something u shouldn't ask :)

a question that you should never ask someone back home on a gokulashtami day -- "whats the menu?" :) and i did just that this past friday. while i was planning on re-heating the leftover rice and mix it with some buttermilk and pickles (which was all what I had), the answer to my question was ... "seedai, vella seedai, thattai, patta thenkuzhal, managkombu, kai murukku, thenga burfi, appam, navaneetam, paal payasam, vadai, and of course the regular 3 course meals .. udambukku mudiyala, adhanaala ivlo dhaan panna mudinjudhu" :) yenda kettomnu irundhadhu.

i was only reminded of the dialogue form MMKR "ennadhu, list angavasthram maadhiri irukke" :)

rajini and ghajini

superstar and shankar, wow! me already looking beyond 200 days. and I love reading all the rumours about the upcoming movie. infact thats more entertaining :) actually I'm thinking of starting something myself and make u all beleive :) heard that thalaivar is doing multiple roles in the movie, I mean more than two. if that is the case, multiply every rajini by 100 and lo, u get the number of days the movie will be houseful :)

ghajini songs kettacha? nice ones, hearing them again and again. harris jeyaraj seems to be on a roll. and this one also has some exotic words ... like 'ona ri thaari' etc. dunno where he gets all these words :)

cricket and all rubbish

its high time that we change the way cricket is played. I've been telling this for a long time ... start promoing professional clubs rather than having national teams. having a single team for the entire nation just spoils other sports. recently I read Kutraleeswaran's (remember?) interview in Hindu. poor chap, had to ditch his pro-swimming career due to lack of sponsorship and support. he ended up doing a masters in the US, and now employed in Intel, Sacramento. really sad to lose a prodigy like him. and I would blame most of it on cricket.

it hurts when people question as to how come a nation of more than a billion cannot win even a single gold in the olympics. I don't know, does vision 2020 has anything on sports? if not we should add it as well.

corporate espionage

last week I was reading an article on Wall Street Journal on this. according to the article, the FBI's main focus these days (apart from counter terrorism), is to tackle corporate spies, especially by chinese nationals. apparently most of it is done by either threatening or bribing people of chinese origin who work for hi-tech companies and defence establishments. and there have been some convictions too.

I was reading this article in our company break room. after I finished reading it, I casually left it on a nearby table. and one of the guys spotted the story. well, he was a chinese :) and not just him, the whole table was occupied by chinese people. with a big smile I silently vacated my place :)

desire to hate ...

violence and killings occupy a major chunk on all the news sites and news papers. and it is not a new trend, been the same way for a long time now. a lot of us have immense interest in reading such stuff. its definitely not the fault of the publishers, for they just cater our needs.

we live in a much civilized world now, as a result we are definitely forced to hide some of our natural instincts and desires. thats probably a reason why a kid likes to watch our captain cut someone's throat on screen. some of us don't even realise that we use this medium to vent some deep feelings like hatred, jealously etc.

is this because of the animal instincts that we may still have or just because we are used to reading and watching only such stuff?

to hell or heaven :)

oh my God, the fun never stops when it comes to Seinfeld. for starters, Seinfeld is a hit TV comedy over here. it stopped a few yrs back but the re-runs are still on. now a small piece from one of the episodes --

Elaine and Puddy are in a romantic relationship. one fine day Elaine finds out that Puddy is very religious and is following christianity ....

Elaine: puddy, are you religious
Puddy: yes
Elaine: aren't you concerned that I ain't religious.
Puddy: no
Elaine: why
Puddy: coz am not the one that is going to hell

by far one of the best I've seen. it was a laugh riot :) jokes apart, the beauty of Seinfeld is that anyone can relate to most it. Seinfeld actually cheers me up. me always in a great mood after a good dose of an episode :)

one more contributor

as some you guys have noticed, there is a new contributor to this blog. Its my fiancee Kalpana. she has already started posting on this space, with the screen name demi :)

its always nice to have more than one contributor for a blog. everyone thinks differently and thats fun in a discussion place like this. eventually me and my friends would give up our individual blogs and continue to share our thoughts on a bigger platform. and that day is not far away.

so until then whitenoise would keep streaming steadily :)

free pizza!

this was something that I used to get all the time at UCSB. I never remember paying for a pizza :) all meetings, discussion sessions, company presentations, anything ... there'd be one thing for sure, free pizza. you can hog as much as you want and there will be free soda as well, just to wash it down :)

was talking to a friend today who went to Caltech for his UG. get ready for this ... google pays for all pizza bills if you are a CS student at Caltech and were working for any CS project (even course related ones), while ordering the pizza. you can work 24hrs every day ... order pizzas round the clock and google would simply reimburse you :) its an honor system, you just need to present the bills to a representative and he/she will reimburse you.

I can do that ... work on CS projects for 24 hrs and live on free pizza ... just don't ask me if those projects would work :)

new planet and an added dimension :)

national geographic reports that what scientists have discovered might actually be a new planet in our solar system. ah ah, this doesn't sound good. now don't start thinking that we might be raided by some aliens pretty soon and "Independence Day" might become a reality. no guys, bush is actually planning to have a stop over on this new planet en route to mars :) and don't fantasize about availability of water et. al in this new one. not that far either.

but what we can think is the immediate impact on our horoscopes :) and I wouldn't be surprised if all the astrologers gang up and call for a world-wide discussion on this. can they waive it? or can they add a clause and say that it only augurs well for our mankind? could that be a 'guest house' for our existing planets from where they can have a better look at us (as they say "moonavadhu veetlerndhu neara guru paarkkaraan") ?wow, this looks exciting :)