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Saturday, October 30, 2004 Tea party politicsA political drama has come to an end after TN Governor Rao's resignation. At the same time, another interesting one has begun with the TN Government disclosing the transcript of the conversation between the Chief Minister Jayalalithaa and Union Home Minister Shivraj Patil. Leaving aside the question whether it is proper to disclose a supposedly confidential conversation to the press, the funniest thing about it is Patil's reasoning that the Governor is being removed for not hosting a tea party on the Independence Day. Looks like a school teacher sending a second grader out of the class for not doing the home work. When would these guys grow up? Posted at 10/30/2004 06:55:21 AM Link Friday, October 29, 2004 Shorter Days & Longer Nights are back again. I realised this when I started for work at 7 in the morning. It was very dark outside that I would have been forgiven for thinking it is 5 a.m. Once the Day light saving time takes effect over the weekend, the realisation would be more complete.Posted at 10/29/2004 09:37:27 AM Link Reunions Frankly, I don't know what I had in mind when I opted to have a web presence, but now, it appears to be the best thing I have ever done so far. Few weeks back, Ramchi jumped from nowhere, left a message in my guest book and followed it up with a call. Both of us were studying at Aptech, Trichy and the last time we met was sometime in 1995. He had stumbled upon my blog when my unusual name has rung a bell but a look around the site made him get in touch with me. For quite sometime, I have been reading 'Ahambaavam' Guru's blogs. I had made some comments against his entries as well and he too has been reading my posts. I was pleasantly surprised on seeing the comments he left for my previous post - he is the same guy with whom I had done my schooling but remained out of touch for the last 12 years or so. What a way to get connected.. I am so proud & excited! Posted at 10/29/2004 05:21:02 AM Link Thursday, October 28, 2004 TVOur TV is not functioning anymore. Just as I was ogling at Natasha Kaplinsky in BBC Breakfast yesterday, the picture shrunk, turned green before vanishing in to tiny dot. Initially I thought that the heavy winds have blown our antenna away, but sadly I realised that it has something to do with the picture tube. I was not an avid TV watcher (I am not comfy with this term, but using it for want of a better one). While in India, thanks to my younger sibling's schooling, we never had the cable connection at our home until after I left the shores. Even otherwise, most of my evenings were spent at the offices of Ramco doing something or other (only god knows what!) & weekends on the MCA classes. First two years of life in UK, where I stayed with 3 other friends of mine - were literally spent watching innumerable Tamil movies that we rented from the shop nearby that programmes were never even considered. We would have watched about 400-500 movies in those two years at an average of 4 to 5 a week that in case we watched any other programme, it was definitely not out of choice. When I moved to Bournemouth in mid-2002, I didn't get Tam movies here, but it was the time I forcibly drowned myself in studies that TV never came in to the picture (pun unintended). But for News at 10, Cricket matches, Wimbledon & WWTBAM - nothing really interested me much. After my wedding last year, my wife had no choice but to kill time watching the idiot box. Over a period of time, she had her own favourite programmes & comperers that whenever she used to talk about Carol Vorderman or someone else, I was like who & sometimes what! After all, I like watching only the likes of Andrew Marr & Gavin Hewitt - the Political Editor & Special correspondent of BBC News respectively. Only in the recent few months, as a consequence of the "mornings r 4 me & my books, evenings wd be spent with u" agreement reached with my other half, I got to realise that there are quite a few nice programmes, that I would eventually like. At a time, when we got set to a routine and started making best use of the idiot box, it has ceased functioning. For now, we have hit upon the idea of eeing how life goes without a TV at home. Let me see how long we manage. Posted at 10/28/2004 01:13:24 PM Link Wednesday, October 27, 2004 Digital Organisers
Posted at 10/27/2004 01:48:32 PM Link Monday, October 25, 2004 Buy one, Get one FREEI have seen this offer been made available for shirts, chocolates, bread loaves and even mobile phones. When I walked inside Sovereign Shopping Centre in Bournemouth on Saturday, I couldn't believe myself. A huge board conveying the above message was over a... hold your breath.. CAR. It was a Vauxhall Meriva priced at £9995. Unable to believe, I asked the sales man about that. Perhaps he thought that I didn't look like one who would buy a car, he said that the offer is genuine and is valid for that day alone in a tone that suggested, "don't ask any more questions". Bad salesmanship. Anyway, that’s not something I am gonna bother about. I am certain what they had displayed on that day were brand new cars, but looking at the dealer's website, I have reason to believe that the offer might be for used cars. Whatever be it, its true that I was taken aback. Posted at 10/25/2004 11:42:57 AM Link Friday, October 22, 2004 Saraswathi PoojaThis is one day of the year which I used to look forward with glee. This used to be the only day when my parents would ask us to be away from the books and keep it for pooja. I, like scores of children in whose households they practice this ritual, would wish that they have this Saraswathi pooja every month or even every week. Today, as I tidied up the house and placed my books before the gods & godesses for pooja, it brought back all the memories of yesteryears where we used to clean up the house, more particularly our vehicles and apply sandal paste & kumkum. It is especially during these times, we miss India very much. I don't want to write or even think too much about that as it would spoil my current mood and I would again start contemplating of returning back to India at the earliest. I have set some targets and it is important that I don't lose sight of that. Posted at 10/22/2004 05:16:54 PM Link Bournemouth, Indians, Mallus, Dasara etc. About two and half years back when I moved to Bournemouth from London, it appeared to me that I was the only Indian in the surrounding 18 pattis (If you blink at this term, it means that you need to watch Tamil movies regularly to enrich your knowledge). Though I had lived in UK for two years before moving to this town, I felt being in a foreign land for the first time only after moving here mainly coz all of whom I met here were strangers – both at work and outside of it. Unlike other bigger cities of UK, Bournemouth had very little or no black population at that time. As a result, I happened to be the only dark-skinned fellow hanging around the town, so much so that school children either used to stare at me like a new exhibit in the toyshop or get frightened like having seen some alien species. Thanks to the presence of JP Morgan Chase here in Bournemouth & their faith in CTS, Satyam, TCS for their IT requirements, last one year saw the town being flooded with truckload of campootar people from India. Unfortunately, JP Morgan Chase happens to be in the other side of the town from where we live, hence not many of these folks live in our neighbourhood. Shortage of nurses in UK & proliferation of care homes across Bournemouth meant that nurses started to arrive from India. Seems that Kerala seems to produce more nurses in India – though only next to teashop owners that so many mallu families in our neighbourhood these days. So, times have changed, children have either grown up that they aren’t scared of me any more or they are seeing more such demons in the road these days, I am not surprised if I spot a group of Indians anywhere here. Three days back a Bangladeshi guy, whom I have befriended told me that there is going to be a Dusshera night on 21st at a hall nearby. My wife & I were quite excited to join the celebrations so that we get to know more people locally. I was thrilled that Bournemouth has now got a sizeable Asian population to celebrate open Dusshera nights. As we were getting ready to go there, what happened in Chennai recently on the fifth day of the test match happened here. It rained profusely and the accompanying winds made it very difficult for us to step out. Added to that, my wife though she was interested to join the fun, wasn’t doing well; hence we decided to call it off. Would look for some other opportunity to network with people. May be Deepavali. Basically I started this post with the intention of conveying what is in the second part of the previous paragraph. I have been made to understand once again that brevity has never been my strength. Wonder how I scored marks for ‘comprehension’ part in the English paper during my school days. Posted at 10/22/2004 11:11:23 AM Link Thursday, October 21, 2004 Not bad at all..hmmm.. On reading this, looks like that school is not bad after all. Perhaps, one should never react to media reports. We should wait for the confirmation/denial from the party concerned. A good lesson learnt! Thanks Harikumar for bringing this news report to my notice. Posted at 10/21/2004 10:14:45 AM Link Wednesday, October 20, 2004 Didn't I say that this might happen?Veerappan's 12-year old daughter has been expelled from school. Reason: Being Veerappan's daughter. Yesterday, when I wrote that the girl would be chastised for everything, I thought that she would be given meaningful stares and people would refer to her as bandit's daughter in hushed tones. But I didn't expect that the school would react this way. Come on.. What did the child do to deserve this? That girl hadn't even seen her father alive and even if she had, this is no way to treat a kid. Shouldn't the school have shown some maturity in dealing with that girl? Shouldn't they have let her study quietly and given her some sort of comfort? Would they dare to throw out of their school a politician or rowdy's son/daughter - who in fact are being brought up under the very nose of the criminals in most undesirable circumstances and have real chance of influencing the other kids of their age? Now, thanks to the media, every kuppan & suppan in TN would be able to identify her and she wouldn't be admitted to any school in the foreseeable future. In all probability, her schooling days are already over. I don't say that the kids of the criminals should have free education. All I am saying is this is a perfect way to spoil so many young minds. They have set a very bad example to hundreds of young minds. Nothing would be more ironic when these very same schoolteachers would teach about ethics, moral values and spirit of tolerance to the children. I thank my stars for having studied in schools that had teachers who deserve to be worshipped. Posted at 10/20/2004 11:08:47 AM Link Tuesday, October 19, 2004 Veerappan - What next?Without any doubt, Veerappan's death is going to hog the headlines in the Indian media for few more weeks. Personally, all these days I believed that he would die of old age some day without being caught. Vijayakumar, who was booted out of Chennai for mishandling Hindu editor's arrest issue, has done himself proud with this encounter. Hope human rights organisation don't give him a torrid time thereby making a mockery of them. The below are the possible scenarios that might happen or already happening in India. Jaya TV and its ilk would start propagating this as one of Amma's sterling achievements. To some extent she deserves some praise as at least she was consistent that terror - be it Veerappan or LTTE should be dealt with iron fists unlike Karunanidhi who along with S.M Krishna was ready to grant amnesty to the brigand during the Rajkumar episode in 2000. Sun TV for its part would first try to divert the attention as if it is no-issue and next would enlist the facilities accorded to the STF personnel during DMK regime. Also, it would raise suspicions about the encounter - from whether Veerappan was really killed in an encounter to whether it was Veerappan first of all. DMK, if Venkatesan Pannaiyar issue is an example to go by, in all probability would nominate Veerappan's wife Muthulakshmi as the DMK candidate for Dharmapuri constituency in the forthcoming elections, whenever it is. Ramadoss would be confused whether to cry foul on the cruel death of a fellow 'Thamizhar' & 'Vanniyar' or focus on other pressing issues like opposing Rajinikanth's 'Chandramuki'. Dinamalar would come out or have already done a special edition on Veerappan with 32 pages full colour photo of the brigand and his last moments. I saw them claim in their website earlier this morning that they are the first to report about Veerappan's death. To my agony, they have published the picture of his 12-year-old daughter studying in a school at Cuddalore. All along that girl might have been growing up without being recognised as the feared brigand's daughter. Poor girl, think about the trauma she would be facing now. She would be chastised for nothing and her life has been put to misery for no fault of hers. This is height of irresponsibility on the part of the sensation-crazy media. Posted at 10/19/2004 10:20:24 AM Link Monday, October 18, 2004 Rain at ChennaiDespite what many think about 5th day, 4th innings chase, spinning track, slightly higher target, out of form Ganguly & Laxman et al., I strongly believed that somehow Indians would have made it 1-1 at Chepauk today, had weather not intervened. Yet, a day of rain at Chennai is more valuable than a victory against Aussies. The former has become a rare phenomenon than the latter. Posted at 10/18/2004 11:07:39 AM Link Friday, October 15, 2004 Dreams float on an impatient windA wind that wants to create a new order. - A P J Abdul Kalam Happy Birthday Sir! Posted at 10/15/2004 10:14:14 AM Link Tuesday, October 12, 2004 Tam MoviesAfter several months, I managed to get 6 Tamil video cassettes and had a chance to enrich my knowledge on that front. Aayudha Ezhuththu - I badly wanted to watch this and when I did, I liked it for sure. Glad to see Surya leaping forward with every movie. Only a few years back, we were watching him as a chocolate-faced lover boy and now he has gone very far. It was a different role for Maddy and he has done it with aplomb. Nothing much to say about Sidharth or Trisha. Esha Deol looks as cute as Hema of yesteryears. The actors & actresses apart, Mani is ever ready to experiment and has done a splendid job. Hats off! Am sure that I'd watch it several times before returning the cassette. Arul - I wish Vikram hadn't acted in this one. It is definitely not a bad one & even not a boring one too, but I hate to see an actor with such a potential doing this ordinary masala stuff. Even though 'Saamy' & 'Dhool' were similar masala movies, direction & Vikram's body language in those movies made it worth watching. But sadly, Arul looked like a movie of 80s. Chiyaan erred a bit in story selection. Madurey - A movie that is tailor made for Vijay - 4 fights, 5 songs, 2 heroines, a punch dialogue et al. Since I didn't expect anything else from Vijay, I wasn't disappointed one bit. The story had several loopholes but could be forgiven. Worth watching once. Vasool Raja MBBS - Another 'Pammal K Sambandham' with Sneha replacing Simran in this one and she looks ravishing indeed! Good to see Prabhu after a long time. New - Couldn't manage to hold on for more than 20 minutes. I don't understand why those women's organisation created such a controversy about the vulgar dialogues. Had they not given any publicity to this movie, no one would have managed to sit in the theatre for more than 15-20 minutes. Perhaps, I was indebted to that video rental owner in my previous life. Crap! Posted at 10/12/2004 01:36:04 PM Link Monday, October 11, 2004 Essence of Distance LearningI was off to Durham over the weekend. Primary purpose of my travel was to visit the B-School library and have a go at some of the dissertations submitted in the previous years. I was told by Student support that the library would be open on Saturdays and that I can obtain the dissertations from the library. When I promptly turned up on Saturday morning, the library was indeed open but it seems that I had to get prior permission from the powers that be to see the dissertation reports as they were under lock & key of someone else. When I pointed out what the Student support people said, the librarian said that you could obtain the reports "from" the library, but NOT "in" the library. That means, if I write to some powers that be, he/she would leave those reports with the librarian and I could pick it up "from" the library, but they won't be available "in" the library under normal circumstances. Utterly ridiculous considering that I travelled more than 1000 kms just to learn the difference between "from" and "in". Perhaps, this is what they mean by "Distance Learning". Posted at 10/11/2004 02:32:26 PM Link Friday, October 08, 2004 Google SMSGuys at Google never get tired of innovation. Now, its Google SMS. It would work only in US at the moment, but am sure they would extend it to other geographies in due course. Posted at 10/8/2004 10:52:54 AM Link Thursday, October 07, 2004 AgeingA haircut earlier this week exposed several silver linings over my head. Another reminder of the fast approaching 30s. Time sure flies. Posted at 10/7/2004 11:42:52 AM Link Wednesday, October 06, 2004 Google TranslationIf you trust Google language tools, try this.. Step 1: Go to http://www.google.com.my/language_tools?hl=en Step 2: Enter the following line into the translate textbox: Sushmita's mom is nice and cool Step 3: Translate from English to Spanish. Step 4: Copy the translated text, and translate it back from Spanish to English. Check out the result! Posted at 10/6/2004 02:09:40 PM Link ALL DAY BREAKFAST AVAILABLE This notice could be found in many of the small restaurants across England. Isn't Breakfast something that we eat in the morning? I understand that they mean the availability of the food items that is normally consumed during breakfast, all through the day. But a better word or phrase would be more appropriate, right? What could be it? Posted at 10/6/2004 01:23:11 PM Link Monday, October 04, 2004 Hard TalkI am not an Amma fan, but I would have liked to watch J.Jayalalithaa's interview in BBC Hard Talk telecast on Oct 1st. After reading the excerpts, I have more reasons to feel so as I just love to watch a politician face embarassing questions. Wish Karan Thapar interviews M.Karunanidhi as well. While many might think that he would handle it with ease and aplomb, I would only like to point out the way he reacted at Coimbatore few months back when a young journalist put an uncomfortable question at him. Posted at 10/4/2004 01:14:03 PM Link Gales Gales of moderate intensity were expected to hit the Southern coast of England last evening. Living in a south facing first floor flat, I could hear the wind howling aloud last night and I couldn't help think about the Florida hurricane, however much I tried not to. Today morning, it was still the same as rains dashed against our huge window accompanied by the music of the winds. There were flash flood warnings from the weatherman as well. As I stepped out of home for work, I wished that I lived in Chennai studying in school on a day like this coz 1) So much of rain would do a world of good to that water-starved city and 2) A weather like this would make the government declare a local holiday. What a way to spend a cold day lying at the sofa, munching some 'bajjis'. As I walk to work daydreaming, the weather in a typical English style makes a U-turn. Its bright & shiny outside. Posted at 10/4/2004 01:13:34 PM Link | ||
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