Thursday, August 11, 2011

I wonder why ??????????????????

It is a little disheartening to wakeup everyday morning into such level of negatives. I am hearing negativity / judgments / sadness / War everywhere. This is not the first time I am talking about the negatives we are having around us. Each day morning the daily news paper opens with another round of sex scandals involving minors or another set of ministers doing a multi billion scandal. This is not just in India but worldwide. Then again several stories, one furnished with details on how a friend was beheaded and packed into plastic bags and buried, or how much more black money in banks or how corrupt is our current judiciary. Yes, its human nature to get attracted to such sticky news but I hardly find a news / a story or a discussion which leaves a smile of satisfaction to anyone’s face. Only question I have is if such real positive incidents and stories doesn’t happen at our times or the media is not interested in broadcasting / publishing any of those because they are only worried about their TRP and number of readers ???

Friday, July 29, 2011

Salt N Pepper - Movie review - My tag - Don't miss it!!!



The write up ahead is total spoiler if you haven’t watched the movie. Please come back here after you gave it a try ( if you have even remote plans to watch the malayalam movie – Salt nd Pepper.

When exactly we cherish our moments on anything ? its when one can connect it to one or the other part of you. Many folks who love fantasy movies are people who have a fantastic imagination. A written red romantic movie is loved by anyone who has love in their life or romance even in their heart. A cook loves to watch and tries out cookery and cookery shows. A guy who has / who wants some awesome friends will cherish the movie DCH because the primary reason is that you just relive your dreams by putting different faces to different stories you hear. I had that feeling on many occasion and those remains my favorites. The things here I am talking about is timeless classics because you are able to connect to them at any point in your life. The same goes in live with why an individual in puberty loves romantic flicks and a person on mid 55 enjoys a after retirement documentary or a fresh pair of parents loves a family movie involving kids and babies. It is just the ability of the creator of art to make that connection with you. If one is really talented, the circle of people he touches increases and one with very few connectors would just pass on as a average attempt.

I started to write this to tell about the movie Salt n pepper. I love to cook and I’m mostly a loner. I was able to connect to this movie really well – minus the romance. It never happened!The movie trailers itself made me feel that this is something I should not miss this one.I went for the movie on second day show and the long queue proved me rite – this is going to be a good one.

One mistake – I went there with a half filled stomach – the title song and visuals left me really hungry·
The radio – from the old car was a charming scene – a feel shifter every time it kicks in.·
The whole movie is out of Trivandrum – any one from ‘ Thirondoram would agree with me’ – but no slangs used! [Thirondoram -Trivandrum in proper Trivandrum Malayalam slang]·

Baburaj’s introduction sets his character – ‘Randu Radhas’ [ Two Radhas – a beauty soap usually used by girls]·

Asif ali proved to be a very good actor – as a proper ’vayi nokki’ – a cute one for girls – I guess [ Mouth looker – a flirt]·

The girl proved to be an eye candy - nice song visuals with a smooch sprinkled in!·

The song and drunken dance @ shanghumugham beach is as close to as you can have from reality and the write up in next scene also fits in·

The opening scene after that – a proper hang over morning·

The title song – it’s the best as it sounds from an old movie and the lyrics and the music is catchy.·

The dialogue – ‘ koothara rum alle , ennighenhum venda – is a typical 20 -25ish answer – courtesy – my drunkard friends [ that’s cheap rum, I don’t need it]·

The ‘Kutti’ dosa left me with memories of Kutti dosa made my mom and Grandmma long time back·

The scene where the cook ( Baburaj) elopes with the hero – Lal – nicely done·

The romance is happening through conversation and not with a lavish song in Switzerland – as it would happen ( I hope, no experience yet : ) )·

The climax is done with a wonderful comedy and a new way to unravel the story·

The scene where Lal asks – if salt was added after boiling the curry or not – Some conversation I had with my fellow roomies in US, any one who loves cooking know what I meant!·

The single fight sequence – Lal delivers that kick on the guys chest – awesome and icing from Babu raj – Enthada panni [ Whats up PIG] I left the cinema hall with a broad smile all over my face – the movie is all about cooking, food, romance, loneliness, inferiority complex and a lot of incidents that every one runs into in everyday life – with a tint of humor. This is the second movie after Pranjiyettan which left me feeling, I should be watching this movie again !



- Pic courtesy -kerals.com

Friday, July 15, 2011

Process initiated - RMS on Wheels -1

Ok Folks, I am looking for wheels in Trivandrum and my journey began with SX4. I was quiet impressed with the commercials which says folks will keep everything waiting if you are driving an SX4. I was looking for a diesel on the high end. For the test drive, I managed to get 5 folks inside the car just to get the worst case scenario for my drive in city. The car has got awesome ground clearance and great leg space both to front and rear passengers. The person sitting on rear seat on the middle will not enjoy the ride if it’s a long ride as the removable hand rest is a pain on your back. Second thing I noticed was that the car does not have many features that cars of the same segment will provide like a cup holder( I don’t think I will drink while I drive in India, but still!), sun glass holder, tinted rear view mirrors and electronic adjustable seats . The dash finish also did not impress me as the plastic finish / wood like finish looked cheap. One would definitely require an assisted camera to have an idea of what’s in the rear, forget about looking back and parking in a new place. Only the rear view mirror inside the car is tinted and the side mirrors are just normal glass. Also there is no auto close feature available on two out side rear view mirrors. The car has only one trip meter. The most disappointing fact was that with 5 folks in the car on 3rd gear, the car did not perform as I would like it to have. It might be because I had been using an old diesel Xeana for a while and the engine varies from 1.6 to 1.2 in case of two cars. But still a 10 year old engine giving a better response was something I didn’t expect. Also the car has engine noise on slow speeds from 30 to 50 KMPH but didn’t go beyond 80 or so to see how it sounds. But on slow speeds, even a month old car has noise. All in all, after looking at the limited feature list and a normal performance and looking at the price tag, I would rate it a 6.5 out of 10.

I am yet to drive any other car, I have Toyota Altiz and Verna Fluidic in my list for this Saturday. Hope one of it to do better to be continued

Trip de Switzerland !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!


I am on marathon call for next 5 days and I think this would a good time to do some updates to my out dated blog :)
Mind you, I am updating this when the call get stalled due to ‘Technical issue’ :)

Now, one lady is looking for the latest version of docs she has to walk through in the meeting – I think folks are well prepared for this discussion – ok no something I will be interested to update in my blog.
So were was I ? I was here last time when I set my foot back to my home land and I was saying I like – Life @ TVM.

I had been busy with so many thing happening around me – work wise and personal wise. Three of my good friends got hitched in one or other way in last three months – one still left for the hunt for the better half just like me. Got into a umpteen project which had been written un doable and I took it up as it had the silver line of working from my home town written all over it. I took up the challenge and had been in office 9 to 9 every day including Saturdays …all I got was kind of 12 Sundays in 3 months but I think it was worth the effort. Finally signed off the stuff and got a – more than average sign off for the assignment. Enjoyed a lot with a very fresh and committed team. One thing I learned here was the folks in my team – most of them in the age group 23 to 25 was much more matured than what I was doing at the same age. I think the generation gap is now shrinking to a gap of 4 years. These folks are already having plans of when to quit, when to get hitched and what they want to go after – after being in hardly one or two years in the industry these folks are pretty good at what they are doing and what they want to do! I hardly knew where I was headed when I had two years of experience under my belt. Leaving the work part, I was lucky enough to travel to one of the most expensive and most beautiful places on the world – Switzerland!!! More of a business trip but had fun @ Switzerland

Travel de Switzerland :











Stayed for 14 days, had only three days to spare as the business meeting were tightly scheduled. I had my flight Via Dubai to Switzerland. I had a three hour stop over in Dubai which I happily slept , the flight was good other than the vegetarian meals I got. I never ordered this and later I got to know that the meals was misplaced for me and the one who ordered was my friend who was two rows ahead of me, and this left him to be happy with some fruits for an 8 hour flight. The Zurich airport was smaller than I had in my mind for being such a tourist location and same with the Zurich city. We had been put up in a business suite in a hotel in Zurich city.

About the city Zurich: it is not as neat as I expected, there was lot of construction going on which might be one reason for the dust. The streets were mostly empty on week days by 7 or 8 pm and night life also was dull. One more thing I learned was Swedish German is a different language from German and some one who speaks German cannot talk Swedish German. Also every one doesn’t understand English :) . So if you are headed to Switzerland, get used with words like ‘ Danke’, Mercy and Good Morningk – with the German accent. The total population of the country is well under the total population of my state ‘ Kerala’. People are good but not ‘ smiley’ people like folks from US. They are more of folks from France / UK where they don’t smile until there is a reason. Public smoking is not an issue here and every other guy / women smoke here- may be the climate is the excuse these smokers cling on to! Cycle is one of the most common transportation used here and we have folks cycling to our customer location on suits. The trams here are too good and it looks to be the affordable transportation to everywhere. We had our chuck cut out for cabs but even with a fat allowance, money was not enough to pay cab charges . For any one who is still tied to Indian food, there are lot of Indian and Srilankan restaurants in Zurich. I was amazed to find out that there was a restaurant named – Kerala restaurant and one conversation when we were about to leave convinced me that it’s a restaurant owned by a malayale

Owner : (phone) : Hello
From the other : ….
Owner : Elaam kazhinju, njan iceum vellavum ready aaki vachelkam, inghu ethiyal mathi ( everything is over, I will be ready with Ice and water)
From the other end : ….
Owner : urappalle

I guess this was conversation regarding a drinking get together the same evening. Malayale never changes – even in Switzerland and falls back to the tag line ‘ inetha parypady’ ( Whats today program?)

I heard that when a new building has to be build, there has to be a approval plan from the locals on the building appearance which will fall in place to the neighboring buildings and that’s why the streets look so much similar. Also they have some amazing building all over. The spider sculpture is really big when you go near to it. The climate ( it was summer) was around 25 to 30 degree Celsius. It was raining almost once in three days but it was never so cold not much hot. I think it justifies why we didn’t find a bigger went in our room for our air conditioner. Out of 26 channels we had in our hotel only one was English and rest was German / Swedish. Also it was a little surprise to find out that our hotel and another one near by doesn’t have a complimentary breakfast even after charging quiet expensively for a two bed suite. This was more of a normal thing in any inns in US! We were lucky to find that lady Gaga performed on the ground right in front of our hotel. We were roaming around and the song sounded familiar. A peak over the fence, we were surprised to see lady Gaga right across the fence performing for a group of half drunk crowd! As I didn’t had any pop song fans with me, we didn’t bother to venture in!- Lady gag looked very small when compared to the pictures I saw from her albums. We experimented with our dinner and played safe with our lunch as there was a online order delivery available with Best curry – 10 franks lunch – Indian vegetarian lunch :)

We had couple of Mexican diner, one Italian, three Sri Lankan and rest was either Pizzas at hotel or Indian restaurants around. I gained almost 4 KGs in two weeks – blame it on eating out completely for two weeks.

Ok, Left it about our weekend on my last update
The weekend, we had it planned quiet good and thankfully it was a long weekend. For Saturday we roamed around Zurich city, Zurich lake and some local mall. One thing I found every where was Swiss army knife and lots of cheap – really good wine. We took a local Zurich lake – boat trip for around one hour and had a good site of many buildings. It was curios that the boat restricts, food, smoke and ice cream. I didn’t understand the difference between food and ice cream :)
On second day we headed to the Alps – Junfrau ‘Top of Europe’. It was more of a 6 hour journey one way and spend almost 2 and half hour on the top. The journey had two hour of bus ride, a on hour stop over at Interlaken and another 3 hours on a Cog wheel train to the top of Europe. More updates and pics on next update :)................

Tuesday, March 08, 2011

Finally landed.....





The status screen say 90% and 10% more to go. It is almost 9:50 pm and I am still in office making sure that today’s update reach my client in time. First things first! It had been a while before I had updated this blog and I have the usual excuse of ‘I was too busy with my life’ to pen down a few words. The thing is I had so much to write every time that random thought goes through my mind or when I see some thing which sparks of a series of thought but never got a breather to sit down and jaunt down some. Now I have a 10% upload window of a huge application which leaves me with out much option to use internet ( as it slows down my upload, a disconnected mobile phone connection which makes sure that I don’t call up a random friend and say some thing stupid …. )
A few updates, after a stint of around 40 months in US, I’m back in my motherland. It feels good to be here. Last time I was here for a vacation, the humidity and the dust killed me (the usual NRI dialogues) but it was rather because of the cold weather of East coast which I got so much used to in say last 3 years!
So this time I made sure that I take step by step crash down to my home place so that I have interim places to shed off the cold weather or say snow. I had been in Hyderabad for around two months before I finally got to my hometown. This time I am here to stay for a while and not for a brisk vacation which usually leaves an impression to my friends that ‘did he come’ or we just felt ‘he came’!
Staying at home and working like a day scholar is something I always wanted to do but my profession never allowed me to do so. Now I got a golden chance and I seriously enjoying the same. My friends back in US had warned me of the stringent time lines now my company has stipulated at my offshore locations and the kind of work we get to change my mind set to stay longer in US. It has been close to two months and I am glad that I stuck on to my decision to travel back. Yes it means to come back from a lot of comfort to a lot of discomfort but this discomfort does come with a sweet thing called ‘family’ around me! I am enjoying every bit of food I get at home as well as at my desi canteen!
A few things that really irked me for a while and now getting back to the desi skin which makes the saga ‘Everything works’
Every one I met in this last two months were in a hurry
No one cares for anyone else until and unless the ‘other one’ is a friend / relative / any of group-one belong to – either be cast / religion / language or even age! My understanding of culture is basically ‘concern for others’ and I haven’t seen much anywhere!
The long queue in front of a Mc’dee in a mall at Hyderabad left me in splits and my friend who was with me didn’t believe that Mc’dee is kind of a fast food eatery and not considered as a restaurant of any class!
No one cares for rules and everything works no matter how bad it is

Sorry to stop it abruptly but the upload is compete and I have to get home atleast by 10:30 and heard that the by-pass road is too dangerous to drive after 10:00pm …god save me :!