|
Thursday, April 07, 2005 MovedFolks, This blog has moved to a different location now... I had planned to make the move in a much organised way, but due to some technical difficulties, I am hastening the move. http://www.chakkarapani.com/graffiti. The above would be my blog URL from now. While I would put the auto re-direction code in place soon, I would appreciate if you could kindly update your bookmarks with the new URL. Thanks very much & see you all at the new place. Posted at 4/7/2005 12:21:00 PM Link Wednesday, April 06, 2005 Beautiful MorningWhen the chill breeze that blew across my face woke me up earlier this morning, I realised that I had neither closed the ventilator, not pulled the curtains of my road facing bedroom window. At 4 o'clock this morning, I lost sleep not just coz of the cold air, but also due to a pleasant fragrance that filled the room as if someone sprayed the air freshener. It was due to the floral tree that not only presented a pretty sight but had also filled up my windowsill with loads of fragranced pink coloured flowers, it couldn't hold on. With the streetlight few yards away providing a perfect lighting, the view from my bed gave an impression that our road was filled with flowers. A pretty sight it was. It truly was. I had to pinch myself to make sure that I wasn't dreaming. As I sat wondering at the beauty of the place, it dawned on me that it had dawned. The well-maintained garden downstairs, that would be a treat to watch from the huge bay window of our lounge would present a coat of green as far as we could see. Over the last few days, I could notice that the colour was changing fast. Now, the garden presents a range of beautiful colours - all from the flowers that greet you with their colourful smile. It didn't happen overnight. But today, on a bright morning the flowers are all in full bloom, a true sign that the spring has arrived. Just grabbed the camera to click as many snaps as I can to preserve the fresh moments permanently only to find that I have run out of film. Well.. there would be another beautiful morning for sure. Posted at 4/6/2005 11:00:00 AM Link Tuesday, April 05, 2005 Manichitrathazhu & ChandramukhiGot to watch the Malayalam movie "Manichitrathazhu" starring Mohanlal, Shobhana & Suresh Gopi over the weekend. I remember that this movie ran well at Trichy about 10 years back while I was in college. Didn't get to watch it then and at last, I had a chance now. Like many of Fazil's movies Manichitrathazhu is good. Also, Mohanlal & Shobhana do deserve a special mention, but to crown Shobhana with National Award for Best Actress, I feel is taking the matters a bit too far. I don't mean to belittle Shobhana's skills, but I feel that there isn't any exceptional display of talent in this movie by Shobhana. May be, there weren't any other contenders for the award that year. I am eager to see how Chandramukhi - the Rajini-ised version of Manichitrathazhu would be. Mohanlal - the hero in the original, makes his appearance only about half time, which could never happen in Rajni starrer. But certainly, Super Star could handle the comedy scenes far better than Mohanlal. Having seen the stills of Chandramukhi and now Manichitrathazhu, I could to some extent place the characters & cast to some extent like Prabhu taking Suresh Gopi's role, Jothika taking Shobhana's etc. Whatever be the alterations to the original, Chandramukhi is gonna be a full-length comedy, perhaps comparable to Guru-Sishyan among Rajini films. Posted at 4/5/2005 02:58:00 PM Link Monday, April 04, 2005 Watch DogWatched a programme by name 'Watch Dog' in BBC last week. They investigate consumer complaints on poor customer service and if they are valid, they rip apart the companies. In the programme I watched, they showed about LA Fitness (read the story here)and few others. Had I known about this before.. well.. Citibank got a life. :) Talking about banks, seems that they had telecast a programme named 'Brassed Off Britain' last summer and I am not alone in whining about the poor service of the banks. If at all I encounter another bad customer experience, I know what to do. :-) Posted at 4/4/2005 11:23:00 AM Link Thursday, March 31, 2005 Gandhi maramRecently bumped upon the web site of my alma mater, National College - Trichy. The site has been developed by one of the current students. As you could see, it hasn't been very professionally designed but then, it is a good start. I was wondering why I didn't take the effort in the first place to develop a website for my college. During our days at college, we had so many complaints about the college management about lot of things, but I have always been proud to be associated with the college for various reasons. I have sent a mail to the webmaster appreciating the start and offering my hand in redesigning the site hoping that he wouldn't mind about my unsolicited feedback. Ours is a decent Arts & Science college (only for men.. shucks!) standing for about 85 years and its alumni include former President R. Venkataraman, former RBI Governor C. Rangarajan etc. Though the college is not in par with St. Joseph's & Bishop Heber in terms of infrastructre & ambience, it did have its share of glory not long ago. The college was started during the days when the freedom movement was at its peak and my dad, who too is an alumni of that college has said that there used to be a sense of nationalistic spirit even in late 1960s, perhaps due to the presence of some of the professors who had taken active part in the freedom struggle. Thinking about our college reminds me of a huge tree known as 'Gandhi maram' (Gandhi Tree). It was under that tree Mahatma Gandhi addressed the people when he visited Trichy. 'Gandhi Maram' is a small part of great history and I used to look upon it as a source of inspiration. During my recent trip to India, I went past our college but Gandhi Maram couldn't be seen from the road. A new building has come up in the ground where the tree used to be. For a moment, I thought of dropping in to find out whether the tree is behind the building or not. Then I backed out in the hope that it would be there as I didn't have the heart to know that yet another piece of history has been ruthlessly destroyed by my very own alma mater. Posted at 3/31/2005 10:24:00 AM Link Wednesday, March 30, 2005 Hats off Kiruba!I think Kiruba's decision to shut down his blog would be one of the talked about topics in the Indian blogosphere today. It is not an exaggeration to say that over a period of time, Kribs grew larger than the very concept of blogging and people started identifying Kiruba for anything associated with blogs in India. As some one said, he was a window to Chennai for those living outside, reporting on the nitty-gritties that you would only find when you live in that place. Kiruba did his best and when he says that he doesn't find this motivating anymore, we have to respect his decision. Only a couple of days back I was thinking that about the quality blogs that existed before and were closed down due to lack of motivation to continue. But Kiruba showed no such signs of slowing down. Unusually, he didn't blog for 5 days and came out later saying that he is shutting shop. This lack-of-motivation funda happens in many things we do - like all of a sudden we stop reading books, stop playing/watching matches etc. It is all about priorities. When we have got better things to do, others get pushed back and blogging is no exception. Perhaps, if this weren’t such a publicly expressed forum & a more addictive habit, we would hardly give a damn. Watching Kiruba from sidelines for about two years now, I am sure that whatever he gets into next would be as great & as successful as blogging. Hats off to him for inspiring so many people to express themselves out in the open. Posted at 3/30/2005 01:44:00 PM Link Tuesday, March 29, 2005 F for ...I just saved myself from a huge embarrassment. Searching for a person's name in a MS Outlook e-mail, I pressed Ctrl + F and started typing the name. While Ctrl + F in all other (no.. most other) applications would launch that little 'Find' dialog box, in case of Outlook, it is a shortcut for forwarding the mail as it launches the 'Forward' window and waits for us to fill the address field. As the search phrase was the person's name itself, in effect I was about to forward a confidential mail to the person about whom the mail was about. I would have made a big a*s of myself, had I pressed the return key. Thank God! Posted at 3/29/2005 10:29:00 AM Link |
|
|
![[Powered by Blogger]](http://www.chakkarapani.com/main/blog/images/bloggerbutton1.gif){kind=small}
