Adding one more...
Movie: Vettaiyadu Vilaiyadu
"Ulagathin kadaisi naal
Indru thaano enbathu pol,
Pesi pesi theertha pinnum
Etho onru kuraiyuthae!"
Bharathi is one of my favorite poets. Baghu and I used to try our hands at composing some tunes for Bharathiar songs during those idle hostel days. Ofcourse one doesn't expect the standards of Bharathi in movie songs these days, but I do expect to enjoy the lyrics of the song as much as the beats and music carrying it.
I am listing a few lines which impressed me the first time I heard them...
Movie: Thotti Jaya
"Engayo un mugam naan partha nyabagam.
Eppotho unnudan naan vazhntha nyabagam."
Movie: Kadhal Kondaen
"Natpinilae natpinilae pirivu enbathu ethumillai
Un manamum en manamum pesa varthaikal thevai illai."
Movie: Kannathil Muthamittal
"Katrin perisaiyum mazhai padum padalgalum
Oru mounam pol inbam tharumo
Kodi keerthanamum kavi kortha varthaigalum
Thuli kanneer pol artham tharumo.."
Movie: Alaipayuthae
"Kilaiyil kanum kiliyin mookku
Vidalai pennin vetrilai naakku
Bhoomi thodatha pillaiyin patham
Ella sivappum unthan kobam... "
Movie: Ghajini
""Parthu pazhagiya naangu thinangalil
Nadai udai bhavanai matri vittal
Salai munaigalil thuritha unavugal
vangi unnum vadikkai kaatti vittal.
...and there are lot more...will add them next time I listen to them. Do add your favorite lines in the comments if you are reminded of any.
Sunday, March 5, 2006
Tuesday, February 28, 2006
A ray of hope in TN at last...
Some heartening news from home...
http://www.hindu.com/2006/02/28/stories/2006022818150100.htm
TN High court has struck down the governments ill-conceived attempt to abolish Entrance exams and just use the State Board marks for admissions to professional courses. The State Board exams, if any are a test of memory and recollection capabilities of the students and in no way identify students that can successfully compete in the academic rigor of a professional course. In addition to that seperating since large number of students get the same marks (read 100%), it would be a herculean task frought with pitfalls to rank them. Am happy to see that there is some authority that uses logic in arriving at judgements.
There will definitely be appeals and exploration of other ways of "rescuing" the students...but the government would do extremely well to stipulate one entrance exam for ALL admissions and improve the standard of that exam so students dont face the hassle of preparing for one exam after another.
http://www.hindu.com/2006/02/28/stories/2006022818150100.htm
TN High court has struck down the governments ill-conceived attempt to abolish Entrance exams and just use the State Board marks for admissions to professional courses. The State Board exams, if any are a test of memory and recollection capabilities of the students and in no way identify students that can successfully compete in the academic rigor of a professional course. In addition to that seperating since large number of students get the same marks (read 100%), it would be a herculean task frought with pitfalls to rank them. Am happy to see that there is some authority that uses logic in arriving at judgements.
There will definitely be appeals and exploration of other ways of "rescuing" the students...but the government would do extremely well to stipulate one entrance exam for ALL admissions and improve the standard of that exam so students dont face the hassle of preparing for one exam after another.
Monday, February 13, 2006
Baghu Sucks...
Here is the mail from this kaiyalagatha fellow:
From: prasanna s
Date: Feb 13, 2006 1:09 PM
Subject: Feb 13th Treat status.
To: softthinkers, praveen.DS@trilogy.com, karthee_sivalingam@infosys.com
Hi all,
I have been told by Murr that there are a few changes in the scheme of things for the treat that we had planned.
1.The sponsor is now changed from Baghu and miss.x
to
2. The reason of treat now changed from Introduction of miss.x
to
Welcoming back Baghu to the elite group of singles.
3. Date now changed from 13th February
to
'Yet to be decided'
4. Venue no change i.e. 'Yet to be decided'..
Murugu will send a detailed mail regarding the same shortly.
@Murr : is this all fine?
and my reply is "Baghu, You suck!!!"
From: prasanna s
Date: Feb 13, 2006 1:09 PM
Subject: Feb 13th Treat status.
To: softthinkers
Hi all,
I have been told by Murr that there are a few changes in the scheme of things for the treat that we had planned.
1.The sponsor is now changed from Baghu and miss.x
to
2. The reason of treat now changed from Introduction of miss.x
to
Welcoming back Baghu to the elite group of singles.
3. Date now changed from 13th February
to
'Yet to be decided'
4. Venue no change i.e. 'Yet to be decided'..
Murugu will send a detailed mail regarding the same shortly.
@Murr : is this all fine?
and my reply is "Baghu, You suck!!!"
Sunday, February 12, 2006
Baghuvin Sabatham...
Last year this day, one of our dear friends, Baghu, made a solemn pledge that he reaffirmed countless times with status messages on Yahoo Chat and that was: he will find his dream girl, before the next Valentine's day (that is tomorrow). I initially was (and still am) skeptical of his cupidial abilities. But if anything, Baghu is definitely unpredictable...so we were waiting. This fellow doesnt stop there, he goes on to declare to every soul he has known in the last four years, that he is giving a treat on Feb 13th to everyone and there he will unveil the object of his sabatham to everyone...he is supposed to introduce his girl to all of us on this day. Notwithstanding the ominous threats of GKB-"Mavanae nee mattum emathinaennu vaiyi...eppadi irunthaalum, treat vangama vidamattaen..", Baghu was (and still is) confident. Grand plans are on to give him the bumps of his lifetime should he fail to deliver, but somewhere in the corner of my mind there is still a ray of hope left for this maverick, adament, self-conceited (but loveable) rascal...lets wait and see. As Ram's status reads...today is definitely the judgement day.
Thursday, February 9, 2006
Salam Hyderabad...
These are some reasons why I love this city:
1. Friends- it has truly been a college away from a college here, we are a gang of about 15 guys, we completely enjoy each other's company-I feel like I have rediscovered each one of them after college...more on each one of them in a seperate post:).
2. Roads- the first thing that strikes you on landing in Hyderabad are the amazing roads that connect the whole city (the unruly traffic running on it is a sad story, but we will ignore that for the moment). They are really wide and well-laid, making driving a great experience.
3. Eat Street-my favorite hang-out, a bunch of eateries just on the banks of Hussain Sagar Lake-a lake and food at one place-what more could your truly ask for?? A stroll along the lake is enough to cure the worst headache and releive the stress-the breeze here competes with that in the beaches in Chennai.
4. Cooking (ofcourse by JP and Bhoopesh)-the initial 6 months were horrible-I had to go scouting for decent food every night and breakfast was a word absent in our dictionary. Then we slowly started-initially just with curd rice, then moved on to many more delicacies (courtesy: Bhoobi ofcourse). Now, on normal days we have a full three-course south indian meal ending at around 1am in the next morning:).
5. Shopping at Hyderabad Central (esp. when there is a sale:) and watching a movie at Prasadz. I have watched movies in gutter-like theaters in Chennai (Devi theater is one example where the low-lifes sell tickets officially in black!!). Here at Prasadz, you can do the booking online and just walk in about an hour earlier, pay for it and collect the tickets. The ambience and facility inside the theaters has to be seen to be beleived!
6. Temples-occasionally we visit a beautiful but crowded temple called Chilkur Balaji temple. I kinda like a small silent Hanuman temple near our house where you dont have to stand in queues and you dont bump into acquaintances who want to talk about everything under the sun inside the temple premises.
7. KBR Park-This park deserves a special mention among the various parks available in the city-they are all amazingly well-maintained. In this park we have a walk-way of about 6km along the circumfrence of the park open to public-the cleanliness of this walkway (inspite of being a free entry) and the greenery surrounding it makes it an ideal destination for a morning/evening walk.
8. Our Friday night activities-these have varied over time starting with watching movies on the VCD player huddled together in the hall, to playing board games like Business, Scotland Yard etc. Now we have a subset of us preparing for a Yoga course which takes away most of their time and so the rest of us are waiting...:)
9. Microsoft parties- being singles (every one of us AFAIK), we are not allowed to stalk any clubs/parties. So we relish the occasional parties that Microsoft hosts to the fullest extent...dancing our hearts out singing until everyone's voice is a mere croack.
10. Restaurants-once you are ok with spending, Hyderabadi hospitality and cuisine opens its doors to you-there are some superb restaurants like Angeeti,Mainland China,Chutneys,Utsav, Ohris-which are sure to burn a deep hole into your pockets, but are worth every bit of it when you do it occasionally. Then there is this small mess called Kakatiya (quite far from our house) where you would get the most satisfying meal for a paltry Rs. 28-their customer service would put every other restaurant I mentioned previously, to dust! It is truly six-sigma!!
11. Cars-Two of our guys Naresh and Arun have bought cars and all of us like to jump-into one of them whenever the occasion arises (or we might create one:) and these two wonderful souls have never ever refused us a ride and even take the pains of choosing the right CD to play during the ride at the right volume to make it a real pleasure ride.
These are the ones that come to my mind now..will add-on to them as I remember..
1. Friends- it has truly been a college away from a college here, we are a gang of about 15 guys, we completely enjoy each other's company-I feel like I have rediscovered each one of them after college...more on each one of them in a seperate post:).
2. Roads- the first thing that strikes you on landing in Hyderabad are the amazing roads that connect the whole city (the unruly traffic running on it is a sad story, but we will ignore that for the moment). They are really wide and well-laid, making driving a great experience.
3. Eat Street-my favorite hang-out, a bunch of eateries just on the banks of Hussain Sagar Lake-a lake and food at one place-what more could your truly ask for?? A stroll along the lake is enough to cure the worst headache and releive the stress-the breeze here competes with that in the beaches in Chennai.
4. Cooking (ofcourse by JP and Bhoopesh)-the initial 6 months were horrible-I had to go scouting for decent food every night and breakfast was a word absent in our dictionary. Then we slowly started-initially just with curd rice, then moved on to many more delicacies (courtesy: Bhoobi ofcourse). Now, on normal days we have a full three-course south indian meal ending at around 1am in the next morning:).
5. Shopping at Hyderabad Central (esp. when there is a sale:) and watching a movie at Prasadz. I have watched movies in gutter-like theaters in Chennai (Devi theater is one example where the low-lifes sell tickets officially in black!!). Here at Prasadz, you can do the booking online and just walk in about an hour earlier, pay for it and collect the tickets. The ambience and facility inside the theaters has to be seen to be beleived!
6. Temples-occasionally we visit a beautiful but crowded temple called Chilkur Balaji temple. I kinda like a small silent Hanuman temple near our house where you dont have to stand in queues and you dont bump into acquaintances who want to talk about everything under the sun inside the temple premises.
7. KBR Park-This park deserves a special mention among the various parks available in the city-they are all amazingly well-maintained. In this park we have a walk-way of about 6km along the circumfrence of the park open to public-the cleanliness of this walkway (inspite of being a free entry) and the greenery surrounding it makes it an ideal destination for a morning/evening walk.
8. Our Friday night activities-these have varied over time starting with watching movies on the VCD player huddled together in the hall, to playing board games like Business, Scotland Yard etc. Now we have a subset of us preparing for a Yoga course which takes away most of their time and so the rest of us are waiting...:)
9. Microsoft parties- being singles (every one of us AFAIK), we are not allowed to stalk any clubs/parties. So we relish the occasional parties that Microsoft hosts to the fullest extent...dancing our hearts out singing until everyone's voice is a mere croack.
10. Restaurants-once you are ok with spending, Hyderabadi hospitality and cuisine opens its doors to you-there are some superb restaurants like Angeeti,Mainland China,Chutneys,Utsav, Ohris-which are sure to burn a deep hole into your pockets, but are worth every bit of it when you do it occasionally. Then there is this small mess called Kakatiya (quite far from our house) where you would get the most satisfying meal for a paltry Rs. 28-their customer service would put every other restaurant I mentioned previously, to dust! It is truly six-sigma!!
11. Cars-Two of our guys Naresh and Arun have bought cars and all of us like to jump-into one of them whenever the occasion arises (or we might create one:) and these two wonderful souls have never ever refused us a ride and even take the pains of choosing the right CD to play during the ride at the right volume to make it a real pleasure ride.
These are the ones that come to my mind now..will add-on to them as I remember..
Wednesday, January 18, 2006
MSN Search Rocks!
First time, ever since the day I saw the super-cool desktop of Windows XP, I have fallen in love all over again with a Microsoft product-MSN desktop search-I tried it twice before (Beta versions) and they sucked big time, slowing down my machine and every search taking longer than a manual search. But the latest version just rocks-I have indexed the whole of my hard disk (80 GB) and my email and still it is able to search stuff in seconds-almost akin to a web-search.
The link for downloading it is here. However remember that patience is a virtue, just hold on till it completes indexing your stuff before expecting results.
The link for downloading it is here. However remember that patience is a virtue, just hold on till it completes indexing your stuff before expecting results.
Monday, January 16, 2006
Bharat Hotel Mahabaleshwar- A bad experience
This piece is written purely with the intention of warning tourists going to Mahabaleshwar about the experiences of our group with one particular hotel called Bharat Hotel at Tapola Road. I have attached some pictures of the hotel as well. You can ignore this post until you plan to visit Mahabaleshwar.
First of all since we were 11 people travelling, these guys had initially promised us 6 rooms each with 2 people and then changed it to 3 rooms with 4 people in each at the same rate which perplexed us from the start. When we finally reached there they showed us one room with 11 cots-to say I was enraged would be euphemistic. Then finally they settled on 3 rooms but refused to alter the rates.
If there is one thing I really really hate about business establishements, it is apathy towards customer experience. When I told them that we are from 4 different software companies and we could give them good publicity among friends if they treated us well, the reply I got was this-"This hotel is there for the last 52 years Sir, we dont need any publicity". I didn't need much time to find out that they have been in existence for 52 years, for pretty much nothing seemed to have been altered in their rooms in those fifty-odd years.
The sole sources of light for the room were two weak bulbs, which looked like relics from stone age.
And the biggest shock was the state of the toilets, I dont want to go into the details here, for the sake of decency, but I would leave it with the observation that I have seen public latrines which are maintained better.
The chairs looked like they had been used as Pan spitting booths at one time and the the wood on the cot was peeling away.
They advertise about presence of "Indoor and Outdoor games"-I am not sure about the outdoor stuff, but the "indoor games" were a TT table and a pool table-one photo would describe their disgusting state more than I can in words.
I was seriously surprised and almost laughed out when the manager casually asked us on being informed of our decision to leave a day early-"Why sir, is anything wrong?"!!!
And for all this BS, we had to shell out Rs 660 per head per day (came to 7260 for 3 rooms one night stay). Luckily on taking a stroll around the city we landed in MTDC hotel, which was amazing. I had never expected such commitment and customer service at a government establishement. The very next day we shifted to this hotel and the cost for the next night stay was 2678 (243 per head) without food ofcourse, but the difference between the two was a whopping 357 per day and any one of us can vouch for the fact that the food at Bharat hotel was not worth more than 150 per day.
First of all since we were 11 people travelling, these guys had initially promised us 6 rooms each with 2 people and then changed it to 3 rooms with 4 people in each at the same rate which perplexed us from the start. When we finally reached there they showed us one room with 11 cots-to say I was enraged would be euphemistic. Then finally they settled on 3 rooms but refused to alter the rates.
If there is one thing I really really hate about business establishements, it is apathy towards customer experience. When I told them that we are from 4 different software companies and we could give them good publicity among friends if they treated us well, the reply I got was this-"This hotel is there for the last 52 years Sir, we dont need any publicity". I didn't need much time to find out that they have been in existence for 52 years, for pretty much nothing seemed to have been altered in their rooms in those fifty-odd years.
The sole sources of light for the room were two weak bulbs, which looked like relics from stone age.
And the biggest shock was the state of the toilets, I dont want to go into the details here, for the sake of decency, but I would leave it with the observation that I have seen public latrines which are maintained better.
The chairs looked like they had been used as Pan spitting booths at one time and the the wood on the cot was peeling away.
They advertise about presence of "Indoor and Outdoor games"-I am not sure about the outdoor stuff, but the "indoor games" were a TT table and a pool table-one photo would describe their disgusting state more than I can in words.
I was seriously surprised and almost laughed out when the manager casually asked us on being informed of our decision to leave a day early-"Why sir, is anything wrong?"!!!
And for all this BS, we had to shell out Rs 660 per head per day (came to 7260 for 3 rooms one night stay). Luckily on taking a stroll around the city we landed in MTDC hotel, which was amazing. I had never expected such commitment and customer service at a government establishement. The very next day we shifted to this hotel and the cost for the next night stay was 2678 (243 per head) without food ofcourse, but the difference between the two was a whopping 357 per day and any one of us can vouch for the fact that the food at Bharat hotel was not worth more than 150 per day.
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