those school days

read this blog - agirlcalleddivya, maintained by sudish. what a nice read. it brought back the memories of my school days. infact I was able to relate to parts of it too. sudarshan has also blogged on similar lines, but apparently he had a crush on his biology teacher.

well got to admit, I was no different either. I had my own and will cherish it forever. anyone who attended Bharathiya Vidya Bhavan School, Coimbatore, will never forget its principal - Kumidhini madam. lot of guys had a crush on her, even at the tender age of 10 :) some even wrote love letters to her, anonymously ofcourse. one such letter forced her to collect handwritten samples from the entire school to find the culprit!

wow, what a planning :)

Rajinikanth's daughter Asihwarya is going to marry Danush. subsequently I read Danush's interview on vikatan.com. upon being queried as to why he is marrying when he is just 22, Danush goes, "well, when I was 16, I decided to marry at 22. If not Aishwarya, I would have married someone else next yr".

wow, what a way to plan ones life. not that the girl impressed him or anything like that, he wants to marry at 22 and decided it when he was 16. just wondering what he was thinking at the age of 10 :)

multi-national force ..... nice joke

thanks to boston red sox's remarkable comeback in the ALCS, I too became baseball fan. and finally, after 86 yrs, boston won the world series. on the tv, there was also a video feed of the american troops in Iraq celebrating this win. and the title on the video -- multi-national force in Iraq. what the hell, does any other country really care about major league baseball in the U.S. and we all know whats the ratio of american troops with respect to non-american troops in Iraq.

counting down........

its only 10 more days before I'm off to chennai and coimbatore for vacation. its 3 yrs since I visted India, and I'm all excited and looking forward to this trip. got to catch up with a lot of people over there.
adding to the excitement are the marriages of a cousin, and a long-time friend, and ofcourse deepavali.
and I'm getting only 3 weeks for this vacation. there should be a new rule, wherein desis in US should be allowed a 'homeland visit vacation' for additional 4 weeks :) afterall we need the existing 2 weeks vacation to roam about the US .... don't we?

Hooters in India

just when I was thinking why India hasn't embraced Hooters, here we go. they are opening some in china too. while china is relatively open minded society compared to India, I'm just wondering what kinda costumes would the waitstaff sport in India.
hey, here is an idea.... why not borrow some clothes from the silver screen vamps :-) oops, they are always drenched in rain/river water, never mind :)

pre-marital affair & tamil movies

latest controversy over a tamil movie called '7G Rainbow Colony'. I haven't watched the film, nor do I intend to, but looks like thats the issue. whether its right or wrong, I don't want to go into it.
but I'm sure some rights organizations are going to have a field day over this. for a society like India, where all forms of contradictions exist, this is new and is going to create a stir.

90% of tamil movies follow a standard template, nobody really cares about the story, and screenplay too. some movies do something ridiculuous and claim themselves to be different from the ordinary. invariably the movie becomes a hit, mainly because the audience, who are tortured by the standard stupid ones, finds some solace in watching these 'different' movies.

I'm pained at the fact that a lot of people are worshipping some directors, who according to me have zero creativity.

New Laptop and free wireless connection

I got my new IBM T42. its really cool and sleek too. i love IBM laptops for their looks and the incredible track pointers. a lot of people hate them, somehow I find them very convenient to use.

it has got an integrated wireless card and just picks up signal from anywhere without any installation. i love that. these days a lot of people use wireless, and most of them are just free on the air. I remember while in UCSB, every other house had a wireless router and nobody bothered to enforce any restrictions on its usage. it was practically free broadband connection :)

of policies and elections

its election time in the US and the rhetoric is unusually high. a lot more is at stake I guess than previous times. Bush and Kerry have plans, as they say "I have a plan". God only knows if they themselves know what it is, let alone us. atleast they say they have a plan.

look at our own indian politicians, do they ever care about policies. all the attacks are personal, worth watching while munching some hot pakoras and bhajjis. says sushma swaraj, a leader of the BJP party, "if Sonia becomes the prime minister, I will tonsure my head". and a congress leader retorts, "Vajpayee is addicted to whiskey". actually I was interested to know what brand Vajpayee likes, just to see if we have similar tastes :)

coming back to the US elections, I wouldn't be surprised if Bush proclaims Veerappan's death as a success to the "ongoing war on terrorism" :-)

captain's catch

what, Veerappan captured dead!!! I thought our captain had caught him more than a decade back. infact he even caught him alive :)

anyways, to celebrate this ocassion (?), I made gulab jamoons :-)

cooking bug

cooking bug has started biting me again. thanks to a friend's sudden enthusiasm (he is raleigh, 2000 miles away), I too have decided to go on a full scale, once again. No more mixed veg rice and onion sambhar.
today the menu is Mor Kozhambu and Beans Paruppu Usili (both are delicious south indian dishes).
for the weekend i'm gonna make sweet boli (again a south indian dish), I have tried this before and it did come nicely.
A cook's real delight is when others savor the stuff he/she has prepared, so all are welcome :-)

a year full of potatoes

memories of my grad life at UCSB were rekindled after reading a post from my friends blog. in the first yr, I shared a 2 bedroom duplex with 3 other indian guys. we had rules drawn up for everything, including time to eat. that was a funny rule, anybody who comes in after 9:30 pm had to do the dishes :-). it was brought into immediate effect as one of us turned up for dinner really late and the dishes remained undone for the next couple of days.

we took turns for cooking, and since 3 of us were vegetarians, all cooked only veggie stuff. each one of us had our own likes and dislikes. we all like only one vegetable in common - potatoes. everyday it used to be potatoes. while I cooked a south indian version of it, the others would put it in dal or tomato curry depending on mood swings.

as soon as I moved out, it was potato-less cooking for the next few months.

five years from now......

how funny, its been a little over five years since I was asked the question, "Where do you see yourself five yrs from now", in an interview. My answer, and typically many of my friends' answers, "Leading a team of dynamic youngsters" :)
back in 1999, when me and my friends were in our final yr of under-grad, we were seriously preparing for our campus interviews. and this was the most common question in the interviews. I still remember the discussions to tackle this question. and all the answers would point to the same direction, to lead a group.
hmmmmm............ its five yrs and most of us are still in entry level positions, with varied yrs of experience. some of us got promotions, some of us have a masters degree, but I don't think none of us is in a management position, as of today. friends, please correct me if I'm wrong.

if this question is posted to me today, my answer would be --- Debugging the same system I'm developing today :)

Better to stick with reality.

p.s: all these are w.r.t career and not changes on a personal level :)

interesting dreams

of late I've been reading a lot on India, and the current lifestyle there, thanks to the Hindu metroplus sections. looks like our good old chennai and coimbatore have a lot more variety when it comes to restaurants. what really surprised me was the incluence of pizza shops and burger joints. often I used to ask my friends as to how this could be possible, and they clearly point out that I miss south indian cuisine as I'm NOT anymore in south india. obvious huh... well I guess I would rather go for the mouth-watering masala dosas instad of pizzas and burgers.
all these thoughts started to come even in my dreams too. adding to this is the excitement of my india trip next month after nearly 3 yrs. almost every night I have dreams of being in chennai/coimbatore. interestingly, on one of those dreams I was walking on a well-known busy street in coimbatore and saw nothing but pizza shops on both sides of the street :) what a horrible dream, I woke up and felt relieved as it was only a dream.

all negative karma :)

orkut

a friend of mine recently sent me an invite to join this online community. orkut is an online forum that can be used to make new friends and participate in active discussions. its like dating/friendship/activity/discussuions everything under one banner. its now owned by google, and no wonder its pretty good. but its a damn slow site and sometimes even irritates me. why can't they upgrade their bandwidth.
its a free service, but like gmail, you need an invite to hop in. if you need an invite, let me know :)

luxury cars

everyone has a desire to own a BMW or a Mercedes-Benz. I'm no different either. but I wanna differ when it comes to picking the right model. though the brand name is really sexy, driving isn't that great when it comes to the lowest-end luxury cars. I really couldn't differentiate the feeling between driving a second hand toyota corolla and a Merc C230 Kompressor...... not to mention the annoying noise it makes. while the former costs a little over 10 grand, the latter is atleast 30 grand. what a waste of money. I knew this as my friend recently bought a brand new C230.
even looks-wise, these lower end luxury cars look crappy. if you are still thinking that they have a better and powerful engine, you are damn WRONG. a ford mustang has more power than these cars, and it looks really cool too. a V6 accord or camry has more power, and ofcourse they are more reliable.
I have been in a 5 series BMW, and that was a dream car. it really fits its description - the ultimate driving machine. but it costs about $50K. have to wait sometime I guess :)

what to buy?????

getting a digital camera is becoming increasingly complex. not for the price, but because of the varieties and various features it has these days. quite a bit of research is needed to get one, after all we are investing more than $200 on this. there are zillions of models ..... and the standard questions are ..... should I get a 3.2 MP or more, should I get one with AA batteries or a one with the smaller and lighter but proprietary battery, do I need a view finder or not, how big the LCD screen should be......... aaahhhh the list just extends. and the minute-to-minute online deals on these adds more fuel to the fire.
I bought a cannon A75 last month, but the picture quality wasn't impressive at all and hence had to return it. that purchase was just by a gut feeling, I just walked into the shop and picked one, but don't think I will do it again. as a result, the more reviews I read/hear, the more confused I am and haven't got one yet.