Life is to Enjoy

Suddenly today I realized that I am the long standing person in my project for the tenure you are in it. I completed 3 yrs and 10 months and is supposed to be way above the IT industry standard of 1.5 years... God save me

Its always exciting to go around places you have never visited before. But the excitement doubles when you meet your best friend. In the name of meeting my friend Sundar, I got an opportunity to explore some major places in Hyd. Rock city, as it is being named, Hyd is surrounded by plenty of rock, which is really evident only when you look for it. I could cover only 4 places, out of which this photo pasted here would identify to all of you as Charminar. Although it looks really beautiful in the picture, the area around it and this structure as such is really really dirty. I never expected this place to be so very badly maintained. When I enquired, the blame is made on population and pollution. I am not a polititian or a person with power to change this locality. Second place which was absolutely mind blowing was a museum. Its named as Salarjung. Some of the items maintained in this museum has great historical importance. It takes 8 full hours to completely go around this. So those who...

As an ordinary middle class Tambram (I hate to identify myself using caste, but this blog needs this identity) family member, you would easily expect a planned devotional tour across the temples closer by you once every year. But this time since I am back to India for a vacation and since my parents are excited and eager to see me, they planned for an additional trip. Apart from the first week of devotional journey comprising of Trichy (Vekkaliamman, Anjaneyar, Nachiyar and Akilandeswary) and Palani (of course, my Tamil God Muruga), another two day trip to Kalahasthi is being planned. Its really tough to say "NO" when you are the only child to your parents, with the fact which I always believed that if the above mentioned Gods didnt bless me, why another God? Oh my God... are you listening?

Knowing that nothing is going to be happening if I write in my blog, I still want to warn my friends (and unknowns, who accidentally read thru my blog) not to choose air-india flights, especially if they come via Bombay (Mumbai, for hardcode Mumbai friends). My main problem started way back in Newark, NJ, USA when the air-india flight got delayed by 4 hours. Its not unusual and I was OK with that. What was unusual is what happened to me in Mumbai airport. I had to catch my connecting flight to Chennai @ 9 AM from domestic airport in Mumbai. I had arrived Mumbai international airport @ 4:30 AM. After luggage and customs clearance, I was ready @ about 6:00 AM to hear the shocking news that I will have to carry my luggage all the way to the domestic airport and then do the check-in. The worst part was the problem due to change in airlines. They transferred me to JET AIRWAYS from Air India and It seems that the JET AIRWAYS counter would close by 6:15 AM. They will be back only by 10:30 AM....

At last the much awaited break of my lifetime is nearing. A month's vacation to spend happily with family, friends and relatives... hoping to have a blast in the 4 weeks time I am in India... wish me happy vacation guys... I think there will be plenty to share in that time, especially because of the IND vs PAK series... Oh yeah, cricket fever never gets out of me :) More updates on my vacation will be done here from India

I am back again with the same topic. Cricket. Somehow it really fascinates me to write about cricket. From a never ending game that was held for 11 days to a 3 hours shortened version of it cricket has seen plenty of changes. I am not a historian nor do I know anything on the past world of cricket. I was familiarized to cricket at a time where "Benson and Hedges" World cup was held in Australia. My family members used to wake up at about 4:30 or 5:00 AM and I used to hear a lot of buzz and wonder what are these people doing. Its not yet dawn and they are already fully enthusiastic. Slowly I learnt cricket and used to support India (of course). I think it was the season where most of my childhood friends also got introduced to cricket and we started to play our own "match" with the plastic bats and balls. Every match day when my family members watch it, we played, used to argue and clarify a lot with my dad, who gets tensed in the middle of a match when we disturb, b...

Infosys wrapped up the 3 match series with CTS at 3-0. It was a clean sweep with very little hurdle. Proud to be a part of such team. Congrats to team India for winning an away series. Could have done better by making it 2-0. Please learn from us ;-) Got a new profession as a fallback option if there is a slowdown in IT. I was officially inducted as a DJ for a very small function consisting of 40 odd people. I am happy that it came through well and had both positive and negative feedback on it. Considering my novice and limted knowledge, I rate myself at 65% for that work. Sivaji is doing really good in box office and I am happy to hear more and more good news on that film. Thalaivaa nee eppothum kalakkitte thaan iruppa. On seeing our super performance in Cricket, we have planned out a quadrangular series between the software giants that work out of Pittsburgh. Infy, CTS, TCS and Sathyam will battle it out and will determine who is the best out of business :-) Lot of hard work over nex...

At last a deserving away test victory for India. I am really happy on this occasion. I was also glad to have a glimpse of the live action that happened and the winning moment. This is a right start for the tour... Go India Go....

I am referring to the drawn first test match at Lords, England. Many people in the media claimed that India rode on luck today and the rain Gods poured blessing for them. Well, I agree but to my knowledge this is the first time it has happened to India in recent times. All the other times Indian team will be on the receiving end. I can remember many instances and one specific instance would be the home test series against Australia where the day 5 of the game was washed out completely whereas India was on top at the end of day 4. Moreover It was a series decider and everything mattered on that day. Since that match was a draw, we had to lose the series. Where did blessing from rain Gods go that day? Its a known fact that nature is bigger than human. Things that are out of our control can be deemed as luck, but only to a certain extent. Neither is Australia riding on luck every time they play nor is Bangladesh unlucky. We should start appreciating the game more than the luck or other ex...

We are taking a timeout on weekends by having a friendly but still a bet match in Cricket played as a series between CTS and Infosys at Pittsburgh. Its really a good initiative thru which we can get to gather with people and know them more, interact and enjoy the team work apart from the professional life. Thanks to the good summer weekend weather, we are having a fun of a time. I wish to explain each match in detail, but very few would appreciate what I would write... so refraining from that. Mothathula oru Chennai 6000028 experience irukku. Konjam santhosham, konjam kovam, konjam kindal, konjam keli... Memories from this cricket game takes me back to old days where Sunday morning cricket was treated as a duty by me back in Ambattur. For who is interested in series details, we have played 2 games of the 3 schedules matches and Infy has wrapped up the series with 2-0 lead. Final match is on this Saturday 21st July.

Not that I didnt write good and great about A.R.Rahman before. But I wanted to express my feeling to whoever reads my blog. I went to Isaipuyal's concert in Chicago last month (June 2007). I am a big time fan of his voice. I relished the whole show. For real music lovers, please check out his latest albums One love and Pray for me Brother. He makes you feel love in the first one and poverty in the other. Amazing talent. No wonder he is the youth icon for India. I can write more. But I give it to the fact that there are more lovers and devotees of Rahman than me and they will have more intersting things to say. Long live ARR and his music.

When I was seeing films taken in hilly area with a lot of snow around back in India I was wondering how great it would be to have my lifetime spent entirely in such a location. I repent for what I felt. It just looks great. Feels good for few days, may be few weeks. Nothing more than 5 weeks. I really had to pen down my first snow experience. Since I am gonna (tho paarra, American stylu) talk bad and good about cold weather, I know I will get hit from my friends who are (un)lucky enough to experience it. First bad thing is your nose will start bleeding if you are prone to some sort of allergy. I am not sure on what allergy it is. Not everyone bleeds, but if you bleed it makes you scared a lot (Manmathan padathula Chimbu mookula ratham vanthaa maari irukkum). I had that bad experience. Second bad thing is you cant go out of home just like that even for taking paper or cross the road to go to other building. You will have to cover yourself up with a coat, ensure shoes are proper and you ...

I have been asked several questions like "What happened to you?", "Are you too busy to blog?" from my usual set of friends (to be frank just 3 of them). I just had one truth to tell them "I have plenty of things to share and if I start sharing everything, my time would be lost in blogging fully". Thats true. Its long since I wrote a blog and here I am trying to re-vamp with the upgraded Google blogging. I was out of blogging for some time now that I didnt realize that there are quite a few upgrades. Any ways. From my side the most memorable thing that has happened is my trip to west coast of USA with my 2 Ambattur cricket gang folks. It was a really pleasant 4 day trip, a little tiring but not so much as meeting them made it easier. A lot was discussed as we met almost after 3 years. Past, present and future, some advices, some experiences, sorrow and joy. Anyone of you who had experienced a meeting with your friend after a big break can understand this. W...

I had to type and email detailing whatever i knew on iPods. I had various instances in my life now where my friends ask the same question and I land up typing everytime. I thought I better blog about it and save it for ever. I will try to give as much options/information I know for now in order to make up your mind on what you want. iPods get categorized as video and non-video ones. So decide on whats needed. When going for audio, decide how many songs you will listen (on an average) and decide on the size needed. If the plan is to buy a small memory iPod, he/she should be patient enough to change songs from computer to iPod for change in interest to listen to a set of songs. There is no choice of ‘small size’ if video option is chosen. The least is 30 GB and it also comes as 60 and 80 GB versions. For audio, there are whole lot of varieties like 512 MB, 1 GB, 4 GB and 8 GB. Some of them are called old generation iPods (using buttons) and some are new generation (rolling type). More fa...