Friday, October 26, 2007

Help Worth To Note

Today while coming to office, a very old lady has requested me to help her in crossing the road and I dutifully did that has have a very different impact all through the day... A sense of strange happiness of helping someone...

Out of all people crossing over her, something must be there to prompt her to ask help from me...

Hmmm... a real sense of happiness...

Likewise few days ago I donated few bucks to another very aged grand-ma who was begging in the road... that day too I had this same sensation of satisfaction...

Also daily I'm seeing an old lady sitting under a tree on the way I used reach the Chepauk railway station attracts my attention..... she must be left alone without any to help her... very dis heartening to see how bad people are treated in their homes and society(which includes me) having no-care attitude towards those most needed people...

I'm sure the day, sorry the time I get the disposable income in my hand will saw a new beginning of service organization which may be handled by me if possible or through someone to serve this most needed people...

Until then I wish her and people like her have at least a peaceful life if not a comfortable life...

Bachelor's Heaven - Triplicane/Chepauk, Chennai

Triplicane aka Thiruvallikeni(Thiru-valli-keni) and Chepauk of Chennai is famously dubbed as bachelor's heaven, all because of its host of mansion spread almost 70% of this area. Mansion in the sense here are not the pose big mansions which are being usually referred in western media, here its just a building with small rooms all up to the third or fourth floor which are typically shared by two, three or four people. This kind of jam-packed buildings which houses more people per sq.km makes this area unusually crowded.

Triplicane aka Thiruvallikeni(Thiru-valli-keni) and Chepauk of Chennai also houses lots of mess to cater to food needs of people who stay here far away from home. These mess are typical hotels made out of small houses which provides home-made taste foods at very reasonable prices. This mess's combining with the mansion's make up the most of this area and very attractive to new comers to Chennai since it gives head start of new den at new land in matter of minutes.

Here are the pictures I took in this area, and this is an even organized to celebrate some anniversary of the temple.

Though the event is nothing to-do with god, it draws big crowd thanks to the home away people who has no work other than roaming after their official work...


A typical narrow lane which is the only way of accessing the most of place in and around Triplicane aka Thiruvallikeni(Thiru-valli-keni) and Chepauk

The event

Not even a single female heads... a true point to prove the bachelor kingdom...

Some crap dancing event...

Man in women performing a dance from famous Chachi-420 movie as dressed like the star Kamal Hasan...

The same fool...

I have seen this short guy in some flims, but couldn't remember exactly... he too was there to perform...

A makeshift stage... which may fall anytime..

An interesting performance... man playing with fire... he did without any safety kit.. and all vulnerable things around him like electric transformer, electric wire right over his head... hmmm who cares....

the same fire guy...

A bunch of cats which has its home in a street which is strangely called as 'Khanna Bagh' street...

Way To PSR Engineering College From Kovilpatti

Those days of traveling 3 hours everyday to and fro from my home to reach my college PSR was all eventful filled with fun and ecstasy, all thanks to the gang of people who travel by our college bus.

This time around I happened to visit my grandma place traveling through the same plains I used to travel to reach the PSR college... All the way from Kovilpatti to Sevalpatti, one can't see anything much other than rocky mountains, small villages which comes once at every 5 or 10 KMs, part agriculture lands and part dry, unused lands.... so its completely different from the current metro life... though Chennai metro life is different it has lots of improve compared to true metros...

The trace route between Kovilpatti and my college is, Kovilpatti -> Ileyaresanathal(Ile-ya-resa-nathal) -> Sippiparai(Sip-pi-parai) -> Naduvapatti (Nadu-va-patti) -> Myparai(My-parai) -> Sangupatti(San-gu-patti) -> Thiruvengadam(Thiru-venga-dam) -> Kundampatti(Kund-am-patti) -> finally my college PSR which is at Sevalpatti(Sev-al-patti).



A near no-man land like the Mars... its between Kovilpatti and Thiruvengadam(Thiru-venga-dam)

A vegetated land...

Its none other than Mr Karthikeyan Ramchel
(its for clueless search crawlers to identify me and my page for this term)

My cousin Raj.. The trusted lieutenant in my war against life...

Typical Software/IT Consultant

Once upon a time there was a shepherd looking after his sheep on the side of a deserted road. Suddenly a brand new Porsche screeches to a halt. The driver, a man dressed in an Armani suit, Cerutti shoes, Ray-Ban Sunglasses, TAG-Heuer wrist-watch, and a Pierre Cardin tie, gets out
and asks the Shepherd: If I can tell you how many sheep you have, will You give me one of them?"

The shepherd looks at the young man, and then looks at the large flock of grazing sheep and replies: "Okay."

The young man parks the car, connects his laptop to the mobile-fax, enters a NASA Webster, scans the Ground using his GPS, opens a database and 60 Excel tables filled with logarithms and pivot tables, then prints out a 150 page report on his high-tech mini-printer.

He turns to the shepherd and says, "You have exactly 1,586 sheep here."
The shepherd cheers," that's correct, you can have your sheep."

The young man makes his pick and puts it in the back of his Porsche.
The shepherd looks at him and asks:

"If I guess your profession, will you return my animal to me?"
The young man answers, "Yes, why not". The shepherd says, "You are an IT consultant ".
How did you know?" asks the young man.

"Very simple," answers the shepherd.
"First, you came here without Being called.
Second, you charged me a fee to tell me something I already
Knew, and third, you don't understand anything about my business...

Now can I have my DOG back?"

Working in IT? Top 10 Things You Should Remember Always

If you are preparing for a career in IT or are new to IT, many of the “dirty little secrets” listed below may surprise you because we don’t usually talk about them out loud. If you are an IT veteran, you’ve probably encountered most of these issues and have a few of your own to add — and please, by all means, take a moment to add them to the discussion. Most of these secrets are aimed at network administrators, IT managers, and desktop support professionals. This list is not aimed at developers and programmers — they have their own set of additional dirty little secrets — but some of these will apply to them as well.

10.) The pay in IT is good compared to many other professions, but since they pay you well, they often think they own you

Although the pay for IT professionals is not as great as it was before the dot-com flameout and the IT backlash in 2001-2002, IT workers still make very good money compared to many other professions (at least the ones that require only an associate’s or bachelor’s degree). And there is every reason to believe that IT pros will continue to be in demand in the coming decades, as technology continues to play a growing role in business and society... More at blogs.techrepublic.com.com

11.) It will be your fault when users make silly errors

Some users will angrily snap at you when they are frustrated. They will yell, “What’s wrong with this thing?” or “This computer is NOT working!” or (my personal favorite), “What did you do to the computers?”... More at blogs.techrepublic.com.com

8.) You will go from goat to hero and back again multiple times within any given day When you miraculously fix something that had been keeping multiple employees from being able to work for the past 10 minutes — and they don’t realize how simple the fix really was — you will become the hero of the moment and everyone’s favorite employee. But they will conveniently forget about your hero anointment a few hours later when they have trouble printing because of a network slowdown... More at blogs.techrepublic.com.com

7.) Certifications won’t always help you become a better technologist, but they can help you land a better job or a pay raise

Headhunters and human resources departments love IT certifications. They make it easy to match up job candidates with job openings. They also make it easy for HR to screen candidates. You’ll hear a lot of veteran IT pros whine about techies who were hired based on certifications but who don’t have the experience to effectively do the job. They are often right... More at blogs.techrepublic.com.com

6.) Your nontechnical co-workers will use you as personal tech support for their home PCs

Your co-workers (in addition to your friends, family, and neighbors) will view you as their personal tech support department for their home PCs and home networks. They will e-mail you, call you, and/or stop by your office to talk about how to deal with the virus that took over their home PC or the wireless router that stopped working after the last power outage and to ask you how to put their photos and videos on the Web so their grandparents in Iowa can view them... More at blogs.techrepublic.com.com

5.) Vendors and consultants will take all the credit when things work well and will blame you when things go wrong

Working with IT consultants is an important part of the job and can be one of the more challenging things to manage. Consultants bring niche expertise to help you deploy specialized systems, and when everything works right, it’s a great partnership. But you have to be careful. When things go wrong, some consultants will try to push the blame off on you by arguing that their solution works great everywhere else so it must be a problem with the local IT infrastructure... More at blogs.techrepublic.com.com

4.) You’ll spend far more time babysitting old technologies than implementing new ones

One of the most attractive things about working in IT is the idea that we’ll get to play with the latest cutting edge technologies. However, that’s not usually the case in most IT jobs... More at blogs.techrepublic.com.com

3.) Veteran IT professionals are often the biggest roadblock to implementing new technologies

A lot of companies could implement more cutting edge stuff than they do. There are plenty of times when upgrading or replacing software or infrastructure can potentially save money and/or increase productivity and profitability. However, it’s often the case that one of the largest roadblocks to migrating to new technologies is not budget constraints or management objections; it’s the veteran techies in the IT department... More at blogs.techrepublic.com.com

2.) Some IT professionals deploy technologies that do more to consolidate their own power than to help the business

Another subtle but blameworthy thing that some IT professionals do is select and implement technologies based on how well those technologies make the business dependent on the IT pros to run them, rather than which ones are truly best for the business itself. For example, IT pros might select a solution that requires specialized skills to maintain instead of a more turnkey solution... More at blogs.techrepublic.com.com

1.) IT pros frequently use jargon to confuse nontechnical business managers and hide the fact that they screwed up

All IT pros — even the very best — screw things up once in a while. This is a profession where a lot is at stake and the systems that are being managed are complex and often difficult to integrate. However, not all IT pros are good at admitting when they make a mistake. Many of them take advantage of the fact that business managers (and even some high-level technical managers) don’t have a good understanding of technology, and so the techies will use jargon to confuse them (and cover up the truth) when explaining why a problem or an outage occurred. For example, to tell a business manager why a financial application went down for three hours, the techie might say, “We had a blue screen of death on the SQL Server that runs that app. Damn Microsoft!” What the techie would fail to mention was that the BSOD was caused by a driver update he applied to the server without first testing it on a staging machine.


Complete Story at http://blogs.techrepublic.com.com/hiner/?p=546

Thursday, October 25, 2007

A Rare Get Together Between Microsoft and An Open Source Family Member - PHP

I'm very much surprised to read a news about the co-operation between Microsoft and Open Source family member. And it got more attention since the Open Source involved is my PHP.

The main subject is "Microsoft is going to support the PHP in one or other way" interesting 'na! so continue read this...


The race between the Windows and Linux operating systems is multifaceted, and one aspect revolves around the PHP scripting language. But PHP is merely an item from an infrastructure of software, a solution stack designed to be the foundation of websites and servers. Essentially, Microsoft has recently upped the stakes in the Windows – Linux face-off by ensuring closer PHP integration with its own operating system in the much larger confrontation between LAMP and WISP. LAMP of course stands for Linux, Apache, MySQL and PHP. But now Microsoft comes with its own alternatives for an operating system, a web server, a database management system, offering Windows, IIS
and SQL. Still, one thing that Microsoft cannot do without is PHP, and this is why the Redmond company is embracing the scripting language.

"Why is WISP the new LAMP? Well, up to now, PHP developers, although they will be developing on top of Windows, the platform of choice for running their web servers etc, was Linux and Apache, with a MySQL back end. Why? Well, they were designed and written to work effectively together. PHP could be handled by IIS, using CGI, however it didn't give the level of performance that running PHP on a Linux/Apache platform gave, hence it became the platform of choice. With the announcement of FastCGI however, that's changing. This FastCGI extension is built into Server 2008, but you can download it for free, for IIS 5.1 and 6. Just a quick note - IIS has had 0 critical updates," explained Matt McSpirit, Microsoft Partner Technology Specialist.

You have of course already been able to read about the work Microsoft and Zend have poured into enhancing PHP performance on Windows, and about the availability of Go Live FastCGI Extension for IIS6.0 and IIS5.1. But now, McSpirit offers the true perspective of where Microsoft is going with the integration of FastCGI into Windows Server 2008. "So, you've now got a strong platform for development and actually running your web applications in Windows Server 2008 and IIS 7.0, along with a great database offering, all of which connect with PHP in a way that enables efficient, streamlined and powerful performance - something that was only available to PHP developers running on LAMP in the past", McSpirit added.

Source: Softpedia.com

An Anti Firefox Evangelist Destined To Be Doomed

In lieu of the increasing usage of Firefox browser and in some European countries Firefox has beaten IE in many counts, Firefox going to be in-determinable force in near future. But few people still don't realize the potential of Firefox. They think their voice heavily biased for one or other reason will take Firefox out of Internet users. Hmmm... no fool who realized the power would goto IE again. A column writer has simply blocked the Firefox users just because they use FF which in-turn has an add-on called (controversial according to them) AdBlock Plus.

Adblock plus is one the most popular add-on for Firefox which gives users un-obstructive browsing experience by blocking the intrusive ads(sadly most ads fall in this line and are needed to be removed)...

Here is the story given by a columnist Grant Buckler on ITBusiness.com,

Hey, you there, reading this column. Yeah, punk, I mean you.

Have you looked at every advertisement in this paper?

You haven't? You thief! How dare you steal my work! This publication exists to provide quality content in exchange for displaying ads. Reading our content without looking at the advertising, therefore, is no less than stealing.

Firefox users who go to http://jacklewis.net/weblog/ are redirected to http://whyfirefoxisblocked.com/index1.php, which says the Adblock Plus[http://adblockplus.org/en/] extension undercuts Web sites dependent on advertising revenue.

“Accessing the content while blocking the ads therefore would be no less than stealing,” wrote Danny Carlton, a Web site designer and author, who runs both sites. JackLewis.net is his personal blog site. “Millions of hard working people are being robbed of their time and effort by this type of software,” he added in a posting on the Why Firefox is Blocked Web site.

And if you've been fast-forwarding TV commercials, you're just as guilty. Heck, if you've been getting a beer during commercials, it's no different. You're still a crook. I'll bet you sometimes even toss the flyers that come with your newspaper into the recycling bin without looking at them.

Oh, and you sent your Aunt Edith a postcard last week, yet you didn't read the junk mail you found in your mailbox? Don't you realize that without its revenues from delivering that junk mail, Canada Post couldn't possibly deliver your postcard for only 51 cents?

Okay, relax. I'm not serious. Yes, the publisher of CDN makes its money from the advertising, but that does not obligate you to look at the ads. The model works because enough readers do look at enough ads that advertisers get their money's worth. The same is true of television.

And the same is true of the web. Somebody needs to explain that to Danny Carlton.

Carlton is a blogger. You can't read his blog using the Firefox web browser. If you try, you get redirected to a page titled “Why Firefox is Blocked,” which explains that because a popular Firefox add-on called Ad Block Plus makes it possible to block online advertising, Carlton has blocked Firefox access to his site to prevent what he calls theft.

“Numerous websites exist in order to provide quality content in exchange for displaying ads,” the page says. “Accessing the content while blocking the ads, therefore would be no less than stealing.”

Let's see if I understand this. You make an assortment of content publicly accessible. I look at the part of it that interests me, and ignore the part that doesn't. That makes me a thief - in spite of the fact that people have been ignoring advertising for as long as it has existed.

Yes, if nobody looks at ads, ad-supported websites won't be viable. Judging from the success of Google - a company that derives 99 per cent of its revenue from online advertising - this isn't a clear and present danger.

And if the online advertising business is really worried about ad-blocking, it should look in the mirror. When an online ad jumps out of its place and blocks my view of what I'm reading, or when the casual movement of my cursor across an ad causes my computer to start blaring noise at me, I start thinking ad-blocking software might be a good idea.

And thanks to Danny Carlton, I've now got some. I hadn't really heard about AdBlock Plus before, but when I read about his tirade, I had to check it out. It works quite nicely, and you can find it at www.adblock.com.

[funny quote of this author about Danny Carlton]
Oh by the way, I also pointed Internet Explorer at Carlton's blog to see what other opinions he has. Among the posts there: rants against “socialized medicine,” the American Civil Liberties Union and the theory of evolution. Now I'm looking for software to block the content and leave the ads.

New Thoery For OOP Concept Encapsulation? A Beetle Cocaine Container

Almost all in IT must be knowing one of the Object Oriented Programming concept Encapsulation. There are different examples to explain it better and here is one new way of explaining it. After reading this you should not think those smugglers has understood the concept better than the programmers...

Here is that news,



Dutch customs officers found 100 dead beetles stuffed with cocaine while examining a parcel from Peru, Dutch authorities said Thursday.

The little drug couriers' bodies had been slit open and filled with a total of 300 grams of cocaine, with an estimated street-value of 8,000 euros ($11,270).

"This is a very striking method of smuggling. We have never seen anything like this before," said government spokesman Kees Nanninga.

Officers decided to open the parcel after scanning it and seeing what appeared to be insects inside.

Source: Reuters.com

Australian Media Mockery About Team India

If not everybody at least the die hard cricket fans would have heard about the mid-air flight snag when Team India was moving to play Mumbai match after losing the series to Australia. This news is widely covered by all Indian news media since in the same flight both Indian and Australian players were flying and lots depends on them. But not all cricket fans might be knowing how the Australian media has covered this whole incident(otherwise could have become accident).... they were too critical of Indian Team and Indian Media following the hype around the alleged racism rows involving Aussie player Symonds...

They have tons of sarcastic comments about Indian Team and Media...

Go on and read this news story,


The Australian cricket team's headline-making tour of India took a dramatic turn on Monday with its aircraft having to undertake an emergency landing in Nagpur.

The Jet Airways flight to Mumbai had to be turned around after birds, believed to be eagles, damaged the right engine during take-off from Nagpur on Monday morning.

The engine groaned audibly on take-off before the pilots announced about 15 minutes into the flight they were returning to the Baba-sahib Ambedkar International Airport because of the damage.

There was a clap or two in relief at touching down in Nagpur but most of the players seemed more frustrated at the disruption to their schedule than too concerned over the health of the aircraft.

However Brad Hogg looked a tad nervous about the whole affair after the team sat on the tarmac for more than an hour while attempts were made to repair the engine.

Nathan Bracken said team physiotherapist Alex Kountouris, a nervous flyer, was a little shaken.

"As soon as it landed he said he was not flying again, he said he was catching the train to Mumbai," said Bracken.

"We felt pretty safe as we were flying with the Indian side and they are living gods over here," he said.

"And the pilot is probably going to be a legend for landing the plane and saving the Indian team.

"But it shows you how quickly something can go from a standard flight to extreme circumstances."

Several ground staff spent more than a quarter of an hour just trying to open a metal box to repair the engine before players from both the Australian and India teams and the rest of the passengers were told to exit.

All players were taken to a hotel to wait for another flight due to leave around 1:30pm local time (1800 AEST).

Television stations in India jumped on the story with graphics of an eagle bouncing off a plane.

The engine problem was just the latest incident in an action-packed series which has seen Andrew Symonds racially abused by fans and members of both sides involved in some fiery exchanges.

The unfortunate birds achieved something the Indian cricketers had failed to do - slow the Australians.

The World Cup holders have marched triumphantly through their one-day series, only dropping one match in the opening six encounters.

They are due to finish off the series at Mumbai's Wankhede Stadium on Wednesday before a one-off Twenty20 match on Saturday against the newly-crowned world champions in the game's newest form.

Source: 9MSN.com

Survival of the Fittest

After seeing the spontaneous increase in real estate prices, many would be thinking of ways to accumulate wealth in more speedier way than the proportionate of the real estate price increase...

But here a group of people used a novel way to avoid paying any rent neither own the property but managed to stay in a city's main business area for free.. wondering how it is possible.. check out this news bit,

"The leader of an artists' cooperative has been sentenced to probation for setting up a secret apartment inside a shopping mall's parking garage as part of a project on mall life.

Michael Townsend, 36, said he and seven other artists built the 750-square-foot apartment beginning in 2003 and lived there for up to three weeks at a time.

The artists built a cinderblock wall and nondescript utility door to keep the loft hidden from the outside world.

But inside, the apartment was fully furnished, down to a hutch filled with china and a Sony Playstation 2 -- although a burglar broke in and stole the Playstation last spring, Townsend said.

There was no running water -- instead they used the mall bathrooms.

On his Web site, Townsend said he was inspired by a Christmastime ad for the mall which featured a "an enthusiastic female voice talking about how great it would be if you (we) could live at the mall."

He built the dwelling "out of a compassion to understand the mall more and life as a shopper."

Townsend said plans to make the apartment "super-sweet" with laminated wood flooring and other perks fell apart last week after he and a visiting artist from Hong Kong walked into the room and were greeted by three security guards. He pleaded no contest to a trespassing charge.

Providence Place Mall spokesman Dante Bellini Jr. described the living space as little more than "an area with stuff in it."

But Providence Police Maj. Stephen Campbell said he and other detectives were so intrigued they visited the apartment to see for themselves.
"I was surprised at what he was able to accomplish," Campbell said. "But what he did was clearly criminal. The mall is private property."

Source: CNN.com

Saturday, October 06, 2007

Judge At 50 Going Back To School

Its everyone dream of getting back the experience of being in school/college after leaving that and mostly this wish never get fulfilled. But here there is one person even after getting the opportunity to go back to school is not very happy as usually one would be... Why so?? You will find out that after reading this news clip...


"New Delhi's High Court justices, annoyed with lower court judges who issue problematic rulings, have decided to send one of them back to law school.

In an order issued late Friday, Judge R. K. Tiwari was told to return for a three-month refresher course after issuing an arrest warrant in defiance of a previous High Court ruling.

"Since Tiwari does not have even elementary knowledge of the criminal law and procedure it would be appropriate that he undergoes a refresher course at Delhi Judicial Academy," Justice V. B. Gupta wrote.

The move comes after a series of high-profile cases that have been overturned by the High Court or the national Supreme Court, citing lack of legal understanding by lower court judges.

Tiwari had ordered police to detain a landlord in a case where his tenant had failed to pay the power company, despite a previous High Court ruling that the landlord could not be held responsible. Tiwari could not immediately be reached for comment.

Gupta ordered that the head of the law school personally submit a report on Tiwari's progress after three months. And, to ensure that others in lower courts got the message, Gupta ordered copies of his order sent to all New Delhi judges."


Source: Associated Press

Thursday, October 04, 2007

My Grandma/Mom Home @ Virudhunagar

It was like a trip down the memory lane. Yes after long years I visited my Grandma/Mom's village Rosalpatti at Virudhunagar. I think Rosalpatti would soon become part of the bigger city Virudhunagar after the rapid industrialization around the area and would no more able hold the status of village. This is good for the people around the area but bad for people like me which is very painful to see the memories associated with the place fading away very quickly.

In places of mud houses and vegetation lands, now stands the concrete structures which makes some kind of goods for the consumption of people who resides somewhere far out of the place at the cost of the individuality of a place which was terrible according to me.

Now after many years, visiting my native place has left me with another set of memories which I will treasure for many years to come. In absence of physical presence of my grandma and mom in this world, visiting a place where they lived their major part of life is always a never miss event for me. For me next to my mom and dad, the person who I love most is my mom's grandma. I remember those holidays whether its quarterly or half yearly or year end holiday I used to visit my grandma the next day of the last exam and stays there for whole holiday session and only my mom and dad knows how tough its to get me back to my school. To my support is my grandma who usually extends my stay by recommending leave for few more days for me.

It was fun staying in my grandma/mom home with those couple of sheeps, three cows, one calf, nearly 15 chickens/hens, couple of cats(one owned by me and another by my sister but both of use don't take care of it. my grandma looked after them and now one of the cat is missing. I donno whose one is missing as we couldn't identify the now grown up cats which is nothing short of a forest cat size), a dog, lots of land(includes the well irrigated land which is called as 'thottam' by locals and dry black soil land which is based on the rain) and a tractor.

I used to get up by the smell of famous "narasus" coffee made up with fresh milk from our cows and hearing the sweet early morning sounds of birds which stays in the huge banyan tree right next to our home. Hmmm never going to get that again.

Here are the pictures I took from my recent trip,

Picture of Virudhunagar old bus stand... Virudhunagar is birth place of very famous Indian leader Kamarajar former CM of Tamilnadu and key in getting the Indira Gandhi to Indian Prime Minister post amidst the 70's political crisis and got the name as "King maker". I'm proud to be linked to this place.

Another picture of the Virudhunagar bus terminus...

Entrance to my Grandma/Mom home... this is currently occupied by my grandma's sister who is also my one of my most favorite...

A now dilapidated home which was once used as connection between two homes...

A now fractured kitchen... here only my grandma used to make me sweet 'paniyaram'( a sweet hot flour cake roasted in oil) whenever I come here in holidays...

My another grandma(my grandma's sister).... In the shelf she is looking, you can find lots of palm leaves which has some inscriptions and she never allowed me touch that... reason she says is whoever holds that other than their owner never lived a successful life... hmmm what a nice way of safeguarding..

Front side of the my grandma home... its now renovated...

The huge banyan tree I was referring previously.. this was planted by my ancestors...

A scene in front of the old home where my another grandma lives now...

A look at the inside structure of the old home...

The banyan tree, which is home to hundreds of birds... I remember climbing up the tree to catch the parrots in which i was unsuccessful at all my attempts..

A pond behind the tree... seems needs this big water storage for its growth...

A front side of now renovated grandma home...

A small garden in making....

A beautiful home named after my grandma 'Venkata-ramanajum-ammal'...

This is a picture of our well irrigated land which is now left uncared...

A look at that village's most active junction ;)

A hand pump... We take water from this place whenever water become very scarce.. mostly during summer times...

A way which leads to the agri land which we owned until some year before... the place has completely changed now... no trace of any agri activities... I used to pick brinjal, tomato and bring to this place to load into the tractor to get those to market place called as "sandhai" by locals...

A locals game...

My aunts home in the same village in another side...

A land left without any care which once was busy with agri...

My granddad's home... surprised at why my grandma and granddad's home are different??? it is indeed different.. my grandad was married to two... my grandma and another one is none other than my grandma's another sister(not the one who is in one of the picture)... its typical custom they used to follow.. and weird reason I got from my grandma when I asked her is "to save the wealth from dividing to many hands".. but it makes sense since India is overwhelmed with dowry system and many daughters means dividing lands to many son-in-laws...

Granddad's home... now its left for rent for a small family...

Grandad home's dilapidated front side...

My uncle is now president of that "panchayat"... he is in DMK... these r people came up to demand putting up a drinking water tab in their area...

A completely modified home.... never going to get the feelings of the old home...

Thank god... at least this pond and banyan tree stands till today to remember those golden days of my life...

Me @ Asia Hockey Cup

This was the first major sporting event I ever get to watch directly. Yes I got chance to see one the matches in the Asia Hockey Cup tournament. It was a completely action packed game. Excited at seeing the international players directly and very close. I could feel the pressure players will have on field and the aggression they show in fields. It was totally a different experience than watching an event by TV.

The game was happening in Mayor Radhakrishnan stadium which is located near to Egmore railway station in mid of Chennai.

I went to watch this game with my school time friend Subramania Siva and his friend Saravanan.

Match was between Malaysia and Japan. Though the country playing is Malaysia, there are many Indian origin players, there was I think almost four Indian origin players and among them are two Tamilian players. So it was more or less like Indian team against Japan. Man of the match was won by Indian origin Tamilian player who was goal keeper for the Malaysian team. So needless to say the applause he got.

Here are the few pictures of the players in action ,






Chennai Metro Travelogue

Its always fun traveling in a public transport system of a metro city like Chennai and that too in train(Chennai MRTS) means lots are in offer for one every day.

Presently I stay in Chepauk and my office is at Taramani, next to TIDEL park. To reach my office I have couple of options, either by Bus through the Beach road or by the Chennai Metro which is officially called as MRTS(Metro Rapid Transport System). Anyone with stable mind would never think of traveling by Bus in Chennai at peak hours(8AM-10AM & 5PM-8PM). So for me the best way is to reach the office by train. The train takes me up to the front gate of my office. Thiruvanmiyur station where I have to get down is at the doorstep of my office, to be exactly its just right opposite on other side of my office entrance.

I get into the train at Chepauk which is located just opposite to Asia's longest beach Marina. So its completely action filled journey every morning I make. Lots of faces, lots of conversations, lots of stories and lot more...

MRTS runs the service completely over the raised structure which is famously dubbed as "Parakum Rail" or in english "Flying Train" among locals here. One interesting fact is that Chennai got this kind of service well before the Delhi Metro. But few things that made the distinction between two are the lack of automated system in Chennai MRTS. Almost all are manually handled and poor in keeping the stations neat.

Here are the few pictures I took,

A way which leads up to Chepauk MRTS railway station... this road is actually the connecting road for Bharathi Salai and Wallaja Salai...

Chepauk MRTS Railway Station

Chepauk MRTS Railway Station

A train just arriving...

Train in the direction I have to travel... but this train don't go up to my station...

Station master with the green and red flags...

A train arriving on the another platform....

A river crossing on the way to my station...

A view of residential area from the train...

Finally reached my destination.... This where I have to get down and cross over the road to reach my office...

A view of the station from my office corridor...

Another view of station from another corner of my office corridor...

A view of my office(TIDEL Park) from train...

A view of the IT Expressway Corridor from the foot over bridge which connects my office and the station...