Ghajini (Hindi) - गजनी

After a long time i woke up today early in the morning when it was still cold outside. After a long time i had got up before 7.00 and i was amused by the fact that is was for a movie, that too in a language i am not fluent in. Ghajini got released in Hindi, today and i was there at 10.00AM at the "Sri Balaji" theater to get the tickets. After a long time i got an opportunity to see the first day first show of a movie and it happens to be the first hindi movie to be seen in theater spending money from my pocket. The main reason was because of all the hype and the expectations set by the movie. Also the film was special since it marked the introduction of Asin in Bollywood.

The movie lived upto the expectations. The movie was faithfully and dutifully copied frame by frame from the tamil version, except for the climax which differed a lot. So it gave a sense of satisfaction even for those who have seen the tamil version a lot many times. Instead of Sanjay Ramasaamy you have Sanjay Singhaniah and instead of chennai it is Mumbai and instead of tamil you have hindi. I might have got this feeling, if not for the beautfully made climax, which not so well crafted in the tamil version. Director Murugadoss has worked a lot on identifying the scenes that can be changed so that it is a lot meaningful. The best part of the movie is Asin, who is meticulous in showing the face reactions. Her face reflects the mood and totally allures the audience. Though all the scenes, dialogues and at times the costume was exaclty similar to that of the tamil version, i remained glued to the seat barely producing signs of motion whenever Asin appeared. When Asin is comical, the theater erupts in laughter, when she faces some ordeal, i noticed a pin drop silence. Looks like with Ghajini she has laid a strong foundation and can build upon that to establish a strong career in Bollywood. Aamir plays his role with ease but you could not help comparing Surya with Aamir and often conclude that Surya was a bit better in few scenes. Wont mention about the movie.

But anyway the movie is awesome and soon it might find its way into this year blockbusters. Worth seeing even if you had seen that tamil version many times.

P.S. - Thought the spelling for Ghajini is गजिनी but noticed it was गजनी in posters.

Side(u) Middle(u) Berth(u)

That day the train was on time for a change. Myself and Musi got into the S8 coach without wasting time. For some reason we often get seats in S8  and lot of interesting incidents happen whenever weravel in S8. The first reaction once we got into the coach was a sign of relief. The coach did not have a side middle berth. This side middle berth seems to be a ingenious idea of a sincere government servant. On the first sight the concept looked quite ok to me. Side middle Berth meant more seats to lie down and dream for the entire night. But thats the only thing you can do, if you get up a little
fast from your sleep, you will end up banging your head on the side upper berth. The most haunting part is the way in which thereservations are made and how the seats are allocated. The way in which seats are allocated is based on the old algorithm based on 72 seats per coach, so once you board it is just confusion with all people in coach proposing their own ideas on how seats are allocated. To confuse this further you have two numbers written near every seat. The confusion will continue till the TTE arrives. One TTE preferred not to do that and we were forced to sleep on the side berths, which in no way is convenient taking the height factor into consideration.

So that explains why we were happy on seeing the missing SMB. We made ourselves comfortable and started our discussion that ranges from modern day Asin to historic Kundavai. But that did not last long, soon we were disturbed by few people who claimed the seats belonged to them. Soon there were around four people checking the tickets. Everything looked perfect, except for the date of journey. We had reserved seats in S8 for the return journey. For the onward trip it was on S5. Once we realised that we were wrong, we did not stay there for more than one second. Ignoring the  smiling faces we walked away and never turned back.

S5 was in utter chaos, the reason was the SMB and two set of numbers written near every seat. Grrrrr once again there were theories floating around. Atlast TTE came around 11.00 and claimed that there is no change in the seating arrangements. The side middle berth is not to be used, which means the old numbering will be followed. But the confusion did not end, as people who boarded at the next station in the middle of the night had no other option other than waking up the people who are lost in dreams.

The final decision still remains unclear, will it continue to be like this, will it be discontinued. Hope government officials resolve it soon.

The Trichy Trip

Had gone to trichy two weeks back to attend see Senthil reluctantly putting an end to his Bachelor life but willingly stepping into the role of a family man. Finally found time today to blog about it. As usual, the preparations for the trip started a long time back, even the marriage preparations might not have happened at that time. And as usual after lot of discussions we decided on starting on saturday morning to Trichy. After a long time i enjoyed a bumpy ride in our normal TNSTC bus with attention oscillating between the "Sivagamiyin Sabatham" and the movies that were played in the bus. Conductor made sure that nobody slept in the bus and played the movie in full volume.

Reached Salem at 3.15 and from there started to Trichy. After a bit of reading, a little of discussion the tiring bus journey came to an end and we were at Trichy. From then started that eating spree. The marriage was grand, and food was just great. For two days every inch of space in the stomach remained occupied.

We did not have enough time to visit the temples around Trichy. When the initial plan was made, we had the plans of visiting all temples but once we started the trip we knew . Fortunately with help of Praveen we were able to visit kallanai and thiruverumbur temple. The recent rains have helped cauvery to cause enough damage to the nearby villages and we could see that on the way to kallanai or Grand anaicut, the dam built by Karikaala Chozhan before 2000 years. Due to the recent floods, water was diverted to Kollidam. The water gushing out of the opened shutters with great force creating a pattern and giving a illusion of standing in a ship was a wonderful sight. After visit to Thiruverumbur, we returned back to Bangalore pledging to return back to Trichy to visit the places we had missed this time. After reading Kalki's book the curiosity to visit the temples has increased a lot. Lets see how the plans go.

Home made office lunch

Inspite of the recession, customer escalations & annoying managers one thing that is to be appreciated about the software companies is, they always come up with something for the engineers to sway away from the work a little. Though most of them turn out to be favorites of management which they claim is good and voluntarily force you to enjoy, sometimes we do enjoy it. One such event happened in our office last week. Last friday we had a section cook off. Every team member was made to bring some home made food and a grand buffet was arranged in office. Not so sure how much one needs to spend to get a buffet like that. As far as bachelors like me, we had taken our empty stomach and participated only in eating. Anyway, it turned out to be a great event. There was almost all items that i could think off. To name a few, chicken briyani, chicken roast, chicken curry, egg masala, vegetable briyani, fried rice, aloo parota, chapathi, dahi vada, coconut rice, gulab jamun, carrot halwa, curd rice etc etc. For a guy who feeds on hotel food daily they all tasted delicious and i did not leave any item untasted. For the first time i ate food in office allured me. Thought it needs to be  remembered, so there goes the post.

What followed that is two customer escalations, which forced me to work from dawn to dusk in the weekend :( but that is a different story better when not thought about.

Vaaranam Aayiram

I liked the movie very much, it lived up to my expectations, looks like this is the best comment that can be made. Generalization might lead to argument. The movie has created mixed response and has kept people at two extremes, one who feel the movie is too good and another section who feel the movie too sentimental and moves at snail's pace. I was totally mesmerized by the movie and would love to see the movie once again. The story is about the life of younger version of Surya guided by his affable and responsible father, who is none other than the older version of Surya. I am not revealing the storyline more than this. Gautam Menon and Surya's hard work needs to be applauded, as they have worked really hard and achived success in showing the transition of Surya as ages from a mischievous school student to responsible Major in Indian army. What happens in between forms the story.

Though it is Surya who occupies every frame, the three heroines have used the little opportunities and make a little impression. The highlights of the movie are the songs and the romantic scenes between Surya and Sameera. Thamari's lyrics blended with Harris Jayaraj music and Surya's dance add strength to the movie. Almost all Surya's dialogue seem to begin with "Daddy" which tests your patience a bit. I am not sure about how many people will accept Surya's family using English to converse most of the times, even in critical situation they seem to stay away from their mother tongue. We have no clue on Gautam's  choice but it does suggest that the movie is intended for only one section of the audience. Other than the movie is great and does make an impact. It is better not to believe the reviews as there is a very high probability of you ending up liking the movie. Hope this film turns out to be a hit.

Ponniyin Selvan

This is going to be a review of the first ever Tamil novel i read recently and not about a junk tamil movie that got released in 2005. The book turned out to be quite interesting one. I was struck by Kalki's imagination, it appears as though everything happens right in front of the eyes. His depiction and the way the characters are introduces is awesome. So elaborate in explanation and so poetic in description kalki wins easily in delivering what was intended. The book also gave a great insight into the Tamil Nadu history and about the medeival chozha empire. The book gives a good description about most of the kings, clans and habits that existed during that time period. Kalki makes use of every available opportunity to provide some historical reference. His characters also highlight the practices that was followed during that time. There were places where Kalki changes the history for the sake of the story, but they were acceptable.

The story starts with "Vallavaraiyan Vanthiyathevan" a vanar kulam prince, taking a message from Aditya Karikalan to his sister Kundavai and king. Later the story plunges into the fight for the chozha throne with  unimaginable stories inter wined which keeps you thinking till you complete the end of the story. Believe me even after the story ends, you might be confused about few parts of the book.  He takes you through the city and Kalki explains the history and beauty of the cities through his eyes and thoughts. His job does not end with that and he gets tasks one by one and we are mostly introduced to the characters through him. Just like the cities,  Kalki explains the beauty of the princesses and their nature through Vanthiyathevan eyes. Kalki provides a very very elaborate description about the characters when they are introduced into the story, so that you get a mental picture of the character. That is the strength of the novel. Kalki has the strength to make you like a character or make it detestable. Kalki imagination seems to gone a bit higher whenever the princesses are involved. The comparisons he makes to compare their beauty is unmatchable.  One more interesting character is Azhwarkadiyaan, it is through him Kalki portrays the feud that existed between  shaivaites and vaishnavaites at that time. Vanthiyathevan is the most adorable character in the book  and at times he steals the limelight from the actual "Ponniyin Selvan". The princesses Kundavai, Vanathi, Poonguzhali and Nandini are lovable. There are many other characters involved in the book who are important in their own aspect, which you will know when you read the book. Once i started reading the first volume, i could not control my curiosity and i kept reading till i completed it. I am planning to read it once again, as i am completely mesmerized by the book. It does deserve a second reading. Also next in line is "Sivakaamiyin Sabatham" and "Parthiban Kanavu" from Kalki.

Suggestion: Better grab a copy instead of searching for online copies. The book is too good to get disappointed and does not cost much also.

Trip to Jog, Murudeshwar, Kollur and Sringeri

I am yet to recover fully from the effects of the trip, both physically and mentally. Physically it was challenging and it is not a trip to forget so soon. It was not a well planned trip but it turned out to be a great one with every piece falling into place at the last minute. The trip started with the journey to Jog falls, through the orphaned roads of Karnataka. Any road that is outside bangalore is neglected and looks like government rarely notices those roads. Anyway after few hours of bumpy ride, we reached Sagar where we spent sometime to clean ourselves and finish breakfast, before we headed for the most gruesome part of the trip. We reached Jog falls and then started the journey down to the abyss of the waterfalls. The cataract falling from around 900 ft height is the highest waterfall in India, and the journey to the bottom of the fall s through the half constructed steps tested the physical fitness. The view from the bottom of the Jog falls is worth taking and view and the  cool breeze is all too great to ignore and the pain is worth taking. Climbing back to the top required arduous efforts.

After that we went to Murudeshwar, a silent sea shore with a huge siva statue. Rest of the evening went in mini football. If you are in doubt what was mini in that, everything was mini right from the team, playground to the ball. Yep, we played football with a tennis ball in a small area with four members per team. But it turned out to be an interesting game. After few months, it was good be involved in some fat burning activity.

Next day we went to two temples kollur and shringeri. While kollur potrayed kerala architecture and look, in shringeri it was fully Hoysala (borrowed from Prabhu's IP). Sringeri temple is  located on the banks of River Tunga. This river deservers special mention because on the shores you will find huge school of fishes of size which i had never seen till now.  After that started the most difficult phase of the the trip, sitting in van for several hours and being rocked like a baby because of the narrow turns on the way to chickmagalur. Putting all together it is an wonderful trip to remember.

Before i fall asleep without switching my laptop, here are the links for the photos

http://picasaweb.google.com/kpraveen85/JogFallsShimoga
http://picasaweb.google.com/kpraveen85/Murudeshwar
http://picasaweb.google.com/kpraveen85/SringeriKollurAgumbe

For my share stay in touch with http://picasaweb.google.com/sens2003 It would take a little more time before i upload the photos. Before last half of the left eye closes, i am signing off now.

Dhaam Dhoom

Definitely did not want to turn this into a cine blog with posts only about movies, but movies seem to be the only matter of interest which is worth sharing in the uneventful life :( So here goes yet another post about recently released tamil movie.

Recently watched the movie "Dhaam Dhoom" along with two of my friends in theater that was almost empty except for 60 wavering heads. I was there since it was Jeeva's last film, and his previous two films had turned me into an ardent fan of Jeeva. The film was ok,  but you may notice few lapses in logic initially, something which i would not have expected in a Jeeva film. The film is about an Indian doctor who foolishly or unfortunately gets caught in a murder case in Russia, and runs to save his life from criminals and from police. As usual our hero escapes showers of bullets with small jumps. In this film you could also see Ravi defying laws of physics, and floating in air without effort. That is ok, Tamil Cinema never respected Newton's gravity.  Songs are the best part of the movie, and Jeeva's dexterity is visible in the locations selected for the songs. Kangana is good, Lakshmi Rai is better.  A bit of suspense is maintained but it should not be difficult to guess the villain. Though it did not satisfy my expectations, it is good and can be watched once.

BMTC bus journey

Yet another incident happened yesterday as usual in BMTC. For me a lot happens in BMTC. Yesterday i gave the conductor 20 Rs and asked for three tickets. He gave the right change of 5 Rs. I was waiting for him to give the ticket, he saw us for a moment and decided against it. Just a glance was enough for him to confirm that we are not locals and he has an opportunity to earn 15 Rs. Anyway yesterday i was in a pugnacious mood, and did not want to leave the matter just like that. If i was alone i would not have done anything certainly. Since i had the company of two of my friends, we decided to give it a try. But he was prepared for it. When we went and asked for the ticket, using the only known local word "Ticket Kodi" :) He just turned his face away and kept silent and did not even bother to see us.  Wondering how BMTC manages to run in profit. If we had known the local language, we could have tried a little more but even after one year, it is still difficult to pickup the local language :( and it is affecting a lot. Anyway i will get an opportunity to see the conductor again i guess, lets see whether i can do something that time.

One year of corporate and bachelor life

A long unintended break from blogging. Had been thinking about what to blog for a long time and later realized that i had completed one year in the software industry on June. Not much has happened over the past one year and life is becoming more and more monotonous. Wake up at 8.00, go to office work till night and sleep has been the daily routine. Anyway few things have changed over the past one year. Had dreams about the software engineer life but after one year of reading and modifying huge well written code base, it is now difficult to write even small programs from the scratch. After using wrapper functions for almost everthying now it is difficult to remember the return values of normal c functions. Even if the tea is horrible life does not move without two tea breaks a day. Bachelor life is teaching a lot of lessons. From a guy who hates idli, it has transformed me into someone who is searching for good idli shops around the city. Stay awake late in the night for no reason staring at the monitor in front of me checking orkut or refreshing google reader.

Dasavatharam

If you are searching for story of the movie, this may not be the right place for you. I am not going to take away the suspense of what actually happens in the movie. The film was released with a lot of speculation about how the ten kamal characters will be related and on what the 140 Million has been spent on ? The movie was neat and clean. Kamal Hassan has done the ten roles with perfection and shows that "Ulaganayagan" is in fact a title well suited to him.

After watching the first half i thought the movie belonged to the hollywood action film genre, since the first half was filled with ruthless killings and breathtaking car chases and some geeky stuffs and jargon which would be difficult to pickup for a normal guy. After that the film moves on with beautiful screenplay taking care of the weak story and you don't feel bored during the whole 3 hours.

Each and every important character that you see in movie is only Kamal. It was difficult the ten characters played by him at the end of the movie. Kamal in villain role needs to be applauded and it happens to be my favourite. Some characters were not necessary but probably added to exceed the count of nine characters already done by veteran sivaji.

Asin comes along with the hero for almost the full length of the movie but fails to impress but irritates with her repetitive dialogues. Mallika, as usual included for a skin show, but looks like most of the scenes were eaten by the censor board :) Other characters, not much to mention.

There are too many ways to interpret what kamal has tried to tell in the climax. Anyway watch the movie and decide it by yourself. Incase you have problems, refer to this http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chaos_theory. We had a discussion among us for 90 minutes after reading the page and what kamal has tried to say in the movie. But do read it only after the movie, not before that.

To end, Dasavatharam is a great work by Kamal and is a movie worth spending money and time. Looks like a trend setter for tamil cinema, that is recovering slowly from the love for masala movies.

An Exciting finale

A truly sensational end to the first season of the IPL T20 season. Could not have expected more excitement. Few misses from chennai and few sixes for Rajasthan royals, taking the match to final ball was simply exciting. For the first time watched match through live streaming and a live cricket match after few months was like a feast to a person dying of hunger. I remained as the supporter of chennai till the last ball of the match and there is nothing to complain about. It was a close contest and Rajasthan snatched it away at the last moment. Anyway here are few things that are to be remembered about the first IPL.

Before start of the season, it was Deccan chargers whom i thought would produce some records and win all matches easily but they failed to fire till the end of the season. Bangalore Royal challengers were  little shaky and failed in all challenges. Mumbai a bit unlucky, and Delhi a lot lucky for a place in semifinal. Kings XI no issues. Knight riders made headlines at times.Rajasthan royals delivered together as a team. My home team, chennai were satisfactory, nothing to blame.

When expected players like Afridi, Gibbs, Ponting, Symonds shattered the expectations, youngs players like asnodkar, badrinath, yomahesh created some. Shaun marsh, Ross taylor, shane watson were outstanding.

Anyway it all ends here this year. IPL had lived upto the hype that was created. Inspite of incidents like Bhajji's slap, IPL deserves a clap just for the entertainment it has provided for the past six weeks. It had something to talk for the past two months.

Most important thing, it gave me an opportunity to see a cricket match live for the first time.

Intel 4965 AGN Wireless card in Debian Etch

Atlast a sign of relief :) After a bit of struggle i was able to go wireless in my laptop, HP Pavillion 6833us. The laptop came pre installed with Vista. Anyway vista is sleeping there in the harddisk. I am yet to find a good use for that. Anyway installed Debian and faced a few problems with driver support. First one with the sound. Laptop had HDA Intel card, and alsa shipped with Debian, 1.0.13 had problems. Googled and upgraded to Alsa 1.0.15, which solved the problem.

After that left with the task of enabling wireless. First attempt was with Ndiswrapper. Looks like Ndiswrapper does not support Intel 4965 AGN Wireless. Anyway Intel has released the native wireless drivers for linux. The project is called iwlwifi, visit http://intellinuxwireless.org/ for further info. Also got a link, with steps to install in debian etch  http://www.nanonanonano.net/linux/debian/iwlwifi . What else is needed ? It is time to go wifi in debian :) Follow the steps blindly you will have wireless configured in Debian.

As for Vista, RIP.

2:56

The title denotes a ratio and it needs a bit of explanation about history of the incident and geography of the location for understanding the real intention of this post. Last sunday praveen and myself were at Indiranagar, filling our tummy with some Tamilnadu food in a tamilnadu hotel. A guy selling Jasmine, was roaming trying to sell some and earn his daily bread. Praveen gave a casual comment. The comment goes  like, who is going to buy jasmine in this city. From there it all started.  I spent the next ten minutes noting down how many girls or women decorate their hair with jasmine or some other flower. So now you might be  able to understand what that ratio means. Finding the intended specimens on a sunday evening in Indiranagar was not a problem.  Out of the 58 women i noticed only two had some sort of flower decorating their hair. And both of them had a little elderly look and from their appearance i could confirm both of them would have crossed 40. In the 56 some looked like north indians who might not have the habit at all. No idea whether it is common for women in karnataka to decorate their hair with flower. It could be  because of the serveral reasons, first the gals i noticed could be north indians, two the time might not be ideal for such a survey, three it was just a casual check done just for fun, fourth girls might be losing the habit altogether. But one thing is for sure, as praveen said the boy selling jasmine may not have a good business. Next time will try to notice a little more and come up with some more good data ;)

P.S. Don't let your imagination run wild and waste time in researching about this topic.

Santhosh Subrmaniam

Saw the movie santhosh subrmaniam last week which turned out to be a good one. Fast paced and filled with comedy, it was a good entertainer. For those who have seen the telugu version "Bommarillu" may find it to be  an exact copy of it. Since i had not seen the telugu movie, i could not find any issues. But comparing the pictures of both the films i could see that there is not even a slight difference in the costume of telugu and tamil version. Genelia had done the role of an innocent girl with ease and impresses all the way. No wonder she is offered the role in Hindi also. She looks beautiful, gorgeous, lovely and add all other adjectives that describe beauty. As for Remake Ravi, he seems to have a liking for remakes. As usual he has danced well but in this movie his dance steps seem to be different and attractive. For Prakash Raj, it is a cake walk and he fits into the role of the caring father easily. Kousalya, cricketer Ramesh's appearance go without notice.  Comedy track is too good with special appreciation to Baskar who comes as the college professor in few  scenes. Yet another remake that could turn out to be a hit for Ravi.

IPL T20

Yesterday i was there at the chinnaswami stadium to see the IPL T20 match between chennai super kings and Bangalore Royal Challengers as a supporter of the mighty super kings. This is the first national or international i witnessed from the ground. Inside the stadium it was sweating and the view was not that great as that of what you see in television. But those are the only negatives which will vanish when you take the fun factor into account. IPL T20 was a visual treat. Sixes, fours, missed catches, runouts, music and cheerleaders and all in four hours was too great.

We were there in the stadium at 6.00 and were able to see the players practising. Though most of the players were practising seriously Makhaya Ntini and Muralitharan responded to shouts of the fans. After a while the Washington Redskins, cheer leaders of Bangalore Royal challengers, lit up the atmosphere with their presence. They did attract a lot of attention of the crowd. The chennai cheer leaders preferred to stay away from the attention and walked silently to their places. We were also able to catch a glimpse of the Kollywood and Sandalwood heroine and Bangalore Royal challenger's brand ambassador "Kuthu Ramya" (as she is called  in kollywood). The crowd wave started and continued for a long time.

Once the match started it was pure fun. When Dale Steyn bowled the first over, he did reduce our hopes. The same happened when Hayden and Parthiv Patel returned to pavillion. Once Hussey and Dhoni joined and when the partnership started flourishing, it was fun. When Dhonis started bombarding the stands with his huge six, none of us were in the seat. Though we, the chennai super kings supporters were outnumbered by the Bangalore Royal challenger's supporters, we had more opportunities to celebrate and we used it fully. Sports brings unity, yeah it was true, soon the chennai supporters were united and responded to shouts and comments of different groups in the stand. Drums sivamani beats took us to TN.

The Bangalore Royal challengers started their batting in style, and looked formidable untill they started losing wickets. Till that the fun was with the Bangalore supporters, they were shouting "Jeetaegaa  Jeetaegaa, Bangalore Jeetaegaa". Once the wickets started falling it  was for us to enjoy. With Sap leading the group, the  chants continued  in the local language, which most of the people might not have understood.   To mention a few,

"Atho paaru lightu, Chennai na weightu"
"Gummathalakadi Gummavaa, Chennai na summava"
"Sala pula sala pula, gummthalaka" and the famour "O".

Throats dried up, Legs ached because of dancing but nobody was willing to let tiredness take away the opportunities of enjoyment and the celebration continued. When super kings won eventually we erupted in joy. It was Royal challengers match gifted by them to Chennai superkings. Anyway once the match ended, we  reached home safely in auto fully satisfied of viewing a fantastic match. Anyway that kindled a small desire in the corner of heart, should witness atleast one India-Pakistan match in Chennai.

House hunting

Had been searching for a good house for two days in and around the area where we were living. The first day it ended up in just phone calls, as most of the house owners are allergic towards the word bachelor.  House owners give a scornful look once you pronounce the word "bachelor". I was forced to check at times whether i look that disgusting. I thought myself and my friend looked a little ok, and not like rogues.  Probably they are expecting us to come out of the college married :)

Some were not willing to reduce the rent, the reason they are giving the house to bachelors. Anyway house owners have their own policy and looks whether you want it or not, like it or not, they are expecting an eve by your side. The hunt is on and is still going on, i mean the hunt for a decent house to live. Now i know why people were so particular in owning a house. It avoids hell a lot of problems.

Stories from a three days Goan

Atlast found some time to chip in something for the blog. Last weekend i was at Goa, a welcoming break from the boring job. Started to Goa on April 4 Friday night by train, setting aside two escalations that were pestering me for sometime. Once the trip was on it was only fun. You could see signs of Goa in the train itself. Most of them were tourists going to train and most of them were already in excited state with the help of drinks. The train was travelling through the western ghats giving some opportunity to explore the scenic beauty of the mountains.

Reached Goa by 1.30 on Saturday. From the journey to the hotel we could confirm what we have heard about Goa. Yeah Goa is famous for drinks  because of low tax, and is visible from the numerous wine shops in the  roads. Most of shop that serve soft drinks also contained atleast some  cans of beer. But one thing that is not known about Goa is that, it is  difficult to move around in Goa, unless you have a lot of cash to burn.  We had booked room near Colva beach and were soon at colva beach having  a really good time in the beach. Though the sun was scorching the skins, the sea water helped in with standing the heat. Evening we were at
Majorda beach, playing football after around 4 years.

On sunday we hired five vehicles, and started the trip to the northern beaches. We started the expedition with a visit to Dona Paula. Then  we were at Coco beach for a boat ride to see the dolphins. We were  lucky the back of few dolphins. Be careful about the rates for the  boat ride, it ranges from 100 to 400 depending on persons. While we  went for 100 per person, we had two people in the same boat paying  Rs.400. Then we visited the Aguada fort and few other beaches like calangute, Bagga. But did not spend much time there.

On monday morning the plan was to visit paulolem. But since time was running out, visited cavelossim and Benaulim beaches near Colva. After that we were off to Panaji or Panjim to catch the evening bus. While on the way stopped at the Basillica of BOM jesus church, a 400 year old chuch that still contains the body of St.Francis Xavier who died  few hundred years ago. After some shopping in Panaji market for a while  we boarded Sharma travels for a 20 hour trip back to work. Heard that KSRTC is better when compared to private transports.

One last point about Goa, Goa does not follow the Indian rules and the policemen there have their own rule and gazette. If the fine for driving without "Pollution check" is 100 in other cities, in goa it is 500. Before you  rent a vehicle make sure you check for all the docs and make sure you have the DL.

What to do during free time

Most of us have our own idea of spending free time, anyway this is just a hint of what i do during free time. If you are against generalisation read the title as "What sen does during free time". By free time i mean the time you are trying to kill, when you are deprived of electronic gadgets and if you do not want to do any
useful work.

Newspaper is the best friend

Newspapers are mighty tools that help in killing time. Anyway it depends on the choice of the newspapers. There are few newspapers here in bangalore which contain nothing but gossips. Starting from hollywood, bollywood the gossips boils downs to that of individual personal life. If a techie eats it becomes a news, if he  breaks his  relationship with his girlfriend it becomes the headlines. Sudokus in  newspapers also help a lot.

Phone a Friend

Sounds like a Kaun Bangega Crorepati option, is it ? This is one of the best options that i use almost every  night. If there is a friend who is in the same state like you, without work, with no option left to kill time,  then he is the right choice. Pickup the phone call him and talk rubbish for hours until you feel sleepy. Since   i have good amount of free talktime for local calls, talking for hours has not troubled me.

Sit and Stare

The most effortless option, lie down on your bed or if possible on the terrace, stare at the sky or ceiling and  let your imagination run wild. Think about what will happen tomorrow, what will happen if you meet a  beautiful girl tomorrow or what will happen if you get a chance to thrash your manager... If you want to  test your memory, think about what happened this day, last year. Rummaging through the past will always be interesting, as long as the present is pleasant.

Specifying categories for posts from weblogger

After all it is possible to specify categories for the blogs posted
from the weblogger mode in emacs. All you have to add is to add the
"Keywords" section to the header and specify the categories as comma
separated values. The only limitation is that, you cannot add any
new categories using weblogger.

If the header that you get is something like this,

Subject:
Newsgroup:
--text follows this line--

Add the "Keywords:" header and specify the existing categories,
something like,

Subject:
Newsgroup:
Keywords:
--text follows this line--

Now the only feature that is needed to make the configuration complete
is adding tags. Searching for ways to add that.

Using Weblogger mode in Emacs

Wow finally i was able to blog from emacs. First had thoughts ofwriting a python client using xmlrpc for posting in wordpress but thatwas all before i came to know about the weblogger mode. What has to be done to enable the weblogger mode in Emacs ? All you have to do is to download the weblogger.el and the xml-rpc.el to a directory of your choice and enable them. Once you downloadthe el files add the following lines to your .emacs file

(add-to-list 'load-path "")
(require 'weblogger)

Now reload the configuration or restart emacs. Weblogger need xml-rpc and URL. If you have them  installed, Emacs would startup without any problems. Setup weblogger using the command, M-x weblogger-setup-weblog and enter the weburl, username and password. For wordpress the URL is http://yourblogaddress/xmlrpc.php

Now you are done, start blogging using M-x weblogger-start-entry.

There are still few loose ends to be tied up to make the webloggercomplete for my account. Still i am not able to specify the title and the category for the post. Hope to do that soon....

Test - Trying to post from emacs

Testing to blog from emacs. No idea about whether this will go
through fine. If you are reading this post, there will be a post
above this explaining the same.

Few funny phobias

Was reading through the list of phobias, and these are some which i thought to be funny or weird.

ablutophobia - fear of bathing
callophobia - fear of beauty
neophobia - fear of change
pantiphobia - fear of everything
xenophobia - fear of foreigners
polyphobia - fear of many things
musophobia - fear of mice
demophobia - fear of people
acoustophobia - fear of sound
lalophobia - fear of speaking
logophobia - fear of study
phronemophobia - fear of thinking
basophobia - fear of walking
plutophobia - fear of wealth
ergophobia - fear of work
cibophobia - fear of food
geliophobia - fear of laughter
venustrophobia - fear of beautiful women
Eisoptrophobia - fear of seeing oneself in mirror :D
Somniphobia - fear of sleep

Last but not the least, the phobia of many bachelors

Phalacrophobia - fear of becoming bald

The 100th post

This post happens to be the 100th post in wordpress, considering the posts in blogger this is the 151st. Started blogging before three years on seeing my seniors who themselves were active blogger when they were in college. Soon a there was a small congregation of bloggers who still hold on to the habit. If you are curious to know who they are, peep into the links at the side of this blog. Soon blogging became a habit, and if the blog remained without any updates for a long time, it certainly looked like a pending job. The most encouraging thing is whatever junk is posted there is atleast someone to read the junk you have posted. Example could be the Kanaa Kaanum Kaalangal post, it was overwhelming to see the replies for the post though the reason is the fame of the serial. After coming to office the rate of  blogging has decreased greatly. As bugs continue to bug the life, most of the time is spent in office and spending time on blogging has become difficult. Lot of things flash at times but posting in blog has become
difficult. But blogging has turned into a inveterate and think will not die just like that.

Posting from ScribeFire

Came across this plugin for firefox called scribefire. Scribefire is a blog editor that integrates  with the browser and lets you to easily post to your blog. So thought of giving it  a try. If this post gets updated in my blogsite, then i would say "Scribefire is cool". One more information that i found while configuring scribefire is, Scribefire seems to be using xmlrpc for communication with the  blog site, though i am not sure.

Powered by ScribeFire.

Guifications in Pidgin.

Had been using Pidgin very long time for both my office and personal IM accounts. One missing feature that i never noticed was missing notifications when a buddy comes online or goes  offline. Started searching  and came across Guifications, a plugin for pidgin that will show a popup for a number of  configurable events. Guifications can be downloaded and installed  from the following location.

http://downloads.guifications.org/plugins/Guifications2/

It notifies you for a lot of events but what i wanted was when my friends login and logout of their IMs. I default popup that notifies failed to impress me, so started searching some themes for Guifications and found a lot of cool and colourful themes in the  following link.

http://sourceforge.net/tracker/?atid=676821&group_id=92888&func=browse

Installation of theme is easy, all you have to do is to unzip and  place the folders at the correct location. In windows it is the  following directory

<PIDGIN INSTALLATION DIR>\pixmaps\pidgin\guifications\themes

If you have the habit of displaying the song you hear as the status, musictracker plugin will help you in doing so in Pidgin. Check out  http://code.google.com/p/musictracker/ for information about the  same.

Kollimalai - Serene and Splendid

Visited kollimalai last week along with seniors, and it turned out to be a great one. Kollimalai was not a well known hill station in Tamilnadu. Not much visited by tourists i guess. Located at around two hours from salem, kollimalai remains undisturbed from tourists harassment . Serenity lends beauty to the place. No traffic, not many people around to disturb you. You are alone with your friends to enjoy the beauty of the hill station. You also have an opportunity to capture the untouched nature in your digicam. The most interesting spot in there is the "Athisaya Aruvi", the waterfalls. To enjoy the the waterfalls you have to climb down around 500 steep steps. The cool water drops falling from the steep rocks looks marvellous and so is the feeling when it falls down and splashes on your body. Few other places include

Arapalliswarar temple
vasalurpatti which has a small lake with boats
Semmedu where there is a small statue of Valvil Ori statue.
A small lake, i forgot the name.

There were few more temples and spots. The most interesting part of the stay in kollimalai is the early morning trekking which we had. Roamed around the gardens and hills there in kollimalai enjoying the early morning chillness. On the return trip went to Hoganekkal, the ride in the calm waters of the cauvery water was great. This happened to be the first trip with super super super seniors. The showed a lot of maturity in organizing the trip, and the trip ended with out any problems.

Snaps at http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/sens2003/KollimalaiTrip

Crying Babies

Street cricket was one of my favourite game a decade back. A truly interesting game with out slight respect for the rules . A flat stick and a plastic ball or a rubber one was enough. The way in which the game was played is the most interesting part. Balls were thrown at full speed to break the stumps or if possible the players leg. Whether catch is taken or not, the wicket is never given without arguments. Even the stumps are broken into two pieces batsmen refuse to leave the field hoping the umpire may do miracle. At times umpires help them also. Run outs and stumpings were the worst part of the game. Remember matches getting abondoned unable to reach a decision whether the player reached the crease before the ball or not. If there was no way out for a team to win, the last possible attempt was to put the blame on the opposite team player that he used a really really bad word during the game and would usually end in omeone running behind someone to thrash him. They were the crying babies. One thing about the crying babies is that they usually win the match.

The reason why i am talking about this is that i could see all these in the australia-india second test match. After seeing the second test between Australia and India i was convinced that there are crying babies in international cricket arena too ;) And to see that the world champions crying was really funny. Still clueless why Ponting men resorted to a new technique, may be to continue the winning streak. Indians are always a big PITA for the aussies. Whether they win or lose, they make sure that aussies record is broken. Good to see that Indians have done it once again.  Hats off to Indians.  If you have any doubts why i have posted this without after the whole issues has subsided, the reason is i do not want to miss the opportunity to belittle aussies at any chance.

Trip to Shivasamudra, Bandipur and Mysore

Atlast found some time to blog about few notable things that happened few weeks back.  Should be the second trip where we ventured out of bangalore with a reasonably good crowd we decided to spend the weekend with a short trip to Shivasamudra, Bandhipur and Mysore. Started at 6, and after a swift journey through the smooth Mysore highway, reached Gangana Chukki at around 10. Not much water so the view was not so pleasing there. Next it was time to drench our bodies in the cool waters of Cauvery at Bharachukki. This was the second visit to Bharachukki, this time there was very little water and we used the opportunity to take a nice bath in the cool waters. After the bath and after a little struggle through the rough roads without brakes for the back wheels, managed to reached Bandipur Sanctuary near Tamilnadu border. The forest looked treacherous and trepidation was increasing as the Van moved deeper and deeper  into the forest. But once the safari started in the morning one thing was obvious, only animal that we could sight is spotted deer. During the return journey we stopped at Mysore to explore the architectural beauty of the Mysore palace and at Tipu's museum to revise a bit of history. Few names in history like Haidar Ali and Mysore War lingered for a while during the short visit.

Check out these links for few shots from seniors.

http://picasaweb.google.co.uk/sens2003/BandipurTrip
http://flickr.com/photos/saponniah

Bye to 2007

Had been trying to blog about this for a very long time.It was about the year 2007. 2007 was the year i  was introduced to two walks of life, totally different from each other. One was the last semester in college where i enjoyed a lot and then the corporate life which i have not adapted fully yet. Not too much expectation for the year 2008 except for few  which i thought of listing it here.

1) India should win atleast a match against Australia.

2) The never ending serial "Kolangal" should end atleast this week.

3) Should find some innovative method to reduce the total number of
serials seen by Mom.

4) Tamil actresses should start learning tamil so that atleast during
the next year they start talking in tamil in tamil programmes.

5) During festivals, Tamil TV channels should telecast atleast one
programme related to that festival.

6) Expecting to see GNU/Linux growing at a faster rate.

7) ARR should produce few more hits.

8) Expecting JKR to release the eighth harry potter book or atleast some news about that.

9) Should try to break the record of seeing 5 movies in one night.

10) Should try to learn at the least one new language.

11) Should try to talk less. Though i take this resolution every new year, never was able to accomplish    this. Should try to hold on to this resolution atleast this time.