A few hundreds to a few ones

Jim Carrey as Bruce Almighty played God for a while and one among the many Godly activities was to check e-mails and read and reply to all the prayers he receives. It is quite mind boggling to see the amount of e-mails he gets and once he replies to all his mails and heaves a sigh of relief, he finds another hundred million new ones in his inbox. Well, I will be unreasonably exagerrating if I say, I used to get mails of that order. But scaling down myself to a mundane human and relatively scaling down the number of mails I used to get, I still used to be bogged down by the number.

Every morning seeing close to 150 odd emails in the inbox used to make me feel quite important,initially but after a while charm was all lost. I really used to hate seeing so many mails in the inbox. Of course, only 50-60% of them used to be mails that required my reply but the other ones were still important ones in one way or the other-be it technical alias mails, lounge emails and importantly mails mentioning ticket availability for weekend travels. The numbers of emails on ticket availability is off late increasing and I will write about it in one of my future posts.

Coming back to the point, I now have very few emails to read and almost none to reply. It is so good to come in the morning and find out that I have just three or four emails in the inbox. I know it is is just a passing phase before I start getting more mails, this passing phase sure is a pleasure phase for me.

The Fish Philosophy

I was traveling back to Bangalore on Sunday afternoon. Day time traveling could get quite boring if you did not have a book or a personal stereo and lucky for me, I had both! My brother, who is probably one of the most voracious reader I have ever come across, gave me these two books called "Fish!" and "Fish! Sticks" and told me that they are really worth reading. I wasn't very impressed with the first look of the books, but nevertheless took it along. I started reading the first one called "Fish!" and it immediately had me stick to it like a leech and I went ahead and completed it quite quickly (given that it just runs into 100 odd pages). The book was so impressive, that I did a back-to-back reading of the second book too -"Fish! Sticks".

Coming to the point, these books are about how one should have a positive attitude towards work, towards changing environment and more than anything a real positive attitude towards LIFE. Both the books have imaginary stories wonderfully inter twining the essence of having a "great attitude" towards life.

Now, what has all this to do with Fish at the first place? Well, for all the curious minds, I would very much encourage to go ahead and read the books and it will be quite a pleasant surprise when you find it out. The best part is, I got to read this book at the exact right time; a time when I have recently taken an altogether different route in my professional life. Moving out of Sun Microsystems and joining Informatica was a decision I took a week back. Such a drastic change, mandates me to have really high energy in a fresh environment and lot of positive attitude and confidence to standing upto new expectations. And I hope to do this by believing in the Fish Philosophy

Far from the Madding Crowd

I had long wanted to do this lonely trip, just for a day, where I transport myself to an almost alien place and spend a day far away from the concrete jungle and free from the clutches of technological encumbrances. I was successfully able to execute my plan on the Friday the 25th and it sure was one very enjoyable and pleasant day I spent.

I boarded the KSRTC Volvo bus on Thursday night at 10.30 pm. Well, actually I boarded the bus at 10.35 pm thanks to my indifference towards being on time and of course to Murphy for the traffic jam at the 11th hour. If not for Gansal, I wld've definitely missed the bus and I know one person
who will be insanely happy about it. Anyways, having successfully boarded the bus, my journey did start. I was supposed to reach Mangalore at 6 am in the morning, but
some freak accident on NH 48 caused an unprecedented delay of three hours (maybe Murphy was just following me silently!). As soon as I got out of the bus at 9 am, I caught a local bus that was heading towards Udupi. I wanted to go to Udupi and pay a visit to the Krishna Temple and the Mutt out there. It was a 90 minute drive on NH 17 and I enjoyed every bit of the drive gazing through the green pastures and the blue backwaters of coastal Mangalore.

I reached Udupi at 10.30 am and checked into Udupi Residency-a place I would very much recommend for folks planning a trip to this place. Having completed my morning ablutions, I headed straight for the temple. Lucky for me, the temple was sparsely crowded and I was able to have a good "kidiki" darshan of the residing deity. I spent 15 minutes in the temple, letting the serene environment of the place absorb me.
It was quite a tranquil experience and a much needed one for me. After that, I headed back to the room, packed and hit the bus stand.

I got into an "Express" bus that was heading to Mangalore and reached there around 1.30 pm. I got the local bus number to go to Ullal-a small hamlet 12 kms from Mangalore. This place has a cool resort called Summer Sands. The resort has a private beach and I had planned to spend the rest of the afternoon there. I reached the place around 2.15 pm and immediately checked into the room I had booked. I had a refreshing bath once again to beat the summer heat and immediately ordered some food (as I did not have anything to eat since morning). It was delicious lunch served right in my room and all I knew after eating was that I had dozed off. I woke up to the sound of my ringing mobile (wasn't I supposed to switch it off?) and the time was close to 6 pm. I answered the call, while getting ready to hit the beach. I went to the beach just in time to catch the lovely sunset. The confluence of the sea, the sky
and the sun is a sight that can anytime potray the most beautiful surrealistic backdrop. Having captured it my mind and my camera, I took a nice walk along the coastline which seemed quite endless. I would've walked for about 15 minutes after which I sat down on the sand and once again let nature embrace my mind and soul in its captivating surroundings. It was total bliss and I can't describe the moment of satiation I felt in mere words. As the dusk turned to dark, I headed back to the resort. It was close to 7.45 pm. I ordered a light dinner and then called the cab to drop me at the railway station.

The West Coast express left Mangalore at 9.15 pm and reached Coimbatore on Saturday morning 6.30 am. As I was leaving Mangalore that night, I knew my day was made. I felt good, rejuvenated and replenished with energy. I did something different that day, something totally out of my daily wonts. It was good to meet a very different set of people, it was good to be alone and finally it was best to be far away from the madding crowd.

Blog-o-mania

The blogging fever caught me last April and since then I had been on and off blogging around and reading way too many blogs written by my friends, acquaintances and sometimes total strangers across the globe. The point I am trying to make here is that, my initial enthusiasm to blog has actually spawned from one blog to four blogs today!

The one you are reading right now of course is my primary blog (I like to call this my primary blog for the simple reason that I started this one first-no strings attached!).

I got carried away with my so called photography skills and started off a photo blog with the idea that some day mine will be in the "Photos of the Year". Around that time, the Bitsian Blog idea was floated across and I immediately jumped into action to be a vivid contributor. These days, I am more of a vivid reader when it comes to this blog.

And finally, a few days back, I started of a technical blog with the intention to write about the various technologies that I come across in my professional life (which from the past few months have been quite a lot!)

Given all this, one may well ask, where on earth will I find time to do work, if I spend time updating my many blogs? A very valid question, but I prefer to remain taciturn on answering this question (some attitude-huh?)

Mast bhari Maayavi

An impromptu decision led me and my roomates to watch this movie called "Maayavi". Surya and Jyothika were the lead role, leading all the other casts in their spins of nonsensical yarns. The very start of the movie indicated that it was nothing short of a pure masala movie with a bunch of belly dancing, display of raw muscle power and lots of so called timely jokes. It was only during half of the movie that it dawned on me that I have seen a similar movie before. It was a partial deja-vu, but was quite strong. I was thinking to myself, "I've seen this before. It was in Hindi..what was the movie? Aaaah got it! Mast, was the movie.

There was this ordinary teenager leading a mundane life, but is head over heels about Urmila. He learns about the cold malice of her aunt and decides to rescue her. He does that, goes through a series of adventurous stuff and Urmila kinda falls in love with him but at the end throw some practical shit and they decide to move along in life, separately.

Maayavi was different from Mast only in the sense that it had to be more suitable for a Tamil crowd. Surya, a local guide and a small time "daada" in Mahabalipuram accidently tries to rob in Jyothika's house only to get caught. He goes through some nasty trouble inspite of not having robbed anything and because of these squabbles, he decides to take revenge. He kindnaps Jyothika (apparently from a movie shooting scene where Jyothika is a herione). Initially she is all pissed off, but later on those few touching moments in the movie melts her heart and the rest is the climax.

If you are utterly bored to death in life, this movie will rekindle your spirits. On the whole, it is an average movie to watch (but just once). Watch out for Jyothika talking her own dialogues.

Free e-Books

I was mentioning in my previous post on how techies would love to get their hands on anything that is FREE. Today, I happened to stumble upon (jeez, I've been using this word a lot!) a site which has lots of technical books available for free reading/downloading. If you think, you need to sharpen the saw, this is one really good site. Go ahead and increase your technical acumen by picking all the books you want, because these are Technical Books for Free

Doodle left but MyShoutBox arrived

I like the idea of having a chat window attached to my blog. Though only a few folks have left messages out there, the idea of having one always sounded cool to me.

In the recent past, I noticed that my Doodle Board did not show up on my blog. It just had an empty space. I initially thought that it was some refresh problem or probably the site was down. It was only after visiting their home page, I came to know that the service is no longer FREE! Tools or applications that are available as Freeware always entice the developer community. I will talk about this some other day. Coming back to the point, I had no choice but to hunt for another FREE tool and that is when I hit up MyShoutBox. Its pretty much the same as my previous one, but allows some decent amount of customization. I am yet to explore it fully, but that is my future AI. If some one wants to give it a shot, leave your message in it.

Thirusanku Swargam

I am not aware if there is a translitration for the title, but if I were to offer a translation for it, I would say, "hanging in mid air". For the curious mind, you can find a nice explanation and description of the title here.

I ain't say more that this!

Thalai Poola Vaaruma

No, I did not say this. This is a forwarded message and I am just passing on the notes.

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Rajnikanth has proved once again that he is the biggest brand in Tamil films with the successful audio launch of Chandramukhi.

His detractors who had been shouting from the roof-top that the superstar charishma and pull has diminished were shocked by the kind of adultation the actor received at the Chandramukhi audio launch. At Chenna's Ritchie Street the wholesale market for electronic goods, shops that deal in audio cassettes opened at 6 am on Saturday (March 5) as agents took delivery of the audio.

Says Sanjay Wadhwa of AnAK Audios who are marketing the Chandramukhi audio: “At a time when audio market is at an all time low, the kind of reception that we got is overwhelming. We had manufactures only 1,50,000 cassettes and 30,000 CD’s, but by Sunday evening all the dealers wanted more stock by Monday!"
It is obvious that the audio is selling like hot cakes on the brand equity of Rajnikanth. At Chennai’s Music World 437 cassettes and 227 CD’s were sold on the first day! Compare this with the number one audio on the chart that has sold only 572 cassettes and 147 CD’s in 32 days after its music launch!

Rajnikanth is truly a phenomenon. He has not lost an iota of his mass fan base and is still the number one by a mile.

Thalai pola varuma!
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Meme

"Meme" was a word coined in the late 70's. The term refers to a unit of information that replicates from brains and inanimate stores of information (books, computers, etc) to other brains or stores of information.

Meme, surely did not unleash its full power when the word was coined then, but today, in the e-world, it has become an almost common scenario. The way information spreads across the world esp through internet is sometimes mind boggling. Collaborative efforts have started to pay off, open sourcing has started a revolution within the developer community (calling all 'eh design architects), e-news has already grabbed us in a big way (think of all the "E-mail this article" every time you read cool things and decide to forward it to your friends). Blogging is another area where "meme" can be very aptly described and defined. Making cross posts, alluding to some one's cool, interesting or informative posts has become a thing of common today.
I am sure all the bloggers would agree to this. The list is surely not exhaustive at this point (but I'll stop here to keep my post small!)

Finally, to think of all this and of course, thanks to Meme, I got to know about this word through Xavier. After all, this is about information dissemination.

Confused with words while playing Cupid ?

Not anymore. My friend Xavier had made a post last week about a site that will test you on the commonly used but quite confusing words. It is an online test with 40 questions to answer (which I know is a bit lengthy). If you are game for testing your skills, this is a good place to do so. Go ahead and tap on the Bernard Shaw in you by taking the test here.

yahOOOOOOOOOO

Yahoo has turned 10 and today they have pervaded the cyber world like "ether". To mark this occasion, they have put up a nice netrospective page that is worth a visit.
Check it out at "Yahoo's netrospective"

And to think of it, I created my first yahoo account 6 years back (not bad)!

Beat the summer heat tenderly

The mercury has been on a steady rise over the past few weeks in Bangalore (where I work), Coimbatore (my hometown) and Chennai (which I visit quite frequently). Well, Chennai being an exception in the sense that the mercury rarely dips! That has seen an increase in intake of more liquid food to keep me cool or should I say, keep my cool? :).

Yesterday, I had been to my locality Food World to buy some stuff. As I was walking out, I noticed a pile of tender coconuts placed in a nice heap, opposite to the super market. The stock looked quite fresh and I was immediately tempted to go and taste the sweet water. I asked the vendor to pick one that has only water and no kernel. God knows how these guys are able to spot one, but most of the time, they do. As I sipped and slurped the water, I could instantly feel the coolness. It was as if, my body was being immersed in ice. My taste buds were jumping in ecstasy to grab the tiny droplets of the water. The one minute was simply rejuvenating. I paid him and then decided to have one tender coconut every day. The good news is, there is no cess, VAT or fringe service tax attached to the price you pay. Thanks to PC for sparing the coconuts.

Finally, what is the point if you don't understand the benefits of tender coconut?
For those, who want to be aware, read the benefits of tender coconut to know more.