A Vagabond Strolls On - 8

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.

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Miney Mine!

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

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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.

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I had fallen in love again!

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.

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Noodle for thought!

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.

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Essential traits for my girl

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.

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Learnin' chinese

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

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Cupid Week!

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.

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Bangalore Air show

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)

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Here I am!

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

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Cheers!

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.

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