Look back at 2008

As the year draws to close, I thought it would be nice to have a nostalgic view of the year gone by through the eyes of my blog. I have highlighted top ten entries selected as links in red , you'll find them as you read through . I am not going to rank them or do any sorting among the ten. entries I rather leave the job of picking and telling me the best entry to the readers. So lets start

• January: Had the best birthday this year, after coming to my college. Used to think a lot about how I would end up in company, since I had got placed in dual. Now I have learnt that you should never expect too much.

• February: Started serious blogging this month, probably one of my first sensible entries i.e, Irony in the Great Indian Premier League Auction was also in this month, then there is always the humorous side in me that pops up resulting in the following two A Funny Thought - Girls Live in A Fairy Tale World, Lunch hour At Lisieux N Avila ( School days , never short of fun ).

• March: I knew things were coming to an end in college soon, so this one is pretty close to my heart End of College Life (Memorable one) and my first technical blog Microsoft, Yahoo and Google .

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Rab Ne Bana Di Jodi Review

Well, it was a testing week with the work, team outing and a few other things. A sleepless Thursday night helped by some singing that made no sense to me, put me of into sleep mode in the morning itself (though I usually sleep post lunch, there was always an option of sleeping in the tunnel or bunker). As far as the rest of the day, I don’t know about team building, but it certainly brought out the killer instinct within the guys (the women were laid back at the game as expected). At least I could relate myself to the good old college days, where I used to play Age of Mythology and Age of Empires. Probably call it the tiredness; I had the best sleep in days on Friday night. The following day was even more terrible with me having to search for BSNL commercial officer's office to get my over charged phone bill sorted out (I am totally pissed of with BSNL by the way, cause their site still shows my bill has unpaid, though the money from my account has disappeared in an online transaction).The need to relax and enjoy was strong during the next day, so all was set for a Sunday night movie. I cannot reveal the circumstances under which I watched the movie (the plans that I had in mind for this film was a bit different, than what actually happened), but nevertheless no harms in writing a review.

For starter’s, I was expecting a lot out of this movie. Since the last SRK film i.e., OSO was such a fulfilling experience. Here you have SRK playing dual roles of Surrinder and his alter ego Raj. Surri goes to his headmaster’s daughter’s marriage and ends up being the bride groom himself, thanks to the accident of the guy who is supposed to get married. What are the odds of that happening? To continue, the newly wed couple of Surri and Taani make their way to home in Amritsar. Surri is madly in love with his new found wife, but only to find out his wife doesn’t love him back. She just about fits the bill for doing his wife duties. Surri decides that he needs impress his wife and make her love him. Thus he goes about creating his alter ego i.e Raj. If Surri is a common man tentative, reserved in his approach to life, you have Raj, the direct opposite outgoing, flirtatious Punjabi dude wearing tight jeans. Raj meets Taani at the dance class she joins, in fact as it always happens in bollywood films they both end up being partners in dance competition. One problem with Aditya chopra’s direction is the difference between Raj and Surri is just a slender moustache. You have dumb wife who doesn’t recognize her hubby with moustache removed (Kind of on the lines of Rajni’s classic comedy Thillu Mullu ). As always dispel your logical part of the brain on watching bollywood films. Moving on, Raj relentlessly flirts with Taani during their dance classes (familiar terrain, I guess). You have heroine rebuffing him initially, but as they work together they get along with each other, Taani admiring his flirts (That sounds too familiar for comfort). Finally Raj wins a day out with Taani over a bet on Panni Poori eating competition. Blah Blah another wooing song, at its end, Raj proposes to Taani confessing his love for her. He shuts down the power of half the city and then lights up the city so as to make I LOVE U appear from a hill. May be Tamil Nadu Electricity Board should consider this as a marketing product for wannabe youngsters who want to propose. See they are shutting down power 6 hours a day; they might as well use power cuts for helping people propose their love.

Coming back to the story, Taani explains she is already committed in marriage, so she could not do anything for Raj’s confession of love. Surri decides to kill Raj’s persona since he had won his wife heart, but is worried she loves Raj, something who he is not in his life, compared to Surri who he is. Now he decides to woo his wife as himself instead of somebody else, but Taani is having serious troubles forgetting Raj. She secretly visits him, confesses she too loves him. They decide to elope away after the dance competition finals. (I make it sound real dirty, Don’t I?? Well, that’s the way it’s in the film). Surri decides if Raj is what her wife wants instead of him, he will give her that. Now throw in some sentiment in the temple, where god puts sense into Taani’s head, who is on the verge of infidelity. She backs out with Raj in the last minute before dance competition for eloping with him. It’s the dance finals, she has made her entry, but Raj doesn’t show up. Not surprised Taani decides to withdraw from finals, but to her surprise Surri shows up and dances amazingly. Now she realizes Raj and Surri are one and the same. God, heroine doesn’t realize the hero with moustache and without one, reminiscent of old MGR films where the difference between characters was a mole on the cheek. I guess a moustache is a better candidate than a mole for disguise. Of course, as expected they hero wins they dance finals too and both live happily ever after.

SRK as Surrinder is impressive. Its one of the roles he hasn’t played yet and he does it pretty well and Raj, of course is the standard SRK role in films. The funny thing as SRK keeps getting older; his heroines seem to be getting younger. Deepika in OSO was 21 with SRK being 40 year old. Now you have Anushka Sharma, 19 year old teenager playing his object of interest. Anushka just about makes the cut for a wife; she is decent in her acting. And the most important thing of all for heroines, they must look good, irrespective of the fact whether she knows to act or dance. Here other than that she also gets to do wheeling with the bike, so its better I guess.Then there is one nostalgic bollywood song with five heroines from bollywood, again repetitive as OSO had one song of the same type already. With Yash Raj films, you at last have a film that is firmly rooted in India, instead of some NRI location such as New York or London and people living in houses where lavish bathrooms are size of a hall. Songs are good for the most part. There couple of sequences in the post interval where the films lags behind, you can’t wait for the film to reach its climax. As a whole its worth while watching it once.

Rating: 2.5 / 5

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Faces Of Recession

"A banker is a fellow who lends you his umbrella when the sun is shining, but wants it back the minute it begins to rain..!! "

- Mark Twain

I am no Paul Krugman or Amartya Sen to talk about economics. The only economics paper that I have ever read was for my Management paper in my 7th semester, that too at the eleventh hour before the exams. Nevertheless, I decided to dig deep into causes of this recession (you start looking at things seriously, only when the impact zone is nearer to you). For starters US economy has officially started shrinking, 0.5% for this quarter. What amazes me is the failure of Big Corporations in US you name it Goldman Sachs, Lehmann brothers, Merrill lynch, AIG Insurance, Citi Group, Bear Sterns, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. These are A-list corporations that attract the best management talent in the world from Ivy League, Wharton and IIM’s in India. Just to give an idea, there only 10 countries in the world whose Gross Domestic Product is larger than their combined losses (Thank God, India is one of them). So the mistakes that have been done are not only big, but it’s also done by pretty smart people ( Now , they don't look so smart, after posting losses of billlions of dollars, do they??? ).

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Vaaranam Aayiram Review

It was one of those arduous weeks, where nothing seems to be going right. First couple of my favourite t-shirts got ruined, due to mixing of wrong set of clothes while washing. Next the visit to PVR cinemas got cancelled due to the lack of tickets. Not a great beginning to a week, but finally ended up doing some serious work at office. Coming back to the movie, this one was on my list of movies to be watched, ever since I heard the songs. But I never planned it for watching it in Bangalore. As things would turn out, on a dull Thursday where random power cuts seemed to be more erratic than women’s mood swings, I fell asleep on my table and my mind drifted onto a dream. It was a multiplex theatre; I was standing there not able to get tickets, while one of my friends pops out of nowhere showing of her credit card and tickets that were bought by her to me. Thanks to show of antics, I snapped out of my dream and sleep, it was almost like a challenge laid out to me, whether I could tickets in a multiplex without a credit card on a Sunday. Well, the next day after I walked around my area to find the new multiplex in my neighborhood. As with most things I life, you keep searching for things far and wide, when it’s actually near you all the time. In fact the Inox multiplex was more near to my house then my office, yet I never seemed to realize it. It was all set for Sunday night show at Inox theatre (never mind the fact I paid 180 for this movie i.e., I am sure a few of my friends jaw would have dropped on reading this). The only dampener being one of my friend who would have showed up with me, failed to come cause of his illness, leaving me a loner at the multiplex. As the say, if one door closes, the other door opens, at least it did for some time before shutting altogether. I had my seat number next to a decent looking girl (I couldn’t make out the details in darkness of theatre though). Just as I thought something was going for me, her dad who was next to her, exchanged the seats and sat next to me, moving the girl out. It’s not as if I was bothered about it, may be I should have said to him, if your daughter had just come alone, she wouldn’t have minded sitting next to me at all. But seeing movies alone is boring affair, though this was a Tamil movie, there was no need for translation, nevertheless a willing translator next to me as I got for ‘Rock On’ would have made it more pleasurable.

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Yes, We Can..!!!

Well, for the most this week when ever I had managed to get my hands on the newspaper or watched TV, one man has been all over the news i.e., Barack Hussein Obama. I could not lay more emphasis on his name than this (Forget about the fact his name rhymes with Osama, there were even jokes linking him to Osama). Four years ago, no body could have dreamt that a man with a Muslim middle name, who is black with a Kenyan father who had spent his childhood in Indonesia, could be posted to the most powerful job in the world. Obama has many firsts to his name; the first black man to get presidential ticket nomination from any party in the US, the first black man to be elected has the president of US. The roots of his success were laid four decades ago. If it were not for a fifteen-year-old school girl, Claudette Colvin who refused to get down from the bus for a white man, Martin Luther King would not have launched the civil disobedience moment against discrimination against blacks. If Martin Luther hadn’t delivered the famous “I have a dream “ speech which made , then the President Lyndon Johnson sign the Civil Rights Act which outlawed the racial segregation, Obama would not have been able to run for the US Presidency. The Neo Conservatives always define a typical American to be a white educated Christian with a catholic background. By electing a black president Americans, have shattered their own myth. This is very relevant to India, where I find so many people have an obsession to look white. Especially those face cream ads in TV where a dark skinned woman always looses and the white colored woman is always looked upon as a winner. I consider those ads racially demeaning that try to create an inferiority complex among women. What’s even worse is people falling for those Ads, buying these products. I guess things like this happen only in India.

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Perseverance Pays Off

Well, ever since I moved to Bangalore one of my top priorities has been to get a broadband connection. While rest of the world defines a minimum speed requirement 2 Mbps as broadband, in India we have conveniently lowered that standard to 256 Kbps to suit our poor quality standards. Anyway, among the handful of ISPs which provide service to home’s here, I decided to go for BSNL. The reason of choosing BSNL was obviously speed. Back in college days, my friends used to boast of download speeds of 200 – 300 Kbps. With me working during week days and Sunday being a holiday. It just gives me Saturday for this stuff, where I had to take care of washing my clothes plus the visit to the nearest BSNL office. The ordeal of getting BSNL went like this:

• Week 1: On this Saturday, I got a photo for my application ready, with my passport has address proof for applying broadband and went to the office to apply. But only to be rebuffed, that I needed a local address proof in Bangalore, not from the city which I am from. As I recently moved to Bangalore, I had no local address proof leaving me to scratch my head.

• Week 2: I think, I had a holiday coupled with the weekend, so had gone home. So no visit to BSNL office this weekend.

• Week 3: I talked to my seniors, in this week about the problem. They suggested that a letter from my Company HR stating that I live in so and so place in Bangalore would do the trick for address proof. I had gotten the address proof and application form ready this time and went to the office. But this time, it turned out to be second Saturday i.e., a holiday. A wasted trip to office.

• Week 4: Well, it turned out to be my lucky weekend. The office was open and also there was special offer for two days where if I applied, I did not have to pay any installation charges or the cost of WiFi enabled modem. But the only worry was that there will be two different guys coming for first LandLine phone connection and then the Broadband connection .If both this guys show up during the weekdays, I will be at office with the house locked, they would just move onto their next work. Leaving me to scramble to office on the following weekend to ask them come back to my house, to give the connection.

• Week 5: For every problem, there is a solution. It’s just that everyone can’t see the solution. While bouncing of ideas with my roommate, I thought a poster on my house door in kannada, asking the BSNL guy to call me at this phone number would do the trick. Since my house was few blocks from my office, I could show up in 10 mins of the call at my house. With help of my well favored friend, who gave a lot more attention to my request, then what I had expected, I got that done pretty fast ( I wish she was the Manager for BSNL in my area, at least I would have got my Broadband in no time in my home with attention like that). The following day that too within 1 week I got a call from Landline guy, thanks to poster saying that he will come tomorrow, which luckily turned out to be holiday. So I was at my home when he showed up. But I had to pay him a compliment amount for showing up on a holiday. (Why do people in government expect compliments, for doing their jobs, for which government also pays them as salary???)

• Week 6 & 7: It was elusive waiting game with BSNL. For every call that I get in mobile, I used attend to it that it could be BSNL guy. I never looked forward so much to get a call, even from a girl. The only calls that I kept getting were from annoying bank people asking me to take loans and investment plans. One of the calls was like my asking me for retirement plans. I barely completed 3 months in my first work; they’re talking about retirement, stupid banks.

• Week 8: I had completely lost my patience, a frustrated man. To add fuel to the fire, I was simply bounced of from one table to another table when I needed to enquire about the broadband connection. Finally, as if that wasn’t enough, the guy in charge of connections for my area was on leave on that Saturday. But I didn’t budge, I met divisional manager, got the installation guys number. I called him in the morning, but as my luck would turn out there was power shutdown in Bangalore that day. So that guy couldn’t finish installation, he had already had gone to. He nevertheless said he will come, once the power comes back. The power came back; the next one hour seemed like an eternity, with me standing on the balcony looking out for that guy. Dogs, Cats, Pigeons, bikes, Auto’s , Good looking girls everything came in the road expect for the BSNL guy who never showed up. I was so frustrated the next day, that I started getting dreams about BSNL modem and browsing (I hardly get any dreams about any girls, so getting dream about BSNL modem was weird).

• D-Day: Finally, after a number of calls, after that disappointing weekend. I did manage to get that guy to agree to come on Wednesday. To make matters worse, it was raining the whole day. But I didn’t want to give up, call after call and loads of bugging him. BSNL guy at last agreed to come at 5 30 pm. I had to skip a meeting in the office and run from my office to be at my home in rain. Then to add another twist, he backed off saying he will come tomorrow since it was raining. I had to entice him that I will even pay for his auto charge, if he comes. But he was like if you don’t mind pick me at office. Then I decided I am going get this broadband today, no matter what. I wanted this so badly. So I borrowed a bike, went to BSNL office, had a close call with skidding in the rain. But I did manage to bring him to my house and install the modem. I even attended the meeting that day via online. Seriously, if I had put half the effort that I had put in wooing that BSNL guy on a girl, I think she would have said yes to me. I guess perseverance pays off whether it is your boss, work, girl friend or in this case BSNL guy. To add final twist, I found out I was in Business Unlimited 15000 plan to my horror. I was not prepared to pay a bill of 15000 per month. But it later turned out that since I had taken the broadband in offer, for the first 15 days I will be getting free BUL 15000 service and then later will revert back to Home 750 plus. Finally, the modem I ended up was a type 4 modem (which is better one i.e. three more Ethernet ports than type 2 modem), though it was type 2 which I ordered. May be, I needed this final bit of luck for all that I had gone through.

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Desperate Microsoft

Have you heard of the saying desperate circumstances call for desperate measures? Well, I read recently, one of the interviews by Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft that his company was not giving up on search in its fight against Google. He went as far as saying that it was like David vs. Goliath, with Microsoft being the David (This is funny considering the situation in mid 90's where Microsoft was the software bully making every other company play by its rules). Now you have the bully being bullied around. He went onto say that he was going to give the much needed push that Live Search needed. Well, now I understand what he meant by push, the Microsoft marketing team has come up with a desperate measure to combat Google. It’s called “Search Perks”, where you get gifts in the form of music downloads, air tickets, books, X-box games for every search you do on Live Search.

For people interested in how it works, you need to download and install MSN toolbar on your IE. For every 25 searches you do, you will be eligible to get points or tickets. When you accumulated 4950 points you cash in using the tickets for a prize. The top prize X Box wireless game controller, for which you have to get 5500 points, but there are only 198 days from the date of launch of service (Which is October 1) for it to end. Even with the maximum of 25 searches per day you get only 4950 points, which means nobody will ever be able to get the top prize. It seems Microsoft think tank, didn’t get quite work out the details when they launched the scheme. When somebody pointed out to this Microsoft spokes person that nobody can win the top prize. A pale faced Microsoft spokes person had to come up with a not so prepared answer that Microsoft will look into extending the Search Perks service depending on its initial response. To be frank, offering freebies ain’t going to drive people to Live Search. Poor Microsoft, they have all the money in the world, yet they seem to be short of innovation and inspiration. Of course you can’t forget how Microsoft flirted with Yahoo to buy the Search engine, only for Google to come in between and sweep Yahoo of its feet by making Yahoo use Google Ad Sense. I shouldn’t be complaining about this, since I do for work for company, which itself believes strongly in the motto, “If you cant Develop them on your own, Buy them ..!! “ .

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Journey of Love

(Disclaimer: All incidents mentioned here are from real life. Any similarities you find with people from real life are purely intentional and congrats you might have actually found the person in the story( The person in the story is certainly not me..!!). I am not a male chauvinist, but I am a guy so I can write only from a guy’s perspective so put up with it. Last but not the least, I am not encouraging anybody to drink (neither do I), Alcohol kills…!)

I told one of my college mates, that I would pen this entry down before I left for Bangalore. Unfortunately it never happened. Well, at least now I feel about writing this down. Let’s start, how does love start in the first place. Many people talk about love at first sight (Well, I know two of my friends, who claim to have fallen for each other at first sight). But it’s hard for me to accept it, how could you know she/he is the right person, when you haven't spoken or know anything tangible about the person. At the most what I can think of here is, it’s just the case of mutual attraction combined with teasing of friends leading to love. It makes logical sense this way, consider a situation where a girl has to ask a query to two unknown guys (whom she has never met before). There is a pretty good chance that the girl will end up asking the better looking guy. Hence you can conclude, looks are initial token for people to fall in love. I believe that you don't fall in love with a girl because she is beautiful; the girl looks beautiful because you’re in love with her. Just try answering this question before you confirm you’re in love with the person. Take a picture of your girl friend the first thing when she wakes up in the morning (That’s when all the illusion of beauty that the make up creates is least effective). Take a hard look at the photo. If you really feel like seeing this same face for the next 50 years of your life day in and day out, as the thing first thing in the morning, may be there is a good chance you have fallen for that person. People in love often seem to have serious issue with accepting some other girl/boy is better looking than their lover. Even when it comes to looks, people have different tastes. Otherwise, there will be loads of guys wooing a single girl and vice versa.

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Heaven or Hell Rock On

What do you think; it’s like experiencing heaven and hell at the same time. Nah, I am not talking about the philosophical stuff (Everybody wants to go to heaven, but nobody is wants to die). Last week, I was in the middle of oracle training (just back from a demanding weekend at home) thanks to the vagaries of Bangalore weather, I got sick again. This time it was fever combined with body ache which made even sitting in cushion chair miserable for me. As the Tamil saying goes “ Kaiku eatunatu , Vaiku eatala “ ( You can touch the food with your hand, but not eat it with your mouth ) , that’s when my manager called me said we have a big team outing tomorrow, so come to PVR multiplex and after that for a dinner party. The thought running through my mind was, Why now God??? Why can’t they have the outing when I am feeling as cool as cucumber? Well, I was in dilemma that night, whether I should skip my first team outing or not because of fever. Eventually I ended up going to the movie and party, thanks to temporary relief provided by crocin. On a brighter note, I was able to hitch hike a ride on my manager’s car to PVR, rather than take a bus from my office. As far as the movie was concerned, it was ‘Rock On’, a Hindi movie (I hardly know any Hindi) so it was pretty much going to be a good sleep for me at the theatre. But as luck would have it, I got my seat next to one of my teammates who joined MCE along with me, who happens to know Hindi and also tries to speak ‘Taamil’ ( like Tamil heroines say “ Ennaku Ennaku Konchum Konchum Taamil theriyum “).

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ABCD

ABCD… I m not going to talk about English alphabets here, though the things I am going to talk about start with this letters. Let’s start

‘D’ for Dress or dressing sense to be more precise (If your friend of mine, I ought to be surprised for your raised eyebrow by now). Back in college days, I used to have really flashy, eye catching style of dressing. Well, as I have mentioned in my previous blog entry, liberal dress codes is one of many advantages at my office. It’s funny how people make use of this new found freedom with regard to dressing sense from college to office. The other day I was using the lift to move to the cafeteria. As the lift was moving up, my eye caught hold of a t-shirt. Natural intuition on my part was to read it, it said “I am a party girl, don’t Force me to Study ...! “. When I finished reading it, the other guy standing cross to me in the lift was giving me a really weird look. Then it struck me, what must have gone through his mind. I thought to myself, for God sake I was not staring at the women’s boobs, I was just reading the quote. First of all, people (guy/girl) who wears t-shirt with quotes wants other people to read them, so they shouldn’t be complaining for getting extra attention to their things. Another interesting thing I notice here is, people wearing socks with chapels which I thought was ridiculous in the beginning, but most people seem to do this in Bangalore. Then I see plenty of women wearing jeans and sleeveless t-shirts (Whether it looks good or not is entirely a different question, sometimes they bring out the wrong features to the fore, I seriously wonder what their boy friends say about their dressing sense..!!), I wonder why men don’t wear sleeveless t-shirts to office (What’s good for the goose, must also be good for the gander going by the feminist views). Sometimes it’s confusing with the jeans and t-shirts, like one of friends finds it hard to differentiate between guy and a gal from the looks at the back. Cant blame my friend for that, it gets even more difficult when your dealing women with short hair. Another interesting and unique style, I observed was the hippy style (to make it clear it’s the costume you see heroes wearing when they sing songs of advice in old tamil films), where people wear shawl over their t-shirts, just add a head band to this costume with a guitar, you will start looking like a hippy. Last but not least, its important to know your body when you dress, just because a dress looks good on Hirtik or Katrina doesn’t mean it will look good on you also ( though the self image that we have of ourselves is like that). To keep it simple, your dress should accentuate your right features and attenuate your anomalies, as a whole make sure your body looks symmetrical.

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MC 'E' Xperience

At last, I have found some quality time for my blog, which had been deserted by me for the most part of august. It has been an exciting first month where I had been living on my own; to fend for myself, wash my clothes for the first time (it rained the whole day, when I did that, leaving me scratching my head to find a place to hang the wet clothes). The first week of august was pretty much a boring affair (and probably it will hold the record for the longest duration for which I listened to presentations). To start things of, it was on the last weekday, where I had met my team mates; it was just three of us in our team. I could never understand why they put me in this team; rather it was the case with most people, who were curious to figure out the basis why they had been allocated into their respective teams. A thorough out and out Java guy like me was put into Perl and UNIX domain. Well, I am prepared to make the most of what I have. Coming back to the point, the second week was a tantalizing affair with soft skills which by the way was at our office. Liberal dress codes and flexible timings are one among many advantages when you’re working with US Company.

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And Finally it Happened

Well, the D-day is here, I m going to be leaving for work to join a MNC. I am nervous at the same time excited. It was time it happened cause almost all my friends left for work ,you do start to feel left out when you dont get the call letter. And also being idle without anything to do is very unlike me and Thank God it came to an end.It was an extended holiday of sought's for me with a break of full 3 months after the college ended. But atleast I feel I used up the time well, I had a good chance to connect back with my school friends, spend loads of time with them. As the say all the fun and frolic must end sometime, I guess its back to work again. Again I always believe whatever you do , it should be fun. I am hoping the work I do at the company also turns out to be fun.

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Dark Knight Movie Review

It was another boring day, where you had a regular power shutdown for the whole day leaving me nothing to do without my computer. Then one of my school mates messaged me asking whether we can go for a film. He had been interning at XYZ IT security firm, rather he got tired of his job there at office, which involves finding out porn sites in the net and adding them to parental control software's list of banned websites. He is getting handsome amount for it(Nice Software job).It was tough call between Jaane tu Jaane Na and Dark Knight, but Dark Knight won cause there wasn't any theater in the city that screened Jaane tu Jaane Na (But weird thing was you had one screening Kismet Connection which is quite ordinary compared to Jaane tu Jaane Na). We at last made it to the theater, it was the same one where we saw The Happening. Now I wasn't in greatest of moods on that day, we just had lunch where each person paid 150 Rs for a meagre meal at a Stupid Hotel ( which my friend boasted to be best for Non Vegeterian food items in the city) which left me very unsatisfied. In the name of trying out new things my friend ordered "Surra(Shark) Putu", I was thinking it would be big (Since sharks usually are , like The Great White) But when the waiter delivered, it was more like 25 grams of cereal served in a tiny plate leaving me fuming. Coming back to the movie it was house full at the theater to my surprise.

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Being Witness to Adam Teasing ..!!!

Note: This post was written by my friend in this blog.

About 3 days ago My friend showed me this article about Adam teasing, a stunt which involves girls teasing guys instead of the usual way around :p. Coincidentally yesterday I went to a little trip with my friends to a farm house just outside the city. Most of them in the trip were girls with some teachers from my school and just one guy, the son of a teacher.When we were all settled and started doing our activities, the guy, being human, also started having fun with some little kids of the other teachers. There was this little covered platform where there was some game stuff, like a Carom board table and a pool table and some game that mocks a football game on a table i.e,FussBall.

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Oil on the Boil

It was a cold night that day, after chatting for more than two hours at Barista(a Coffee Place) I and my friend separated bidding farewell to each other. On my return trip to home, the fuel in my bike went to into reserve fuel, So I just headed for a near by Fuel station. To my dismay, the Fuel station seemed to have only premium petrol. Out of no choice, I filled premium petrol on that day went to home. But the incident spurred me into thinking why there is a shortage of petrol and the oil prices being so high.To start of off, oil was pretty cheap compared to the prices it is selling now. In 1998 price of oil was around 35$ a barrel ( A barrel is roughly equal to 159 litres). Today world's most profitable company is Exxon Mobil, an US oil major with yearly turn over of 40billion dollars, thanks 140$ a barrel , oil price.

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Things that Happened in "The Happening"

It was a saturday weekend, I was tweaking something with my linux. Then one of my school friends messaged, asking me to come out for a film i.e, "The Happening". I was totally not into the film, But I had rejected my friends offer to go out in the evening three times during that week and if I had rejected this, it would have jeopardized our trip to the pool next week, So accepted it reluctantly. We reached the theater, my friend bought Rs 65 tickets for this not so happening film. They thing that made my stomach burn was, the previous week I had seen Dasavatharam for just Rs50 ticket on a second day show, while I was paying Rs65 for this crappy film. Anyways we entered the theatre, there were hardly 80 people in theater.

The film started with an anime mentos Ad ( where the monkey becums man) which my brilliant friend took it for the actual movie and asking me was this is a cartoon film. Well the actual film started later, you see New york, central park where two lovely ladies are seated in a bench. Then suddenly, one of the ladies takes a hair pin slits her throat to commit suicide. This was the first in the long line of the suicides you see in the film. The Next scene you see construction workers jumping of from top of the buildings leaving me to wonder whether they were trying bunchy jumping. The story revolves around Mark Wahlberg, a teacher in philadelphia. The news soon reaches Mark's school, of the weird things Happening in the city i.e, people committing suicides. This suicides cause massive evacuation of New york, our hero Mark,his wife, his friend along with his daughter rush to the train station to flee from the city. Only to find that people are committing suicides even at the train's destination place. Infact few suicides are interesting to begin with, I can understand Shylaman trying to strike a fear at the hearts of people who are watching the movie(it does in the beginning). But the problem is it gets repetitive, nevertheless to Shylaman's credit he does come up with very innovative ways for people to kill themselves throughout the film.

1. Jump from top of building
2. Make yourself as a breakfast to the Lion's in your Local Zoo( This video is shown in an iPhone, I cant wait to get my hands on it, when it comes to india)
   
3. Ram your Car at full speed onto a tree
4. Start a Lawn mover , Lay down in its path
5. Shoot yourself with a gun
6. Slit your throat with a hair pin
7. Hang yourself in a traffic Signal
8. Beat Your head against a Glass wall

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Dasavatharam Review

We planned well in advance for this movie, infact a week earlier. I guess it was worth the wait to see a single actor play ten different roles. The movie started 30 mins late than the scheduled time to my frustration. Once it started your drawn into the thick of action. The first scene opens with Govind Ramasamy (First Character) being felicitated by heads of state of US and India. In the initial prologue, he describes how even the most trivial of the things that happen can be related to an major event( Such as the butterfly effect i.e , tiny variations in air pressure caused by flapping of wings can make the difference between a tornado occuring in one place and another place). The story starts from 1200 AD where there is tension between Shivanites(ppl who worshio Lord Shiva) and Vaishanavites(ppl who worshio Lord Vishnu). You have a Chola King trying to remove a statue of Lord Vishnu from the sanctum of temple. Here you see the Rangaraja Nambi(Second Character), a staunch vaishnavite who opposes the move and hence he is thrown to the sea chained through his skin along with the Lord Vishnu statue. Seeing this, I couldnt help recollect a line from an earlier tamil film starring Rajni where he says " ஹரியும் சிவனும் ஒன்னு , அ்ைத அறியாதவன் வாயில மண்ணு..!!! ".

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My take on My College Mates

This are my views, thoughts on my class mates in college.I have tried to keep it as short as possible, So I might have missed out on few Good or bad attributes of yours. Now few important abbreviation's

• (Q) -> Indicates -> Quit drinking and smoking before you get cancer,die of it and making me write a eulogy of you out here..!!!

• (L) -> Indicates -> The person has hit by arrows from cupid, Hope he/she gets Married to one he/she loves and has a Happy Married life..!!!

As normally with my blog, I never mention names of people with whom I am in direct contact with, So no names instead I have used their birthdays..!! I am sure few people would be interested in looking at what I wrote for others than themselves. Anyways birthdays are sorted out for easy search. I have taken the birth dates from placement details file, taken utmost care to get them right, but inspite of that few mistakes have been found. If there mistakes ( Like you cannot find your birthday or wrong birth dates) leave a comment telling who you are ,I will try to fix it . I might be wrong in my view, if I haven't had chance to interact with you myself, then what I hear about you from others is my take here. Again No hard feelings dudes and dudettes , if you feel something is offensive or should be edited out, leave a comment..!!!

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Glimpse of Corporate life

Well, to start things this was not my first visit to Bangalore. I have visited the city thrice before. But all these three times the sense of purpose was that of a tourist. It looks rather funny now, the first time when I traveled there. My dad and mom took me to Bangalore airport (My memory not failing me, I think I was 6 years then) I was awe struck at the site of planes taking of into the sky. Being a stubborn child that I was back then, I made a big fuss at the airport to let me go in one of those planes. I just wanted to fly of into the sky. I cried and shouted so much, that the airport security guard had an enquiry with my dad, just to make sure nobody was being kidnapped. In the end my parents managed to take me out of the airport.

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Chumaa

Well, One of the things that I felt I should have learnt, but didnt do it was learning Hindi. When I talk to many of my online friends(especially gals) , its hard to manage or reply in hindi, this is even worse when somebody cracks a joke in hindi, everybody around you is laughing and your wondering what the hell all the fuss is about. Hmmmm, Coming back to the point, this incident happened couple of weeks ago.

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End of College Life

I woke up as usual today morning 8 30 and hurried of to college. But today was the last day of college. Strangely there were no tinkling sensations of missing anything that morning. Rather I was more worried about, whether one of my project mates had finished typing the abstract paper work I had given him (As my intuition suggested, he had typed something, but rather did a shabby job of it) to show it to my guide that day. After checking his work in the hostel, I went back to class, only to find that photo taking frenzy started with everybody taking photos. I was rather feeling severely frustrated in the morning, because I had missed out on yesterday night’s meeting of all guys in hostel. Well, to be frank I did a get a call, from one of my friends at around 11 pm in the night. By that time both my parents had gone to sleep, I had dwelled into my project working on a module. I was like why the hell???? I didn’t get the info about the meeting earlier, but I didn’t go since it was pretty late at night, when I did get the info. My frustration reached its peak, when people whom I saw started narrating how they chatted off the whole night narrating their ek choti se love stories. Everybody was talking about it, but not to be part of it was getting to me. And the increased photo shooting frenzy in the class didn’t help. So I decided to go out to chill a bit and come back in. I went out for half an hour to gather myself up, after all this is the last day, there ain’t going to be anybody to be mad at from tomorrow. When I did come back in, I was straight way pushed into photo shooting session. No qualms about the photo’s though or the person whom took the photo with, I did refuse to do that in Goa tour, when I was asked, but I did it now, better late than never. We had our FA coming down to our class, to advise us (that would be pretty much the last piece of advice we are going to get from her, but I have to admit her advises are always thought provoking for me). Even our FA seemed a bit moved since it was the last working day, but I was not feeling anything. Then we had our juniors giving us this contact book, a compilation of all our class mate’s addresses. I think it was very nice of them to do that. One thing which I m rather happy about with myself, is that probably we have given lot more technical inputs and guidance to our juniors, then what our seniors had done for us. I seriously wish that they end up with a better placement record than us in final year. That contact book thing probably cheered up my mood.

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Microsoft, Yahoo and Google

All the three companies above have in their own way revolutionized the world of computers. There are more similarities between these software giants than what meets the eye.

Microsoft with its windows series of products has dominated worlds PC market for nearly two decades now. Virtually a whopping 95% of worlds PCs run on Microsoft OS. As you must have heard in the spider man movies, with great power comes great responsibility. But often power is misused. There are many instances of Microsoft bullying in world of software. Microsoft introduced its flagship product MS Office for its windows OS in 1989. At that time the dominant office suite included WordPerfect (Novell) and Lotus 123(IBM). As you might have guessed after introduction of MS Office both the applications were gone from the PC market in a few years. How did Microsoft achieve this within a short period??? Later anti trust litigations against Microsoft accused MS using what one calls as “UNDOCUMENTED API CALLS” in its Office products. While Novell and IBM where made to work with APIs provided by Microsoft to develop their office applications. MS was accused of hiding those system call interfaces which would perform the task faster and efficiently than documented API calls given to Novell and IBM thus giving unfair advantage to its products then its rivals. Another instance of dirty business tactics happened when internet revolution was burgeoning. As you might all know Netscape navigator was a very successful browser used during the mid 1990s. As usual Microsoft never likes people running non Microsoft products on Microsoft OS. It decided to ship its own browser the Internet Explorer (IE) along with its windows’98. IE was there right on the users desktop as users default browser, MS made IE free. No marks for guessing what happened in a few years time. Netscape went along the way WordPerfect and Lotus 123 did, into the software ruins. Instead of using giving the users the choice it just thrusted IE in the hands of users (IE did win the browser war cause it was as good as Netscape, So most users didn’t feel the need to switch over). The majority of criticism of MS has been for its business tactics, often described with the motto "EMBRACE, EXTEND AND EXTINGUISH". Microsoft initially embraces a competing standard or product, then extends it to produce their own incompatible version of the software or standard, which in time extinguishes competition that does not or cannot use Microsoft's new version. These and other tactics have led to various companies and governments filing lawsuits against Microsoft. In fact in 2002 Microsoft lost a lawsuit against it (for abusing its monopoly in PC OS to make users use its own product), the judge ordered the Microsoft to be split into two separate companies (People will remember what happened to BELL Corp in telecom sector when it had monopoly of the phone market, it was split into 7 companies to encourage competition). But the shrewd businessman Gates was, a handsome donation to George W Bush’s election Campaign ensured, MS escaped with appeal by just paying a huge compensation to Sun Microsystems and other Companies. Gates ensured his goose which laid the Golden Egg remained intact, the split was averted.

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Irony in the Great Indian Premier League Auction

Yesterday, as usual I was sitting cozily in my couch was skipping through the TV channels, to get some news. Instead what I found in all the news channels was IPL auction. It was mouthwatering to see the amount of bucks cricketers were being bought for. As I watched Mallyazz,Prietyz,SRKzzz pull out their big money kitty to buy players, it was clear that cricket was as much a business in this country where one can earn money as it was a sport. We had fringe players in Indian cricket like yusuf pathan, parthiv patel being bought for crores. I started wondering why the media doesn't give such attention to other sports. It’s always about cricket in this country. Few weeks ago, I saw a news that the badminton training session for the national players prior to a international tournaments were canceled due to the shortage of corks. The reason given was even more pathetic, Sports authority of India (SAI) did not have any funds to buy corks. Its an irony that a country like Ethiopia which is at the bottom of the worlds poorest nations is able to win gold medals at the Olympics, but India which boasts being fastest growing economy with(9% GDP per year next to Chinese of course) is struggling to win a medal at the Olympics every time(believe me the last time India won a gold at the Olympics was in 1980,Moscow games for hockey and hockey is no were in the radar of top Indian sports today) .The problem is that all the funds are being tunneled into one game and the rest of games have to fight for the scraps left behind.

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A Funny Thought - Girls Live in A Fairy Tale World..!!!

This is a funny line that ran through my mind my after seeing this display picture on one of my close girl friends orkut profile. You can see the picture here...

I think it would be better if it were changed as follows:

"Someone should sue Disney for making Every boy believe that there is a Sleeping Beauty waiting for him to be Kissed and Awakened.!!!"

Lolzzz

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