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Tuesday, December 30, 2003 Sony Ericsson T610: It was a sort of belated Christmas gift I gifted myself when I replaced my Nokia 6310i with T610. Looks awesome with its built-in digital camera etc, but having been a Nokia man for the last couple of years, I still like Nokia for its ease of navigation. Guess it would take a while to get used to the new instrument.Posted at 12/30/2003 10:04:50 AM Link Friday, December 26, 2003 Someone wants to have fun!Creating an ID in Yahoo closely resembling mine, some one has been chatting with my friends over Yahoo messenger. It came to light when a friend with whom my wife was chatting with said "I am chatting with your husband too!", when I was actually sitting next to her! I’d better warn my buddies that I am indeed the original guy and not to waste time with that jerk (and better waste their time with me) ! Posted at 12/26/2003 03:59:01 PM Link Tuesday, December 23, 2003 Festive mood has set in; as a result there is nothing-worthwhile going on at work. Group of people are playing Quake III (I tried my hand and was beaten black & blue several times before giving up), some are hearing blaring rock music and the whole place looks chaotic. I, for one want to do something constructive during this lull period (in terms of work) but couldn't figure out what exactly to do.Merry Christmas, anyways! Posted at 12/23/2003 02:08:13 PM Link Monday, December 22, 2003 Don't Get Bangalored!Check out www.stopoffshoreoutsourcing.com! Derogatory!! They never thought Free Trade, Technology et al would benefit others as well. Did they? In the backdrop of these vehement protests, US' assurance not to make laws against BPO sounds okay, although I am a bit sceptical about US' promise when it clashes with their interests. Posted at 12/22/2003 10:50:26 AM Link Thank you! While I would like to be modest, let me be on my own and brag about it. I have been voted as the "Best Indian Male Blogger for 2003" at The Indiblog Awards, thus proving upsets are part of contests! Thanks for all those who voted, especially to that anonymous 'moron' who nominated me! Hearty Congrats to other winners!! Posted at 12/22/2003 10:48:22 AM Link Friday, December 19, 2003 Ouch!There is no point in having hi-fi technologies unless you make use of them properly. I was made to realise this hard way when I discovered that I had missed few important messages in my answering machine. I seldom find any messages in my answering machine and hence I don't check that frequently. Mine is not the kind that alerts you to check the same when there is a message. Hopefully, today's lesson would go down well in me and let me change the habit. Posted at 12/19/2003 02:22:33 PM Link Thursday, December 18, 2003 Statutory WarningSamosa eating is injurious to health. Damn! Who cares!! Posted at 12/18/2003 11:48:39 AM Link Tuesday, December 16, 2003 Filmy WeekI have been living quite unlike me for the last few days. In the last four days, I managed to watch about 11 movies and here is my take on some of them. Sorry about the language based content here. Love Actually: When we (my wife & I) Saw this movie last Tuesday at Odeon in Tottenham Court Road - London, there were exactly 10 people in the 200 seat capacity cinema. Set almost in London, during the last few weeks preceding Christmas, this British comedy has about 8 unrelated stories leading up to a good climax on Christmas Eve. It was fun all the way and one of the very good movies I have watched in the recent times. Certainly would vouch for it. Its a shame that we had to leave the movie about 25 minutes to the end as we had a coach to catch. Boys: Oh Boy! But for A R Rahman's scores & BGM, this is a crap. Though I didn't have very high regards for Shankar, though I enjoyed 'Gentleman', 'Indian', 'Mudhalvan' etc., certainly I didn't expect a Shankar movie to be this low. Sujatha appears at ease with his 'explicit' dialogues that has come under fire from many quarters. Though there are scenes, which appear to cross the line, I don't think the film deserved the amount of criticism it attracted (my wife strongly disagrees with me on this point, though). Certainly, it didn't deserve to be a great hit as well. Thiruda Thirudi: I hope I would attain 'moksha' sometime, as I have atlast seen 'Manmadha Raasa'. At one point, I was afraid that some saint has cursed me in my previous life to spend my entire life without seeing the visuals of that song. Thank goodness, it was not to be. I got a bit nostalgic while watching this movie as it has been filmed at the very places in Trichy, where I spent the best part of my life during my college days. But, despite that, I just couldn't understand what made this film a super-duper hit. Pithamagan: This is one film that took me by storm. Three days after watching the movie, every character is staying in my mind and I think it would be so for many more weeks. Bala deserves a pat on his back for the way he has handled the screenplay. Had he given a bit more importance to Vikram's character, the film would have inadervently turned into a documentary. I never thought Laila could act. The re-recording & BGM of Ilayaraja, refreshing voice of Yesudas, fab performance by Vikram & Surya made it bag the 'Movie of Year' award, albeit from me! :) I am sure there are few awards waiting for 'Pithamagan' later. Posted at 12/16/2003 11:24:19 AM Link Monday, December 15, 2003 Saddam, the prisonerWith my little understanding of human psychology, I always believed that Saddam Hussein, when cornered, would give up his life on his own than suffer the humiliation of being captured alive. I still couldn't believe that the guy under the US captivity now is the "real" Saddam. The truth would never be out in this case, as those in play are the big, big bad boys! Posted at 12/15/2003 01:56:00 PM Link Friday, December 12, 2003 Happy Birthday Superstar!Posted at 12/12/2003 10:38:41 AM Link Wednesday, December 10, 2003 EgggggjamLike the many 'middle class of academia' slightly above average students, I hate the examination rituals but hardly have a choice. Experience has taught me that it pays to remain composed when taking up something important. So, before setting off to London on Monday afternoon, I ensured that I remained cool that I was even reading Anand's lengthy posts explaining his semester project and phaseology. The examination was supposed to commence at 9:00 AM and I reached the place a good 40 minutes beforehand. Since I know that I wouldn't be allowed into the building 15 minutes prior to the commencement of the exam and not wanting to suffer standing in the cold English weather, I waited at the station for few minutes before reaching the examination centre at 8:42 AM. I was allowed in, but the bloke there said that for some reason, the venue has been changed and directed me to the building in the adjacent street. Oh well, I went there (that was an academic building as well) with two other candidates in tow only to find a surprised receptionist who didn't know head or tail about the stuff. It was 8:48 then and that helpful receptionist realising the importance of the situation made couple of quick phone calls and asked us to rush to the Senate Hall of London University, which she ‘believed’ is the venue of the said examination. That building was quite a distance away from where I was and with cold wind blowing across the face, I just sprinted few blocks with my luggage on tow and entered a huge building assuming it to be the right one. When I confirmed the same at the reception and scurried in to the hall, it was five minutes past nine and the invigilator had finished his customary briefing and was handing over the examination stationery. I didn't panic too much but wasn't cool either. I was very exhausted to concentrate on the paper for the next 20 minutes and I would say losing 1/6th of your crucial time on the D-day for no fault of yours is not an ideal climax one would expect after 6 months of hard work. I have given my piece of mind to the powers that be in the Business School. Anyway, as an optimist, I hope what I wrote during the 5/6th of the time would give me something to cheer about when the results get declared in late February. Posted at 12/10/2003 05:47:51 PM Link Monday, December 08, 2003 365 daysIt was exactly this day last year I met my girl for the first time. Life is never the same again! Posted at 12/8/2003 08:30:14 AM Link Friday, December 05, 2003 Fascination for politicsIndian politics & polls never cease to fascinate me. Even when I don't have anyone to discuss politics (In my observation, most women don't have interest in politics and my wife is no exception), I do watch out the arena, many a times without any real purpose. Last week's 'semi-final' polls to the 4 North Indian states threw up lot of interesting stuff. Some are good, some are bad and here they are. Good: - Thanks to T.N. Seshan, EVMs have become a feature of Indian polls. People have got adapted to that gadget(?!) without much fuss. - At least, one community laughs all the way to the bank: pollsters. - Nation is indebted to MP, Chattisgarh & Rajasthan voters for putting a lid on the dreams of SP & BSP of becoming national parties, atleast for now. - Voters are not carried away by personalities and jargons. (Ex: Digvijay Singh in MP) - People do demand development and hence change. (Ex: Ajit Jogi & Digvijay Singh) - There is no such thing called Sonia magic (Ex: 3-1) - Caste & BC identity won't bring votes any more if you keep development at bay. (Ex: Ajit Jogi) Bad: - Corruption is no more an issue these days (Ex: Dilip Singh Judeo). - - City folks don't exercise their franchise with enthusiasm. (Ex: Delhi) - Poll campaigning is all about marketing. If used in a right way, much of the flak you got earlier could turn advantageous. (Ex: Much of the development in Delhi came at the behest of Supreme Court. But Sheila Dikshit turned them into her advantage.) Not sure whether its good or bad: - More women in politics. - More women CMs in the country. As the general election is less than a year away, it looks like the politics is heading for bipolarisation at least in Hindi heartland. The next few months promises more action. Suddenly, life has become so interesting! ;) Posted at 12/5/2003 10:56:36 AM Link Thursday, December 04, 2003 Google IndexingCould anyone suggest me how to make Google re-index my site and remove the cached pages? I am not sure whether I conveyed the point properly, but my problem is as below. When someone searches for a string, say "pictures of the colosseum", one of the pages in my site gets listed in the results. I have revamped my website about 2 months back and that particular page listed by Google is an old one (I have moved it elsewhere in the site) and when clicked, quite naturally returns a 404 error. Any thoughts, folks? Thanks in advance! Posted at 12/4/2003 04:49:08 PM Link Wednesday, December 03, 2003 Really Good, Really free!Its an old news, but still a good news for those who are academically inclined. Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the much revered University has put many of its course materials on-line for free. In the course of next 5 years, every subject taught at MIT will be available online for FREE. MIT has expressed that the true value of an MIT on-the-campus course is obtained by the teacher-student and student-student interaction and can not be obtained from this online course material. MIT also says that other Universities can use this model and bring out the materials for courses where they are better than MIT. The Open Courseware URL is http://ocw.mit.edu/ Happy Learning! Posted at 12/3/2003 11:03:54 AM Link Tuesday, December 02, 2003 I am embarassed to say that some moron(he/she chose that name..) has nominated me for the "Best Indian Male Blogger" award at Indiblog Awards site. Seems that there would be voting later this week to choose the eventual winners. Like someone else, who has also been nominated, I too feel its like a feather weight pitted against heavy weights. I admit that I did enjoy the observations, however untrue it might be, he/she has posted about my blog.Was delighted to see some of my regular reads - Kumaraguru, Shobha, VJ, Raj, Kiruba, Mahesh, Anita have also been nominated in various categories. Posted at 12/2/2003 11:09:43 AM Link |
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