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.