photo update

On a weekday after a heavy meal...couldn't stop myself crashing on the bed...

@HomeTown
pic taken using my iPhone3Gs

Beware of Kids

Today evening after office as usual I was going to my gym. As I was parking my bike outside the gym,I saw there were a few kids playing with their moms I guess..but I dint pay much attention to them...
then all of a sudden a cute kid started calling me.. "Maama".."maama"...then her mom pulled the kid close to herself and was telling to another lady..that the kid always thinks whoever comes by bike is her maama...
and yea I heard that...[that was actually for me]..I was all smiles..and went into the gym...


But this reminded me of an embarrassing incident which happened some time during 2005, while I was in Hyderabad..

One fine day I was going to office..all neatly dressed..and the bus by which I was going to office was very crowded,which was quite usual...I was standing for sometime..and at one of the stops..the person sitting on the seat in front of me got up..and before someone grabbed it..I jumped on to it..[now who knows what was in store there for me...]
Then there was this kid..should be about 2-3yrs old..sitting on his mom's lap...the kid seemed to be very annoying one..cos the mom was really struggling to keep him at one place...
Then this kid turns back and discovers me...I gave a broad smile [not that I love kids a lot..and pls dont think am a pedophile]..just cos he seemed to be one annoying one..I was trying to socialize myself with my smile..[who knows that the smile turns out to be a fatal one for me..]

The kid stared at me for a while..and then all of sudden jumped on to me..shouting "Daddy".so loud that I heard the echo from behind.....and I was like.."what ? :O..." the people around were all looking at this whole drama...am sure half of them would have really thought that I was his dad...The lady pulled the kid towards her and told..it is not daddy..it is uncle...now that didnt seem to have bettered the situation for me.. infact it has worsened the situation..with all suspicious looks around..I felt it is not worth the luxury of having a seat so I got up...and went to the rear end of the bus..so that the kid could not even smell my presence...

Yes!

After a long pause comes this post just to assure everyone of my existence.
Oflate I've been quite busy both personally and professionally, hence couldnt catch up with my mates in blogosphere.

When I was in Hyderabad I watched this telugu movie Khaleja, and I so wanted to write a review on that one.  Not that it was an interesting flick but I wanted to enlighten the ignorant crowd that it is a movie inspired by a book.




Khaleja (Telugu)     Rating: 1.5/5

It's an okayish movie and as expected a typical commercial telugu movie with all aspects of entertainment like comedy,action,over-action, skin show etc. Mahesh babu and Anushka both added to the glamor quotient of the movie.The songs were pathetic except to the one which I liked, "Sada Siva"..If someone had asked me to rate the movie..I would have rated it 3/5 but since it is a copied concept and there is no reference to the original idea I downgrade it to 1.5/5.


 I really wonder if anyone who watched the movie has also read this book "The immortals of Meluha" and not found anything similar. I felt the main theme of the movie and the book were almost same.
Last week I got this opportunity to meet Amish Tripathi, the author of the book, who was surprised that a movie has already come out with his concept. I made this point when he was discussing about his plans to make a movie based on the book.

I've listed out the similarities and have mailed it to Amish, which are as follows.

Book	Movie
The people of Meluha wait desperately for a savior	The people of the mysterious village wait desperately for a savior, whom they call as GOD
Throat turning blue is an indication of Lord	Here they don’t have the neelakanta concept but there exists a plot by which the Lord will be discovered
Shiva is considered as GOD, and he hates being called that because he thinks he is a normal human being like anyone	Mahesh Babu is considered as GOD, and even he hates being called
Later part of the book Shiva, internalises the belief that he is Lord	ditto
Nandi always accompanies Shiva	In this movie there is this character(played by Shafi) who always sticks to him wherever he goes..and who is also from the mysterious village
Bhadra is a good friend of Shiva	In this one, he doesn’t have a childhood friend but a person (played by Ali) becomes his good friend and sticks around with him

There is one scene in which Mahesh and Ali booze and then talk about the heroine (played by Anushka), it just resembles the scene when Shiva and Bhadra have marijuana and talk about Sati
The movie has a song "Sada Siva", praising Lord Shiva..which shows that the director of the movie has used the image and character of Lord Shiva to portray the character of the protagonist.

Through the lens

High speed photography :P 

using my iPhone 3Gs

Grease money

Discovered this word after a wiki search on bribery.

For the last few days bribery has been a buzz word for me. Whatever the topic be, whoever it be with whom I talk..this has been one common thing featuring everywhere...One thing I've realized is that government officials are the most prospering ones owing to this omnipresent phenomena..Any department we take.. everywhere there is a huge scope for corruption....for ex: municipal corporations(for every damn approval they charge hefty amounts),airport customs, traffic police...all of them are minting money....


There is an interesting aspect of Bribe.


Bribe is one thing which can be both a Capex as well as an Opex. It is more painful as an Opex.
It has a long value chain of its own..comprised of government officials of all ranks, goons, media, sometimes even locals..While I was searching for bribery on web, found this interesting pic..so felt like sharing

I am tired of running!

These days I've been busy running around government offices. As expected the laidback responses by people and multiple levels of hierarchy really sucked me. Today I was at the sub registrar office for getting EC (Encumbrance certificate) and was pleasantly surprised to see SLAs (Service level agreements) defined for each of the services.

Thanks to E-Goverance being implemented, now things happen in a jiffy.

A board showing different time standards(SLAs) for various services.

The catch here is that the SLA applies only after you submit your document, and to do that one there needs to be a person sitting at the receiving end, who on most of the ocasions will be enjoying extended breaks or will be indulging in some petty discussions with colleagues.





Well it was not me alone running around, there is someone else in my life who has also been running along with. Let me introduce you this specimen. Click on read more to see who it is..

Greece shopping

The following are the stuff I bought in a shop in Athens as part of our Greece shopping, which we felt was big mistake then, but now when I look at those stuff it helps in refreshing my memories.

Athena is the Greek goddess of wisdom. This stone carving is bigger than it appears in the pic. It was priced at 36 Euros but we got it for 18 Euros, as there was some sale going on

The great philosopher Socrates for 8 Euros


Please click on the Read More..>>

The 150! .. a long journey

I was once called the Rahul Dravid of blogging[click to see the comment]..considering the pace at which I post on my blog. The current post is my 150th post and it took me 6 years to achieve this feat. To commemorate the 150th post, I would like to introduce some of my blogger pals to my readers.[most of you would be knowing them]
Here we go...

Sh@s : A special blogging friend :). She speaks from heart, and that reflects on her blog. The number of comments and followers clearly shows that she is quite famous among other bloggers. Her blog caption says random thoughts and she puts those thoughts in the form of poems. I am generally not very fond of poems but this blog is different, and I keep peeping into this blog often to check for any updates.

Suraj : A very talented person he is. For all those people, who love hi-quality pictures and icons stuff, should definitely check out his blog. I've personally downloaded many wallpapers from his blog. I was honored by letting me write a guest post on his blog. You may check the post.

Gayathri aka G3 aka Guru: I should say that she is the most notorious person in the blogosphere,for more information do check her blogger profile and blog caption.After reading that you will also believe with my claim.These days she is seen spamming people with her fb statuses and google buzzes and has almost abandoned her blog. I sincerely hope FB bans her and soon she makes a comeback here.




Now comes my most favorite blogger. This person is very knowledgeable and I love every post of hers, not that I agree to every point she makes, but every point she makes apparently is very sensible and none cant fully refute with those also.

WiseDon: She calls herself as wise donkey[an oxymoron] but I call her WiseDon. Right now she is on a long leave hence no recent updates, but all my readers this blog is a must read. There have been a many wow moments when I read this blog. I am sure even you would feel the same.





There are many more blogs which I read and comment regularly, but owing to the space constraint[which has been a constant complaint by people about me] I have picked just four bloggers.

The trip to Greece - Part IV

Recap

Part I - It all started like this  , Nice to Greece, which covered the journey from Nice to Ancona and the encounter with the Police there

Part II - Then once we were in Greece, Ferry to Patras and Athens,we had many interesting experiences one of them being the friendship with a thief.

Part III - This had a chain of upsets, which made the trip seem like one of the unluckiest ones.Athens to Athens, I ended this post saying that the next part would tell on how I  was molested by police and the transporter like car chase. For all that excitement, you may go ahead clicking the read more

The real side of the real babu

What's wrong with Mr. Nara Chandrababu Naidu?.
I was shocked when I saw this video. Do check the video after 3:00 for the shocking part. In this video you can see our babu raising his hand on a tribal woman to silent her and hitting another woman to grab mike from her. Hitting someone is socially unacceptable and that too by a person of such status is strongly condemnable. In front of a huge crowd someone can do such an ugly thing, wondering to what level these guys will degrade behind the screens.

Dear Babu,

I hope you realize that it is a very shameful act and you better  apologize for the same. I've always had some respect towards you for your vision and execution of plans. The way you lead the transformation of Hyderabad from a normal metro to a global hub for IT jobs. But following the recent happenings and this incident all that respect I had towards you is no more.

A leader should maintain his cool even at trying times and you've failed at that.
May be it is true that the real character of a person is known during bad times.

Gufaa - you will never get lost

Last night I've been to a restaurant called Gufaa (cave) managed by Ohri's. It is in the heart of the city at Basheerbagh, Hyderbad. Three of us(Me,Swad and Gtalk) went to this place. As the name goes by, the place had the look and feel of a cave. The waiters were dressed like some forest guards to make you feel it, as an adventurous experience. Kids will love this place, they would be excited with the look and feel. The dim lights and the old hindi classic music makes it an excellent ambience for having food.

Coming to the main part, the food. We ordered for Tawa Corn, Pathar ka Gosht, Prawn fry, Harabhara biryani and Mix nonveg biryani. I loved the biryani a lot. One should definitely have the biryani. After a long time I had something like a real biryani.The prices were slightly at the higher side but sometimes we should pay little premium for the service quality. Overall it was really great. A nice place for get-togethers.


PS: Ok, Its a short review on the restaurant ..so sorry for this boring post
PPS: Yet another post to do self promotion..the pic taken by my iPhone 3Gs

Where there's a will, there's a way

Readers, Here comes a video taken by me using my old Nokia 5700 Xpress Music.
The specimen in this video is my friend Sridhar Talatam. He is an expert when it comes to using minimal resources. You will see how he manages to make a chapathi without any proper equipment [i dont know what you call that wooden thing] in this video. I dont think anyone in this world would have tried this. This is heights of innovation and creativity

Quiz - Identify the person in the picture

Here is a quiz for my readers. Identify the person who is selected.

Ok now please dont ask me why I was checking out that website.

Note: There is another familiar person in that pic. Identify that person also if you can.

So from this what do we understand?.
Never go by the profiles advertised on the websites. All of them would be fake :)

Ayyo! Ayyo!

Hey no no.. am not singing the song "Love marriage"..Even I want to share something about Ayodhya issue.. It's a hot topic you see..a good chances of getting some traffic..
I found this cartoon, someone forwarded this, which is an apt one for the moment..
a cartoon which marries CWG to Ayodhya issue.

For the benefit of the people who cannot read hindi. The scene goes like this...
Ayodhya verdict has one of it's key decisions as to give the reconstruction project contract to Kalmadi. Following which our Islam fraternity requests Hindhus to get temple built and Hindhus the otherway...Thats it the problem solved :)..

Really Kalmadi has become a huge celebrity.. Two days to go for CWG..Here is the schedule.. Good luck to everyone.. all athletes, organizers & scamsters..




And about Ayodhya...am happy that things are a lot cooler than what people were fearing about prior to the verdict. Let peace prevail. Let religion be used only for spiritual purposes ...attaining nirvana..and not for political gains.

Dreams - can anyone beat me on that!

Well readers, Endhiran (Robot) releases today and it is supposed to the most costliest movie in Asia. Supposedly the last movie of Rajnikanth. It has all winning combination in it..RajniKanth, Shankar(my fav), A R Rahman(my fav)..and yea of course Aishwarya. So totally a power packed film. They seem to have marketed it aggressively because it is talked about in every other channel. Whatever be it this movie will seem more logical to me unlike his other movies [stunts will be no different from any other movie]..because he is robot in this movie (so it makes it credible :D).

Ok now coming to the actual story of this post...you may not know this..that.. even I was a movie actor..yes you read it correctly.....

The immortals of Meluha

I never claim "reading books" to be one of my hobbies. Its not that I don't read books. I do read but not every other book I lay my hands on. For me the cover page is very important if I have to pick up a book for myself or if someone suggests and gives me a good feedback then I definitely read that.
As I said I never used to say "reading books" as my hobby, but at one instance I did that and thats when I repented :)


This was during my final year at IIT Madras and our campus placements started then, as usual the largest IT company in India visited our campus to be the first one to go. Those days we never used to work much on our CVs nor on preparation for interview[none of my friends did]. I borrowed a tie from one person a belt from some other and got my CV printed on a piece of paper and went to the interview. That was the first  interview in my life. I never did a mock interview also before that [none of my friends did :P]. I was totally cool [ chatting,laughing out loud with friends] till I entered the interview room, but as I was going inside my heart beat was at triple the normal rate. That's when I could feel the chillness all throughout my body.

There were 3 people on panel. A middle aged man[guess a tamilian], an old man[dont remem how he looked] and a lady[she was for sure a northie]. Then the regular tell about u etc, somehow I mugged up that part and blurted out the same.so managed that part....and as it went on..they asked me techie questions..to which I could answer comfortably [not that was an expert..but yea managed even that]..

then suddenly the lady interrupted and asked me" So Mr. Unknown.. what are your hobbies?"

I went blank for a while...[firstly it was the lady asking, and secondly it was sudden shift from techy to personal questions]
So I said "Ma'm.. my hobbies are...[thinking for a while].. reading books, watching movies [ ok now I remembered my actual hobbies] playing carrom, football, hockey, computer games ...again interrupted by the lady..[now I understood she should be some HR]

HR-"Wow! thats interesting, you read books..so what books have you read?"

Freedom of Speech - debate

The debate I am talking about has run for a week, and everyday morning when  I get up the first thing I used do was to check the reply to my previous comment. It all started like this.
As usual I was hopping on to different blogs and then found this blog by a blogger "Uncommon Sense". This post, Right to hurt religious sentiments, of his caught my attention and I couldnt stop myself from reacting on it.
Do check out the post.
A warning to my readers before you read the contents of that blog post. The content has many expletives.

I caught the cat :D

Disclaimer: I am not jobless

I was casually browsing through the whosamongus widget to check the visitors of my blog, which I do at times just to see if I got anyone from new geographies :) and that is when this copied content part caught my attention. It showed me that someone copied some content from one of my blog posts. It is from this post Outsourcing - Good or Bad posted on April 15, 2009
and the content copied was

"Outsourcing is a tactic to reduce cost but that itself is not the sole intention. It is actually trying to improve efficiency by concentrating on our core area and outsourcing the not so critical activities to someone for whom that part is a core competency"

First I thought of ignoring that but the detective devil in me, who is very inquisitive, pleaded me to check this....

Give it a try:)

"Trying to comprehend what GOD is ...is just like a computer program trying to comprehend what its developer is"







PS : sorry for the micro-post readers..I'm in a philosophical mood today :)
PPS: I believe in GOD!

Trip to Villagio - Venice in Doha

Dear Reader,
Today I will take you to the Italian village in Doha..and I will be your guide for this trip ..I am sure I will not bore you :)


Girls will find the last pic interesting :)...

iThink using iPhone

@Corniche Road, Doha

Movie marathon - reloaded

My nine day long vacation ends today :(. I am sad on the thing that I couldn't make it to the desert safari and the reason being, unable to get 2 more people to accompany me [ min three are required for the trip :(]. And from tomorrow onwards starts my struggle....phew~ just ten more days and I will be done with the Doha chapter.

Today evening I walked along the corniche road to spend my last few hours of vacation. I walked for about 2hrs today and it's the longest I walked in the recent times. Really loved the place, it's an ideal one for evening jog/walks.

Finally I managed to get one photo clicked but that too in an awkward position. In this pic you can see my office building, which is the rightmost tower. It has small dome on top of it.

Apart from that as expected from the title I've been watching movies one after the other in this weekend. I've watched totally 7 movies, 1 hindi and 6 english movies.So here goes my short reviews

Dabangg (Hindi) Rating 2.5/5

Again yet another Salman khan's family movie.. Thank GOD Sohail khan was not there. The comedy part of the movie is just ok and some of the action sequences are copied from hollywood movies....atleast one such of it I remember seeing in the movie Banlieue 13 (french movie). Sonakshi had really a sorry role...not better than a cameo role.....I dont understand one thing why do they need Malaika Arora for an item song...they couldnt find any other girl or was that a cost cutting measure.... A lot of muscle exposing fights...both Sonu sood and Salman competed on who will show the most...i couldnt stop laughing as Salman's shirt tears open when he gets angry on Sonu sood..Overall an okayish movie.


RobinHood (English) Rating 4/5

Good comedy, interesting story (I doubt if it is real), but you will never get bored throughout the movie.
Rusell Crowe as usual acted really well so was Cate Blanchett
People who love war movies...

Hala - pay as you talk

Live life a king size is true in all aspects for Arabs.
There is lavishness in whatever they do .. just check the prepaid card envelope of Qatar Telecom (Qtel)

Hala is the prepaid service of Qtel.

That's how the cover page looks like. It has all chamkis on the cover which shines. There is also some design which is etched on it.

If they have to choose between utility and hedonism they will always choose the latter one for marketing the products.

Yours lovingly

I bought this for my niece
I like the camel tied to the letter 'l' :)

Realization

And we took 2 years for that!!










@Virgin Stores, Villagio, Doha

Wilbur Sargunaraj - true rockstar :)

I dont think any of you will be knowing this person. Even I read about him recently. The first time I saw him was in a mail forward, the video "Love Marriage". I thought he was some crazy guy experimenting his new handycam and couldnt stop laughing while watching the video.But after I went through his website I couldnt believe myself looking at the number of followers he has. Also his story is very inspirational. Born in a small town in Tamil Nadu he grew from humble beginnings. But he capitalized on his childhood interest in singing and has realized his dreams of becoming a celebrity.
"Dance King, Drummer, Musical Sensation, Tamilian" Wilbur Sargunaraj is a true rockstar. He has an unique way of blending eastern and western style of music. The best thing I like about him is, he uses very common people for his videos, be it dancers or supporting actors. That goes by his punchline "making common extraordinary". Check this song, I bet anyone who watches the video will laugh out loud.


As they say "imitation is the best form of flattery", check out the following video. I wonder if the girl knows that it is "Tamil" language.

Kaun?

Thats how I kill my time ...

Any guesses on who she is?


















Quote of the day "Golden rule, he who has gold rules" 

PS: Want a portrait for free of cost? order now, offer valid only till  Sep18,2010.

Silly Dal

Ok, here comes another recipe from the master chef.
A quick and a simple way to make something, which tastes good as well, and I name it "Silly Dal".

Take a cup of lentils(dal) and pour water in it, soak it in water for sometime.
Cut an onion [I hate this the most] and a tomato if you want.
Fry the minced onions in oil till it becomes light brown colored [I guess I dont have to tell every silly thing like turn on the gas, light a match etc.. it is a silly recipe agreed, but not a recipe for dummies]
Now while frying the onions, you may add mustard seeds and cummins (this burns very fast..so keep the flame low or better turn it off). Then add half spoon turmeric and chilly powder[your wish]..mix the whole thing well.
Now add the soaked lentils to this. (If you have enough time you could have boiled the lentils also. I generally do it along with rice..in a separate bowl, to save time)
Since the lentils were soaked for sometime they become softer. Keep stirring well so that the whole ingredients mix well. You may add your tomatoes now [I did it then..you could have added it earlier also]

Add some water..I dint measure how much I poured..add depending on how lighter you want the dal to be...You may add salt accordingly..[My suggestion to readers who have high BP careful on this part]...
Let this whole thing boil for some time..in mean time you can take a shower....I did so:)..so thats like some 10-15mins.
Add a few curry  leaves..just to get some feel that you are having some good stuff. Check the image above, thats how it should look like else it means you didnt follow my recipe well.

Thats all..yummy dal ready.. Eureka! was my expression after this.
In my last post, Silly Pulav, I said.. "I am not an expert in cooking, but as they say necessity is the mother of invention"..now I say
"desperation is grandmother of invention"


Now this is what I call a happy meal.

Happy Ganesh Chaturthi

May the Lord Ganesha remove all obstacles and shower you with bounties.

Jai Shri Siddhi Vinayaka

This is a very big festival back at home and am missing all that.

In my family the whole puja is generally done by children, so me and my sister used to decorate Vinayaka with all the leaves & flowers and read the mantras. And the belief that the story of birth of Vinayaka and the Samanthakamani is a must read to avoid false allegations(neelapanindhaalu), So I used to read out loudly the story.

Today, early in the morning I got the wakeup call from home reminding me about the festival, and my mom told me to take full bath and pray GOD :). In addition to that am fasting till evening, which I used to do from my school days.

Once again everyone Happy Ganesh Chaturthi.

EID Mubarak!

Dear All,

EID MUBARAK! to everyone

"May the blessings of Allah fill your life with peace, joy and prosperity"

The month long roza has finally come to a sweet finish. As an icing on the cake we are getting a 9 day long vacation.

Planning to go on a desert safari tour, lets see Insha Allah we make it :)

Photo: HeyHijabi

The consultant way

This image was shared by my friend's friend on Facebook. After I went through the whole story in the comic I somehow felt that the Genie is more apt for a consultant than a professor( that too from IIT)

So this is my take on Consultants :)

A professor atleast will never guarantee success but plays a role of facilitator, whereas on contrary a consultant gives a very bad picture of your present( you may even feel like you are the biggest loser) and a gives a rosy picture post implementation. This can as well stir a discussion on the ethical stance of each of the professions.Which may go on for pages..so lets not deviate

Consultant is a person who comes in the middle of client's life [which was running peacefully till then], gives gyaan [read bullshit], confuses, scares, then provides a simple solution(on paper), charges hefty and disappears. After which only the client wakes up wondering what happened all the while.

You will get a good understanding on how a consultant visualizes and communicates the same to clients from the below image. This is typically in a software development cycle.

There is an old joke on consultant

A shepherd was herding his flock in a remote pasture when suddenly a brand-new BMW advanced out of the dust cloud towards him. The driver, a young man in a Broni suit, Gucci shoes, Ray Ban..