramatically, my feeling always proved me right. Always felt like go back to bed again and sleep over the whole day. Monday blues...

If you want to take a look at the lyrics, click on the below read more link.

Where is the moment when you need it the most
You kick up the leaves and the magic is lost
Tell me your blue sky's fade to grey
Tell me your passion's gone away
And I don't need no carryin' on

You're standin' in line just to hit a new low
You're fakin' a smile with the coffee to go
Tell me your life's been way off line
You're fallin' to pieces every time
And I don't need no carryin' on

'Cause you had a bad day, you're taking one down
You sing a sad song just to turn it around
You say you don't know, you tell me don't lie
You work on a smile and you go for a ride
You had a bad day, the camera don't lie
You're comin' back down and you really don't mind
You had a bad day... you had a bad day

Well you need a blue sky holiday
The point is they laugh at what you say
And I don't need no carryin' on

Sometimes the system goes on the blink and the whole thing it turns out wrong
You might not make it back and you know that you could be well all that strong
And I'm not wrong... (Yeahh!!)

So where is the passion when you need it the most
(oh, when you're down)
You kick up the leaves and the magic is lost

I am a rolling stone!

2006-11-08T10:29:00.000+05:30

My boss called me a 'rolling stone'. This tag marks my character of worry free. Rolling stone gathers no moss, Isn't it? It is true to an extent. I wish I could settle down in a place, but could never able to do that. I want to settle down in chennai forever, but don't know when I would be able to go back there. Time alone can answer this.

Yesterday, I was re-reading the book 'Who moved my cheese?'. It is a small story about four rats and how they adapt to the changes. Sniff and Scurry are rats with less thinking ability. They live by their instincts. Haw and Hem are more like humans. They try to reason out the happenings around them. All four rats found out a cheese station in a maze. All were living happily because of unlimited cheese with no hardwork attached with them. One day, the cheese gets completed. Sniff and Scurry pack their bags in search of a new place for their food. But Haw and Hem refused to accept the fact that cheese got over. They started believing that someone had stolen their cheese. And they were in no mood to look for it. Rest of the story is about their feelings and thoughts in the scenario. I love the story because of the simple and very much relevant story plot. People become lethargic after tasting success in life. They forget the past struggles which brought them to the current position. We should be always ready to face the change. The story goes like this apothegm : 'The only unchanging thing in this world is CHANGE'. I could associate myself with Haw rat. Whatever I blabbered all along when I was in depression of love break is similar to Haw's thoughts in the story ;)

Lighter topics:
The songs used while introuducing heroines in movies are always very cute. I love them and have a big list of those songs. The happiness in a guy's mind when he meets his girl for first time is unlimited. Almost all these songs market on this fact and try to project the girl as beautiful angel.

She is a fantasy
sweet as a harmony
now you know she is a mystery
fills your heart with ecstasy

The weekend that was

2006-11-06T14:48:00.000+05:30

On friday night, We were in the Bengalooru (!) airport to send off our friend. One of my roommate had left for HongKong on that day. He is an embedded system techie. He had accepted a job offer and going there on long term work permit. Is it some kind of precursor to this trend? The china story is becoming more prominent in embedded industry now. Indians are losing in competition with chinese engineers in embedded field.

On a lighter sense, we had a quite entertaining time while waiting for his early morning flight in airport. Two of his girl friends were also there. They were sweet chatterboxes. We didn't have to do much action, they would start with some topic and kept on dragging my friend's legs. Driving (ooturuthu..ikku english translation nalla irukka??) is fun for me as long as I am not in the hot seat. :) Had a cold, ice-clad, Tropical Iceberg coffee on that cold night in aiport coffee day outlet. I love having cold drink in cold climate (Is it some weird habit of mine??!)

My college days was very interesting, thanks to 20 odd clubs there. We had a big Dramatix club, those guys are wholesome entertainers. They perform dance, ad-mad, adapt theme and adapt theme in lighter sense too. Here are few video clips from one of their comedy show. It was performed by my juniors batch. All credits goes to Balamurali (98-02 CIT) for uploading the videos to youtube.

On saturday night, I saw 'varalaru' movie with my friends. It was ok-ok movie, could have become more interesting if music was good. AR Rahman had done a lousy job for this movie. The story line kept people fixed in seats for the whole three hours. I had an interesting dialogues with a fanatic fan of Ajith after the movie

Some Ajith Fan Mr.X: "Super movie-ila da". He was clapping for long time after the show
Me: "Ada pavi, intha kadi padathu poi oruthen superb movie-ina sollaran da" (i was passing comments with my friends)
Another Ajith Fan Mr. Y: "Sir, intha movie-ku enna korachal?" "It gathered three crores in the first week in tamilnadu itself, theriyumma??" "And you know what, this movie is going to Japan for a release"
Me: "Aiyo, nanga kashtapatathu pothatha??! japan makkale vere Ajith torture pannunuma??" :)
Mr.Y: "Enna sir, ippadi sollintingo? Intha padam nalla illaney sollaru muthal allu neenga than sir"
Me: "Ithellam too much boss" :)

We left the conversation then itself, but it would have hurted his sentiments on Ajith. He was morachifying (staring at) me for the remaining time, when we were coming down from PVR. ;)

The culinary experience of eating sea foods is taken to new heights in 'The Kudla' restaurant. I was dining in this restaurant with my cousins and his friends on sunday night. Had a memorable time with crab, fish and all sea living creatures ;) I would definitely recommend this restaurant for all my friends. It can boast itself for serving best sea foods in the city. Note for all those whom I promised a treat in the city: I will host you a dinner in this restaurant if you are a non-veggie.

Koncham 'polambals' time:
Depression has become a vicious addiction for me. I was (atleast trying desperately) free from depression of love break for quite a while now. But few incidents put me back in the depression cycle once in a while. My pillow might have had count on number of nights I slept with wet eyes. I am happy that I didn't torture any of my friend by narrating my feelings to him during this time. My independent attitude kept me silent now. One of my best buddies in US of A has recently scrapped me in orkut asking me,
She: "Nirek, How's life? What's happening in her end? Any updates"
Me: "Hey, I am just sticking to your words. I am waiting for her to speak to me. so no talks and no hurts till now. Life is sailing on"
She: "Thats good for you, Enjoy"
But, I got back into depression cycle yesterday because of my trip towards Malleshwaram in bike. I went there to meet my cousin yesterday. I was travelling in same roads which had a beautiful past memories about my love. For a split second, I thought I will drop plan of going in the road and go back to home. Then somehow managed to go to my cousin's house in sadashiv nagar. I was silent for the whole day and slowly depression thoughts has creeped in. First love and first love break are not definitely a good memories to live with. I wish I move out of this city as soon as possible. There are some developments in that side. Will keep you posted guys.

Nurturing Entrepreneurship Dream

ToI- Lead India Initiative

Magic!

Ideas worth spreading!

iPhone in India

India Rocks!

Cheers!

Grand (Robot) Prix

Software Easter Eggs

Rock for Good Cause!

Maestro

Unnai Kandane...

Hats off to Vijay TV!

Stumblers!

Thathithom!

Any Ideas on YouTube Business Model?

Third Dimension

Kaatrin Mozhi...

Thinking Blogger Award

Akon, Rompe

No time to breathe...

Happy Birthday Thooya!

Genesis!

Chatbots

Windows Live Writer Rocks!!

What's the good word?

Wow...Taj!

I love Asimo!

Yippee!

Alma mater

sivaji!

The Juno

phoenix

Random thoughts on Ideal Work Environ!

Borat!

Movie baton from Ran

Ads

Bheja Fry!

Thanks Honey!

Coorg Vacation

New gizmo in my house

2 Fast 2 catch upon

Still away!

A Short Break!

This is really bad!

Not bad!

A Vagabond Strolls On - 8

Miney Mine!

I had fallen in love again!

Noodle for thought!

Essential traits for my girl

Learnin' chinese

Cupid Week!

Bangalore Air show

Here I am!

Cheers!

The Death Valley!

Cheers!

Met my mentor!

Love for mother land!

Few multimedia centric business models

Budday!

Nandhi Hills!

A Vagabond Strolls on - 7

Thalaivaa!

iPhone!

I am a Green Lantern!

Safe bloggin!

Rock your life!

New Year 2007!

Happy New Year!

Demotivation!

Why me?

Merry X-Mas!

Frustration!

Media World!

Where did my money go?

Winter!

Why do we fall in love?

Guntur!