Veni V(a)idi ViBlog (Beta)

Exactly my thoughts!

2007-06-07T10:48:00.000-07:00

Note: this post is only for myself (as if the rest of the blogspot is for others, my wife chides)
Some joy that happened to me suddenly that out of nowhere that i remembered this song.
I was not a big fan of this song before, but suddenly now this song seems heavenly.
The voice is so divine and the hearing this song I feel has similar effect as of drinking chamomile tea -soothing :)
Does anyone know the raaga ?

Not exactly my thoughts but interesting

2007-05-17T13:16:00.000-07:00

Waking UP

2007-02-01T11:49:00.000-08:00

I have always prized myself for being like the feather in "Forest Gump" taking life as
it comes, not wondering too much about anything and the "thats not a big deal" kind of
attitude. I always agreed with J.M.Barrie-"Young boys should never be sent to bed...
they always wake up a day older" (Finding Neverland). Growing up is a term I never
wanted to get used to.I thought that being a guy who understands all perspectives is
the best thing in life.

Lately, lot of things have started hitting me, where I come to realise "already too
late", or should have done much earlier. LOT of eye openers(most of them through my
wife) where i have been left wondering how did i not notice what was happenning with
the world, and where was I doing what. Vanity, its such a killer. The problem with
vanity is that the person who has it doesn't know it. On seeing some one happy/calm/relaxed
its easy to forget the hardwork/background they did to get there. I am going to think about all those.

I have come to realize is that it is possible to grow old and be mature without losing
your innocence. Its not an easy task mind you. To balance them and not still getting
Carried away with either of them. I am going to attempt to do that. Do instill a
sense of urgency in what I do and how I carry on with my life. Do make sure to live
with a taste and stand up.

I won't go as far as to say i am going to attempt George Costanza's concept of "Do the
Opposite" & "Fight your natural instinct" but something along the lines doesn't sound
bad. Where I am going to fight my natural instinct which tells me that caution is the
utmost thing and make it ready to fight the consequences. I know, its going to be a
long journey here, particular if you start taking life seriously a decade later, but

I know i will have the full support of my wife, I am embarking on that..

The current situation reminds me of Tom Cruise waking up one day and writing a Mission Statement(Jerry Maguire), but eventually nothing but goodness is come out of this.
So hey, what the heck!!

Diwali Wishes

2006-10-20T11:59:00.000-07:00

Diwali is not a bad time to wake up & start doing things that we we once started/always wanted to start. So me thinking of blogging atleast at a better pace than before. So here's diwali wishes done by Sandy(my wife)

2006-10-20T08:39:00.000-07:00

Yogi B n Nachathira Feat Lock Up - Madai Thiranthu

Is this the next generation of tamil music? Listened to this recently(Courtesy, my wife sandy) . Lyrics are pretty strong at some places. This is a Malaysian based music group which made me pay attention(!)- This is the first tamil song of hip-hop genre that I heard.

The Pen is Mightier than the keyboard

2006-06-09T13:54:00.000-07:00

Recently I received e-greeting cards for the new year/pongal etc. Its so easy these days to not even touch the pen(even for a personal greeting) and choose something from the net and add your own message. With so any sites offering free e-greeting cards, pick something, add a tune/voice message and forward it. For a person who believes in personal touch in anything personal(that’s why its called personal) I am still yet to come in full terms of it.

During my college days, when I used to live 1500 miles away from my parents and STD rates not being that affordable, letters were the main source of correspondence with my family. They used to send me an Inland letter every week, and I used to reply with a postcard every other week(mostly for reminding that more money needs to be sent ;) I remember the hindi movie Dilwale Dulhaniya Le Jayenge where Amrish Puri smells the letter he receives from India and says he feels desh ki kushboo(smell of motherland) from that letter. I wouldn’t go as far as that but seeing one’s own parents handwritten words

definitely gives you the feeling of being near them(more so than voice & webcam) because you spend so much time thinking about the other person when you write. My mother was not used to writing letters so I would beg her to jot a few lines just to see her handwriting and her style and she used to oblige every now and then.

I had a reputation of having spelling mistakes in every language I had known be it tamil, hindi, English. In Hindi, once I had to write an essay about Gandhi and I had just prepared for that and I wrote a very neat essay. Only then the next day the master recited the whole essay to the class I found out that instead of Gandhi, I had written Gadhi(which translates to donkey) everywhere. Even when I was learning Sanskrit in my high school – I used to make mistakes even when I had to write rama ramou ramaaha(the basic grammar). Thanks these days for the spell check software !! I am digressing here, the point is my sister used to collect all my postcards that I send them and once I go for vacation, it would be a fun session for them pointing out all the mistakes that I had made in the letters written during the course of the semester.

My father was very good in writing letters. Every letter to him would be like a completion. The best place to start would be (as Wodehouse says) at the beginning(like “kshemam, khemaithirkku bathil”, which translates to I am doing fine, reply how you are doing) and then you have to answer all the questions asked in their previous correspondence, current state of affairs, and then enquire about the well-being of all other known people. The information should not be zig-zag and flow like a pattern.

These days, even emails are sent in sms format. My wife, who is five years younger than me claims that she can send 4 complete sms messages in one minute. She always questions why I write complete words when you can do with so few letters. Most of her messages would need interpretation for me . Example :

Hi me zzzz Wanna go shopn. RU cmng (translates in English as Hi, I am feeling bored, I want to go shopping, Would you come with me)

Gues wat shalu did, ROFL stuf spk2ul8r abt tat ( translates in English as to Guess what shalu did , Rolling off the floor laughing stuff. Will speak to you later about that.)

With all these YABA(Yet Another Bloody Acronym)’s I wonder sooner or later, they would start teaching these for English as Second Language courses

Of Asterix and Losing Innocence

2006-02-24T13:50:00.000-08:00

I am a major fan of asterix and obelix, having read all the books multiple times. For asterix fans, a new book has recently come out – Asterix and the Falling Sky. I remember eyebrows being raised in my family when after college, I used to buy comic books and read. Aren’t you too old for that was the argument. I think no one is too old for anything. Everyone has their own tangibles that motivates them, that they never get tired of. Its small things like these that keep us engaged/absorbed in life, when life itself is taunting us in a frying pan.

I think the problem with us is we outgrow things very quickly. Whatever was funny to me previously now isn’t. Looks like as the years grow by the number of things that engage us keeps coming down. I have matured(tell that to my wife!) even though I don’t want to. As Voltaire said "If we don't find something pleasant, we'll find something new and interesting together" – we have a need to constantly find something that we don’t seem to grow tired of .

When you notice a child, it always views everything without prejudice and its having fun and being contented most of the time because its sees everything with wonderment and amaze. Everything in nature seems to be a playtool or a source of joy with for them.What wouldn’t I give up to be mature and still retain my innocence. In fact this was one of the qualities that brought me closer to my wife sandhiya. Her ability to be innocent and have fun at the simplest of the things. She still keeps a burger pillow, all funny key chains, scented rubbers and her enthusiasm unbridled. Looking at her at the way she approaches all things mundane, it makes me wonder if really life is so simple and are we the ones making it so complicated ?

Google packs it up

2006-01-10T06:40:00.000-08:00

There comes a time in a man's blogging life when he has to absolutely blog something about technology particulary if the blogger in question is in the field of technology, or he starts questioning himself of his credibility in the field he is in. I wouldn't call myself a geek following the latest in technolgy, but i try to keep track of the latest once in a while and try it out.

The problem with saying latest offering from google these days is before you finish the blog, something else new has been introduced. Google pack is nothing new, but they have packed some of their tools into one neat package. Some of these are must-have and some only for people with tech interest and rest for people reading this post(mostly jobless). Most of the tools in there are the best in their trade. My observations on some of these tools as a novice. Geeks(Or-So-Called), kindly excuse, and do what Geeks(Or-So-Called) do.

Google Earth - Simply awesome, except that make sure that your computer has atleast 512 MB RAM and more than 1GHz speed to have a decent viewing quality.

Picasa - Pretty decent tool for organizing your photos on your PC. If you want to share it on the web, I fould flickr a nice way. Better than yahoo photos as it doesn't reduce the resolutions of photos too much.

Google Desktop - No need to mention about Google's search. One disadvantage I found is that it consumes quite some memory(since you need to run it all the time in the background), but it's worth it when you have to search for something in your PC.

Google Toolbar - Pretty convenient if you use google more than a few times and found the pop-up blocker better than MS Service Pack2.

Mozilla - A neat browser, i like this for viewing simultaneous pages in tabs, reading feeds etc. Definitely faster and consumes less memory than IE. Another good browser is opera. Either way you won't go wrong with using any of these two browsers.

Ad-Aware- A must have these days what with the non-stop infusion of ads and spy software. Equally good is spy-bots

Google Talk is what I am using currently to chat whomever I know in India replacing skype. Skype was good intially but with the enormous increase in users, the voice quality has gone down. One of my relatives suggested Rediff Bol (the patriotic indian that he is), but we uninstalled it promptly after we used a few times as the quality/interface is not that great.

RealPlayer Hate this, and when a person and his wife agree on hating a particular thing, it must be pretty bad won't you say.

Haven't tried Trillian or GalleryPlayer HD Images. Any feedback on this anyone?

Happy New Year!!

2005-12-30T11:09:00.000-08:00

Wishing everyone (I could count 4 readers to the max as of today, as I started this blog only yesterday !!) a very happy new year 2006.

January 1 is the new year according the Gregorian Calendar which most of the world seem to follow. Every other country use this calendar for day to day purposes, but in many countries people have their own calendars to mark auspicious days and traditional holidays. In India, almost every state has a different new year start date, and in fact in our Brahmin community itself, though Tamil New Year Day is the same day, there are several versions of “panchangam” (vedic calendar).

Personally I am not the one who believes in making resolutions during new year (it makes for a good conversational piece though) –"ensoi maadi" as kannadigas say, being my motto. But then there’s something that one can do –take a few minutes to reflect on the whole year, the decisions the mistakes, the fun memories, the friends made/lost in contact and see if something can be taken forward. Another school of thought is to make a resolution and announce it to as many people as you can, so that the thought of people asking you about it would push one to keep that up as best as possible, and even if little comes out of it no harm, right?

There were two things that remind me of the new year in my younger days: the calendar and the diary. My father keeps a diary not for memoirs, but for keeping track of the daily expenses. He used to maintain it to every single rupee and tally at the end of the day. His point is to keep track of where money is spent, more important than how. I envy this habit very much, I don’t know whether I will be able to replicate that ever. And he used to get diaries from his office, insurance companies and sometimes from his friends. My interests in those dairies were the front pages which used to have stuff like the world map/capitals, world timings, units conversions, etc. After my father retired, the diaries he used to get reduced gradually. I hope the year doesn’t come when he has to purchase a diary, somehow sentimentally I would feel sorry about that.

The other thing is the calendar, mine being an orthodox family we were not supposed to hang any calendars with film stars/models. Calendars either are supposed to be plain or with some god(Murugar, ganapathy, shiva etc.). Mostly these calendars would be issued by the local vendors, so a fortnight before the new year, my mom used to spy around the local vendor population finding who’s issuing the best calendars. And then we would eventually get a load of calendars which we would then distribute to our friends/servants. The LIC and “Saravana Stores” calendars were very popular then with the latter having good renderings of God images. I even remember during my hosteling days in Pilani, I used to get a calendar every year from my home. Nowadays, lot of people are content with taking print outs of nice calendars from the internet to hang in cubicles.

Would like to finish the blog with a “A Psalm Of Life” by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. Read this completely, its very simple and very touching.

Tell me not in mournful numbers,
Life is but an empty dream!
For the soul is dead that slumbers,
And things are not what they seem.

Life is real! Life is earnest!
And the grave is not its goal;
Dust thou are, to dust thou returnest,
Was not spoken of the soul.

Not enjoyment, and not sorrow,
Is our destined end or way;
But to act, that each tomorrow
Find us farther than today.

Art is long, and Time is fleeting,
And our hearts, though stout and brave,
Still, like muffled drums,
are beatingFuneral marches to the grave.

In the world's broad field of battle,
In the bivouac of Life,
Be not like dumb, driven cattle!
Be a hero in the strife!

Trust no Future, howe'er pleasant!
Let the dead Past bury its dead!
Act, - act in the living Present!
Heart within, and God o'erhead!

Lives of great men all remind us
We can make our lives sublime,
And, departing, leave behind us
Footprints on the sand of time;

Footprints, that perhaps another,
Sailing o'er life's solenm main,
A forlorn and shipwrecked brother,
Seeing, shall take heart again.

Let us then be up and doing,
With a heart for any fate;
Still achieving, still pursuing,
Learn to labor and to wait.

Au revoir Deepak

2005-12-29T11:16:00.000-08:00

It was a pleasant summer time in a remote village in New Jersey. Some time in June 2000 I guess. Life was very much different over the last few months for myself mostly because I had been new to U.S. Was getting used to the new continent. Can’t say new culture because most of the teammates in that particular project were also from India. It was a new experience with all the novices learning new nuances. With no pressure on work(was there ever?), we were relaxing and spending time in office discussing everything from visas/consultants/body-shoppers/Indian grocery/Indian movies/driving in U.S.(Will write a separate post on those experiences alone sometime later).

Was one such busy day when we saw two gentlemen walk up to office in full formal suits. Well if you had known Lucent, you would understand the predicament. For those who doesn’t know, the work environment is very informal with the dress-code intending to show it’s a cutting-edge tech. company. No need to then say that all the Indian eyes in that project(there were no other eyes on that project anyway) were scanning them. But these two were not to be fazed away. They were cool, calm and knew exactly what they were doing. They saw the atmosphere and recognized it fits them to a tee. They were professionals, so as to say working in such “busy” environments. On one of those busiest days, I got introduced to Deepak. Deepak gave the customary “hey-buddy-i’ve-seen-tons-like-you’ reception.

From there on, we got a chance to be good friends. Little would we know, that we would be spending five plus years living under the same roof. Little did I know that, I would get to see a master in action at close quarters in the art of “Showing yourself busy in working environment”. Been through a lot including lay-offs, lots of memorable trips, getting to realize that we really can’t cook. With our other room mates- Bala & Joe-we had lots of fun through out these years. One particular experience that I miss would be the Saturday morning when everyone gets up around 9 and sits in the living room with his laptop, wondering who’s going to make the tea and who’s going to make breakfast & watching desi TV channel and arguing upon everything from Lebron to Sopranos, from red-state to Vatican, from Seinfeld to tendulkar’s imported car. This would go till we had to decide who’s going to make the lunch ;)

Deepak’s always ready to impart his wisdom, never ask if its wanted. But the good thing is, he always had a good knowledge of most of the topics. He’s a infotainment guy- whether it’s a movie/sport/show- he loved more to read/discuss about it than watch it. We nick named him “Gandalf” -mostly for his age, though he used to say he’s just over-the-hill and I used to say he’s so far from the hill that the hill is just a mole to him now. He had a sensible head and I appreciated most of his views on most of the subjects(Will leave to Nishanth, an another friend of us to comment more on this.)

Of late, he was mentioning about returning to India for good, and since a majority of desi people here say that and majority of the desi people don’t believe the other majority, it was quite a surprise so as to say when he packed his bags(stuffed would be a better word) to India for good with a promise to return with a vengeance and few deepak juniors. I saw a major similarity with him- both of us wanted to achieve lot of things in life, but very lazy to do them-so we were trying to achieve as much by being as lazy, and trying to be smart. Hoping this friendship also doesn’t turn from a regular mailing to mailing for diwali/new year/mahavir jayanthi(he’s a moderate jain, and yes contrary to popular belief moderate jains do exist.) Deepak, Wish you all the best in your personal and professional life.

and so it begins...

2005-12-29T11:14:00.000-08:00

"Hello, World"

Sukhlam bharathaaram

2005-12-29T11:13:00.000-08:00

Sukhlam bharatharam vishnum sashivadanam chathurbhujam
prasanna vadanam dhyayaeth sarva vignoba santhayae