Monthly Archive for March, 2006

Man in Black

Published on March 31, 2006 in General stuff. 3 Comments

Man in Black

Originally uploaded by k2cool.

I love the colour black so much that I use a lot of black Tees and Jeans. This one photo was taken with a Canon Digital SLR is one of my favorites. Main reason is that it has come out very well.
I suppose it was taken by my bro or might be my bro-in-law which I don’t quite remember now. The location is my front side portico of my home. The lighting and the colours have come out very well in this photo. When I showed it to one of my friends, her first reaction was that it was too gaudy. Is it so??? Anyway, I like black and so this photo.

Family song does it all

Published on March 31, 2006 in Just for Jolly. 0 Comments

Fanatic followers of tamil cinema should be well known about the concept of famil song.what is a family song? Is it something which boasts about the family’s achievements? Nah! It is something unique.

Following are some situations where it is used.

Situation 1:

When the heroine is kidnapped by villain’s gang and kept captive in a place that cannot be traced out even by the police. Hero sings the family song and Bingo! heroine sings it back or throws something to show where she is.

Example:- The song “Sriramanin Srideviye” from the movie Priya starring Rajnikanth and Sridevi.

Situation 2:

This one is too much!

A little girl, who happens to be a millionaire, falls into eyes of the villain and co. They try to abduct all the property by bringing a look alike of the girl. The truth unfolds only with the family song.

Example:- The song “Paapa Padum Paatu” from the movie Durga. To note, the family song is shared between a dog, baby Shamli and a monkey.

There are endless situations to these and at the end of it all, laughter remains and shows the idiosyncracies of our own tamil directors.

Remember to remember a person’s name

Published on March 30, 2006 in provoking Perceptions. 0 Comments

Gosh! How frustrating would it be when someone addresses you by a name that is not yours? It pains even mush when people who have been introduced to you forget your name after the first meeting.

I have read somewhere that remembering a person’s name is the first step in developing a healthy relationship. What happens is people take the introductions lightly and tend to forget the other person’s name. I hate a people who forget my name after the first acquaintance. At the same time, I make sure that I don’t forget the names soon.

“Remember to remember a person’s name”

Traveller’s Gear

Published on March 26, 2006 in General stuff. 2 Comments

It’s been a long time since I posted here. Hmmm, May be I am too busy with work and other routines or Am I not managing my time properly? Need to think about it later.Anyway, let me delve into today’s post.

Travelling is a great thing to do. I would not say it is my passion and all. I have not travelled much all my life. The longest distance I have travelled is from Chennai to Gujarat. It was just a 5 day trip. Out of which, four days were on train.

One of my favorite shows on televison is “Globe Trekker” which is aired regularly on Discovery’s Travel and Living channel. In this program,the presenter travels different countries and show us the culture and living. They use minimum travel gear and show all cheap and best places to stay and eat. Good concept though.I never miss the ones which are presented by Megan McCormick, Ian Wright and Justin Shapiro. The presentation from these people just nails you down on the chair for an hour. They make you feel as if you are on the country with their lively presentation. Gosh! Megan and Ian steal the show. Megan with her looks and bubbly presentation and Ian with his down to earth simplicity. This one show really inspired me. I am planning to travel a lot of countries from now on.

So, as a beginner, I need to work out on some basic gears for a good traveller. I was discussing with Balaji and we have come up with a list.Here it goes…

A very strong Backpack
10 T-shirts,4 Bermudas and a Jean too
A torch
A pair of trainers and 6 pairs of socks
A very good Digital Camera. A Digital SLR will be too good to resist
A Swiss-Army knife
Traveller’s cheque of $1000 minimum
International Plastic card

I suppose these are the essentials for a good traveller. If you have any to add to this list, you are welcome. I am gonna buy all these within a year’s time and start travelling.

Funny Indian Dancers

Published on March 19, 2006 in Just for Jolly. 1 Comment

This is my brother’s college buddies rocking!

Devuda, Devuda!

Frustrating subscriber unavailable messages

Published on March 17, 2006 in provoking Perceptions. 9 Comments

I commute to office by train. It takes around 2 hours to reach Tambaram (where my Office is) from Ambattur (where I reside). I usually kill the time with a book or listening to my Portable mp3 player.

One night, when I was returning from office, I was listening to a guy near me. He was very much disgusted with his mobile phone service provider. He was trying to reach someone for a very long time but he could not. He was frustrated to hear the automated voice response from the service provider end. He wanted to share his anger with someone and there I was. It seems that he has been trying to reach one of his clients for more than an hour and he got the same Voice response from the other end. He was speaking in Tamil and told me that he was frustrated even more to hear the message in English. I offered my help and tried reaching the number from my mobile. To my surprise, I found that the number he was trying to reach was temporarily out of service. Poor guy he is, I explained this to him. He responded stating in Tamil, �Sir! I thought the lady was screaming all along that the network was busy�. Poor guy he is!

This made me to think about the cellular providers who use the IVR system to frustrate the customers.

The guy does not understand English. After all, he wants to make some calls and run his business. Is there any option for him to choose his preferred language? If there is one, is he educated about it?

If this is what customer service levels are, how will an illiterate Indian survive in the world of IVR which blurt out only in English?

Insane management!

The Magic of Cntrl+Enter key in Browsers

Published on March 14, 2006 in General stuff. 3 Comments

Shortcut keys really make life easier when working with Windows environment. One of my favourites is the cntrl+enter key combination which adds http:// .com to the word when typed in browser. Last week, at my office PC, one of my friends complained that cntrl+enter does not work in IE anymore. When asked whether he worked around to find what happened, his answer was to reinstall IE.

Gosh! I will never try reinstalling IE. I have had miserable experiences in that. Googled for some work around and Bingo! there was one. the option use in-line Autocomplete for web addresses was unchecked.

After checking the same, it worked fine. It’s such a pain to use IE without short-cut keys. After all, working in IE in itself is a pain.

P.S.:-
the moral of the story is, Don’t ask people,for solutions, who uninstall and reinstall everything if there is a problem. If possible try using a good browser other than IE.

Life is like .

Published on March 11, 2006 in Just for Jolly. 3 Comments

It has been a week since I posted here. I was quite busy at work that I had to refrain from posting for a while. Today it is my week off and I am going to post the ones which have been running in my mind for more than a week.

Life is like *.*

One night last week, around mid night, I got a sms from my friend. expecting a usual goodnight message, I was amazed� to see a good message after a long time. the sms goes like this…..

“Life is like having a cup of tea. you sit by the window, lift the cup and take a careless sip…. only to find that somebody forgot to drop a sugar cube in it. too lazy to go for it, you somehow stuggle through that sugarless cup… till you discover undissolved sugar crystals sitting comfortably at the bottom…..

That’s how life is. we do not make an effort to value what is with and around us.So, look around may be the sweetness you are looking for is closer than what you think.”

Hmmm! Nice message to end the day and start a good night. Then I realized that it’s bwecoimg a fashionable statement to say these. People have their own theories of life and they put it starting “Life is like *.*……..”. There are some people whose main time job is to compose these phrases and preach them happily!

I made a google search with the keywords life is like a fetched another good one. it goes this way,

“Life is like a box of chocolates. you never know what you are gonna get”.

Unless these are used too much till they are cliched, I will be getting such kind of text messages to start or end the day!

P.S.:- If you have your own “life is like a *.*”, leave it in this page.