Christmas it is!!

“Kadavul Ullame Or Karunai Illame

Adaikalam koduthaven arulai kanuvom”

...

“Unnum unavum neerum dhinam thantha deivame

Endrum umakke naam nandri solluvom”

Downloaded this song after a looooooooong search on the net...one of my all time favourites from Anbulla Rajinikanth..btw did Bhavatharini sing this??better than the not too recent “Anbendra mazhayile” from Minsara Kanavu..well..opinons are subjective and this is mine...after all...IMHO..the Master cannot be compared with the Maestro..

there is another song in this movie which i love..

“Then poove Vaa..”..haven’t been able to locate that on the net...will get that soon......

Saturday sani!!

It was 5:00AM IST on Saturday when I started from Office after having completed my marathon release, which lasted 2 days (incidentally I had left office only by 4 on Friday and missed dinner on both days), thanks to a ultra-perfectionist on-site coordinator, who thought it more prudent to give a message box that said ‘Enter the month’ instead of a configuration file for a DTS task on SQL Server. Such was her intention of building a User friendly process that she was Ok even with an empty message box, but not an ini file! Ammmmmmmmmmmmmmmaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa......drove me up the wall!!!It is not ignorance that drives me mad as much as the exhibition of it...well, I seem to run into too many such specimens of late!!!

I managed to convince her about the ini approach and finally got on to my bike..my mobile was out of charge..so I would not be able to enjoy my usual quota of early morning radio L..Waded through the so-called road from my office to sholinganallur at unusually slow speeds..I didn’t want to go at my usual 80-90kmph...and i had decided to go by ECR..cruising at 40-50..the world engulfed in darkness..my Yamaha cutting through..and a strong sense of nostalgia took over me..my night shift days when i used to drive on ECR on my way back home at about 6:00 AM......sleeping while you drive..driving as you sleep..the cold wind blowing on your face .. great feeling!here it was back again...i distinctly remember the stretch from the point where the connection road meets ECR to Marrybrown..my eyes were closed..it was as if I was lying flat at home...no lights..no disturbance..except that I was driving!! No brakes applied and no sudden thrusts required...i was on a flying machine..couple of short naps..and i was at home in 60 minutes..

Little did i know that this journey was going to hurt me so badly...i’ve been down with severe cold, throat pain and fever for the past 3-4 days..my appetite is gone..can hardly taste a thing now Lno respite..so how long will this persist??

Given a chance, i will definitely drive in the dark again, though i should get a bullet/cruiser..A 100cc just isn’t good enough on ECR..no insults meant to my King size libero’s capabilities!!

What the heck...office again ..tomorrow....??!

“Vesham Kalaikavum Oivu edukkavum

Velai nerunguthamma”

Looking forward to my vacation, as and when it happens..!!

SmirnOff..

Vodka + Sweetlime + Sugar Syrup....Rocks..!!

Weekend movie marathon..

3 movies in 2 days..what better way to enjoy the weekend?

'Thank you for Smoking' has been on my laptop for so long and I managed to finally double click on that mpeg file at 1:00 AM Saturday early morning, as soon as I got back from office. Well... the movie certainly is worth watching and must be made part of the Marketing specialization of MBA. The hero's dialog delivery and body language are right on target and the best part of the movie is the session at his kid's classroom...short; yet makes a great impact..and the change in the kid's attitude towards his father is fantastically portrayed...

'Constantine' - the movie started with some age old prophecy. whew...worst of the lot..what was the director trying to say?? pathetic storyline..the all usual God vs Satan..do the graphics save the face of the movie?? not really is my call..keanu reeves looks great...that is all this movie merits in my opinion...

'Chicken Little' - Walt Disney animation..need i say more.excellent sound tracks..graphics and a story that suits the animation genre..Mr.Cluck (Chicken little's father) doesn't believe in Chicken Little after Little creates a huge confusion about sky falling..All through the movie Little tries to make up for it and in the end succeeds..my favourite character..the gold fish..beautifully crafted animation with a helmet containing water on its head..
(Constantine and CL..back to back..from 9:00 PM Saturday to 1:00AM Sunday..hehehe)

I cannot help but draw parallels between the thread that is common to 'Thank you for smoking', 'Chicken Little' and 'Pursuit of happiness': father son relationship portrayed in different forms..though the last one is about the father's fight to lead a better life..a fantastic one...the other 2 are a bit light-hearted on the same theme..one that i relish..personally!!

and am not completely done..plan to watch Chicken Run tonight..

Aankhon ki gustakhiyan..

Drops certainly seem more beautiful than studs!!

;)

Lenin is back!

I was passing through the Thiruvanmiyur bus stand when I was hit by a vampire of old times..one that had me in its holds for long and still does, though with a much lesser intensity (and why??, will find an answer sometime later). There is this Kalyana mandapam near the bus stand where a state- level meet of the Communist party is being held. A big hoarding of Lenin in black and white on a red background has been erected. And this is enough to kindle in me, the long fuming fire of communism. Did Lenin have such magnetism in real life, as is being projected in all these posters? Only someone in his era can answer that, but I can vouch for the fact that his implementation of the spirit of communism and his ways of work (to my very limited knowledge, based on what I have read about him) certainly attract even the critics of communism.

All the red literature in this world cannot arouse in me, the same feeling as a poster of Lenin/Stalin or the sickle-hammer on a red background. These lines from a long forgotten Tamil movie come to my mind the moment I think of the Red revolution:

‘Manidha Manidha ini un vizhigal sivanthal ulagam vidiyum

Vizhiyil vazhiyum udhiram muzhudhum ini un saridham ezhuthum’

My ode to the greatest Red revolutionary leader: my management ideal. Money, my honey, but not at the cost of the hand that makes this world run!! Communism in its raw form emblazoned with the motto of Capitalism! The philosophy is not dead and the truth shall be proved soon!

My thoughts on Management

So many thoughts have been clouding my mind for the past 3 weeks; yet none have been published. Thoughts on the most simple of problems that can happen in an organization: leadership change. A leadership change is no doubt a phenomenon that needs to be handled with care, for a rash decision by either side ultimately affects only the organization (the loyal guy that I am!!). People like to say nobody is indispensable but only those involved in the blood bath called IT understand what it means..you are ‘used’ to the point beyond which you are no longer required and at any point of time between the origin and the destination you are indeed indispensable, no exceptions made!! And why is all this generalization being made: to understand the mindset of ‘established’ resources and their difficulties in changing to a different leadership style. These resources, over a period of time, become masters of their respective areas that the question of dispensing with them is equivalent to asking a member of BCCI if Sachin can be ‘dropped’ for a match! The value-add that this presents to the organization does not come without a cost, though. They are so used to their own way of running things, that any minor change (leave alone a radical one) to the way they are being managed arouses a strong feeling of discomfort in them. And if the style of the management changes from macro to micro, it is all the more worse. People feel that every action of theirs is being questioned, they are left ‘out of the loop’ on important discussions and there exists in office, a non-conducive atmosphere for growth. This is where I beg to differ: the problem is not with Micro-management as a style; it is in the way it is being implemented by the manager that causes all these problems. Otherwise micro-management is as good a style as any other management technique; the only caveat being its success depends a lot on the manager who uses it. The results of an incorrect implementation are what I am seeing at office today. The organization is losing out on a well trained manager, the all-too-important SMEs and most important of all: their productive time is wasted on unnecessary plots to pin each other down!

The other point where I feel corporate ethics haven’t been upheld is in the way people are seeking a resolution to this issue: an open discussion is all that is required to put all this out of everyone’s mind and not an escalation. An escalation for all these operational and ‘soft’ issues, to the next level, is nothing short of a student going to his headmistress (intentional reference to a female!!) that his teacher (male and intentional again!!, let me see if I can decode this when I come back to this post some time later) for some subject X has changed. A closed mind can never see what can come out of a fair discussion and it never happened here. A meeting addressing everybody’s concerns with the new manager and his boss (Headmistress, it is!!) would be my solution and in my humble opinion, one that would work definitely rather than a clandestine session with each one, which only serves to add to the animosity.

No, the see-saw is too tilted now..Too much has been said about Mr.X that this post will be better off without him and there are too many cases to be presented against him. After all, this is a post on my thoughts on management and not on Mr.X!!

XAT ??!!

A spark...tiny though it may be..has set me thinking of what I didn’t want to do this year..should i take XAT 2007/08??!!...If any of my previous vows are anything to go by, then this one is probably best termed as ‘Pathoda onnu pathinonnu; athoda ithu onnu’ (roughly equivalent to ‘Add one more to the previous list’) and nothing more..but I need to get myself moving out of what I am doing in this IT field and I do understand the urgency and necessity associated with it.. term it over confidence..I can’t help but think of these lines when I see myself in this quagmire (only consolation being that I was not thrown in, but it was on my own will)

“Nallathor veenai seithe

Athai nalam keda puzhuthiyil erivathu undo

Solladi Sivasakthi

Ennai sudar migum arivudan padaithu vittai”

The source of all this...hmm.. a couple of my colleagues are busy writing exams for their post graduate courses and couple others writing the whole lot of ‘Indian Management’ exams and the GMAT takers..Do they also have only 24 hours a day??Sure??The lazy bugger that I am ..my answer is too obvious to be penned down..

’exam’ –night outs the night before the exam, skipping breakfast (yup..bath too as usual and more specifically on the day of exams), complete exams and head right to the mess and fill until a kakka can kothify from my open mouth and get on to the steel cot or a game of Red Alert until it is cool enough to head out to Octa (our computer center)...whew...I would love to get back to those lovely college days..doing absolutely nothing..yet feel like having done everything..Comparing it with what I am doing today..a world being done and at the end of the day all I can feel is an eerie emptiness..and the routine hasn’t changed over the past 3.5 years..

Is this spark going to change this all?..I clearly remember this drama enacted exactly 2 years ago when I started leaving office by 6PM, come what may...unfortunately that didn’t last long due to various reasons and ultimately my tryst with my employer has L

Bharathiar hasn’t left me searching again..

“Manadhil urudhi vendum.....

Kanavu meippada vendum..

Kaariyathil urudhi vendum..

Dharaniyile perumai vendum..”

There aren’t too many days left to apply...and ironically there aren’t too many self-imposed vows that I have kept up either??!!

Will I wake up by 5:30 at least tomorrow??

We, The Living!!

As is always the practice with me, I returned ‘We the living’ by Ayn Rand to the lending library having taking a month to read that book completely. This has become a habit for me to pick up an AR book and while reading it, complete 2 to 3 other books. Her books are so laden with thoughts that I hate to read them as though it were yet another Sidney Sheldon.

This book is stated to be the closest ever AR’s attempt at autobiography. The prologue by Leonard Peikoff was an eye opener on what the book was about. Post-Russian revolution scene..need there be anything more in the plot to interest a pro-communist???I took that right away from the library’s dust covered shelf after a long search..

AR’s novels are so focussed on the protagonist that as you progress through the novel (I wouldn’t want to use that term to AR’s creations..they just can’t be compared to the earthly Sheldons, Ludlums and Archers), you tend to be part of the character...The previous ones that I had read were : The Fountainhead and Anthem..I don’t remember much of Anthem except that it was a futuristic novel where the ‘I’ doesn’t exist (or does it???)...hmm..Fountainhead’s Howard Roark was brilliant..the final dialogues delivered in the court defending his act of bombing a building (don’t remember whatever that was..) were amazing..

‘We the living’ is a bit different from Fountainhead in the sense that the plot revolves around 3 characters instead of 1: Leo, Andrei and Kira..

Leo – Degenerates slowly and breaks down after he understands that he is on the losing side of a battle..

Andrei - The die-hard communist who ultimately finds the true sense (or nonsense) of the principles he had lived for

Kira – The victor who dies at the end of the struggle.. All the struggle that Kira goes through...the way she supports Leo’s stay at the sanatorium by losing herself to Andrei.her odyssey to get out of Russia..present a poignant picture..

Most of what I infer above is based on the prologue by Leo but I accept all that totally..The novel is a fantastic portrayal of the pathetic state of certain sections of the bourgeois class after the Russian revolution.. to call that ‘Tit for Tat’ for all the power that this class exercised over the Proletariats defeats the spirit of socialism...Empowering the Proletariats never intended beating down the bourgeois...

This question on socialism (initiated by The Fountainhead) inside my half trained mind still remains open (too confusing now..)...I have always maintained that the welfare of the state is of paramount importance..no exceptions..but with each of the AR’s writings that I have completed, I feel if that indeed supersedes the individual’s welfare..After all, everyone lives primarily for the ‘I’ in him...me included..(am none too great to be granted a special status ...still felt like adding that)..perhaps her writings are so greatly realistic in the depiction of a principle...in its personification ...that for some time after completion too many thoughts crowd my mind...I brood over the foundation of socialism (as stated by Marx/Engels) as against the pro-individualistic view taken by AR..only to end up subscribing to both schools..

Am I losing clarity of thought or am I in the process of defining a new Philosophy that combines these two..Only time will answer...

(Interesting to note that this book was rejected by many publishers before being taken up by Macmillan company!!..probably AR was far too ahead of her times..)

another crib..

I've wanted to post so much in the past week that I actually managed to post none!! So that says it all..Another usual crib story about my God-forsaken Office, Office Mates, Mr.x...But I cross all boundaries that can be thought of and make this statement:
"IT is SH short of what it actually is"
and don't forget to add me to the ever expanding list of IT-bashers.

This is not about the past week but about something that has changed over a period of 4 years (quite some time, isn't it??, fair enough to make that generalism!!) Are people being recruited just to show off that we are the biggest recruiters? Is this some kind of human trade??(dubaikku kalla thonila poraa mathiri varavana ellam eduthukaa..)..Do these HR guys have any idea of what is expected of people who come in or is it only the target that matters to them? We are not running Training institues to train and provide certificates to freshers. People are expected to work on bloody projects and DELIVER..Why else on earth are they being paid in 5 digits a month right after stepping out of college?Questions on syntax, loops, logic put me totally off
balance.Do our HR guys insist on getting guys without brains/common-sense and hope to fit it here making them work on live projects??.Cmon..when are we going to stop spoonfeeding...India is already reeling under this new age of Intellectual slavery and we are only adding to that ..too fast...and i see no end in sight unless we understand that IT is not restricted to Air Conditioned office rooms..flexi-work hours..perks,..pay..onsite...

I have always said this and continue to say: My only expectation from anybody (be it a fresher or a director) who joins work is the willingness to work and learn...ATTITUDE...as simple and straight as that...let me even cut that learning part off if people find it too hard...the least that you can do for all you earn is complete what is expected of you..I will not be surprised if i hear from a fresher that it is a violation of labour law under so-so section!!If these guys wanna play the game according to their rules,my response is clear: get the hell out and gather guts to put up your playground..define your rules and prove that you are what you say...don't expect that here...

All said and done.. i don't blame these guys solely for all that has prompted me to write this..what do the trainers(who else but partially baked guys like me who need to fill in some 'Organization Initiative' in the Appraisals form or the all familiar 'yaaravadhu pudusa vanthirukkanu pakkalmda' guys) do all through the couple of months of training...people still are at college level with no idea of what coding standards are...school students will beat them any day with their knowledge...Trainings ought to be made more stringent and dedicated faculty added if we are looking at steps forward...

Ooh ..the best part..doesn't end without references to Mr.X ..does it??...What kind of a manager is one who cannot read through his emails but never fails to ask for an update (on what was put in the email..the worst part being..it would have been addressed to him??!!)?I never knew we had an 'Illiterate quota' in my company..easiest way to get in...someone who can't identify what project is being talked about for 45 minutes???someone who cannot understand what a UNIX login id is???someone who stumps you by asking the all too famous 'who is going to fix the MySQL bug man'...all this someone is not someone..this is specific to Mr.X..and am sure there are friends of mine who are only more than eager to add details about 'their man'...there is one consolation from these guys though: they are living examples of 'Learn How not to be a bad manager in 24 hours'...i do not include every manager in this list...there are some who have acquired the art and 'manage'(in its purest form) really well...hats off ..you guys are a rare breed!!!

Deteriorating standards of new entrants..weak middle management...a far-too-distant top management...are we heading anywhere?? Yes.. the only destination that i see is an endless dark hole and the direction:VERTICALLY DOWN...!!!

(My favourite song suits perfectly: Naadagam vidum velai than ..uccha kaatchi nadakuthamma...
and if i am going to read this post sometime in the future, i should not be left wondering as to what the inspiration to this piece of writing was: Jus heard from someone that one of my team members was seen in a 'near-weeping' status after all the drama early today...!!??)

Vaanaththil oru puratchi..

andhi vaana mandapathil
vidhavai marumanam...
natchathirangal vannam poondu
vellai thurandhanave!!!
deepavaliyin vaana vedikkaigal...

Azhagiya Tamizh magan...!!

Wonder why people need to come up with such an impressive name for this guy's movies!!! I've been listening to this film's songs for the past couple of days...hmm....

First impression: Did ARR outsource this project to some DJ???All songs except the 'Maduraiku pogadhe', with a profound country side feel, give you a feel of having just jumped out of the dance floor!! That songs gives me a feel of the Raja Rajeswari title song on Sun TV...!!:(

Am not sure if ARR always wanted to speak out 'punch dialogues' on screen.. 'Ellapugazhum' has given him that opportunity...it cannot be classified as a song under any genre...that is prose read loudly with some BGM, if I am so generous enough..

'Nee Mariyln Monroe' impresses with some new age lyrics that has been taking over Tamizh filmdom recently..nothing much to be written about music though..

'Valayapatti' has more of a Harris Jayaraj feel ..reminds of Saiyo Saiyo from Arasatchi..pada pada pattamboochi from Majnu..

and to the much hyped 'ponmagal vanthal' remix..hmm..is this the same ARR who recreated the 'Thottal Poo malarum' magic?..none of that is to be expected here....sadly ARR has also gone a square back by adding the usual remix stuff...computer generated beats...some who-needs-to-understand english lyrics in between and letting the singers do the 'talking'....the only solace are the bits where TMS' voice have been left unchanged!!!

The pick of the lot: 'Kelamal kaiyile' sung by Sriram Parthasarathy and Saindhavi(!!) has both the male and female singers reaching high octaves consistently throughout the song and both are equally up to the task..
('kokilam' (Kudos Thamarai for all managing to dig up such words!!!Umathu Tamizh sevai thodarattum..) is one of such countless words (one of my faves..) in Tamizh that has an inherent melody about it and produces a visual effect with it..Saindhavi pronounces it to perfection...)..Saindhavi is a find...her voice in this song proves it..

Thennaga isai puyale..
Azhagiya Tamizh magan isayil Azhugiyathen???
unnidam naan edirpaarpathu isai; osai illaye!!
Sivajiyin kalaipil oiyvu kandeero???
allathu thalai alaviruku thalapathiku vendam endru mudivu kondeero??

IT Professional's life..

Why would I need to think of anything beyond the Title of this post to define what an oxymoron is?!

oru
morone
oxymoronai
vilakkugiraane!!!

Diwali...

The festival of lights is due in a couple of days and is in no way different to me from how i have been seeing it for the past 5-6 years or so. To me, Diwali is symbolic of eradicating darkness and replacing it with light.
'Tamasoma Jyothirgamaya'.

I fail to see any reason as to why people would be so excited about this (not only this but all festivals in general); the only justification being a day's break from work, even that doesn't count this time because Diwali falls on Thursday, right in the middle of the week.Oh Yes, the holiday
does provide an option to save a day's leave :).

My first concern, Lifes of thousands of families are being scorched for the manufacture of crackers. Agreed that is their means of earning their daily bread;but the health hazards they encounter in making them and child labour do not in any way serve to justify the end products; nor their necessity for celebrating this festival. What I propose may seem to be the classical ending of a Shankar or a Rajini movie but it is the need of the hour: Members in this industry need to be educated to ensure that they do not push their future generations into this unfathomable abyss.

One more concern that applies to all festivals is, people often say that a festival serves to bring the family together. Family, as an institution, is not so well established in any part of the world as in India. But does it still hold good? To say that a festival brings together a family is
nothing less than making a mockery of the statement. This is no 'Thanksgiving day' as in Western nations, where people 'take time off' to visit family members. Do we need a 'reason' and a 'gift' to meet our own kith and kin? Has materialism cast such a powerful shadow on Indian traditions?

As I see,in recent times, festivals serve only as a stage to showcase the economic disparity in this fast developing nation. It certainly does not make much sense to eat sweets and savouries throughout the day when you see the guy who collects garbage waiting outside the gates for his
'collection' to get what he had promised his children back at home. Worse still, children watching from across the street when my own cousins happily while away a whole day bursting crackers is certainly not an occassion to be remembered for the right reasons.And the voices of the
thousands of children's' cries for right to education and normal living do not drown the din of the crackers.

If Diwali does remind people of their duty to help people in need and values to be upheld, I would be more than happy to 'celebrate'. Until each tear is wiped off the face of every Indian child...darkness will prevail no matter how many lights are lit..and I wait until the light of the inner soul guides us all...

show me the meaning of being lonely..

'Show me the meaning of being lonely
So many words for the broken heart
It's hard to see in a crimson love
So hard to breathe
Walk with me, and maybe
Nights of light so soon become
Wild and free I could feel the sun
Your every wish will be done
They tell me


Show me the meaning of being lonely
Is this the feeling I need to walk with
Tell me why can't I be there where you are
There's something missing in my heart

Life goes on as it never ends
Eyes of stone observe the trends
They never say forever gaze upon me
Guilty roads to an endless love (endless love)
There's no control
Are you with me now?
Your every wish will be done
They tell me


There's nowhere to run
I have no place to go
Surrender my heart, body, and soul
How can it be
You're asking me
To feel the things you never show

You are missing in my heart
Tell me why can't I be there where you are'

certainly Backstreet Boyz' best ever musical....and equally good lyrics...when am i going to get that Evanescence piece??!!

sambar idly..

Ratna cafe's sambar idly (the new one at RTO) beats Murugan idly hands down...the sambar here outclasses murugan's USP..soft idlies.....other items at RC are so-so though....!!!

Fortune smiles..me 2!!

Fortune favours Indian stock markets big time...(not to mention..on me too..rather.. not too big time.. but thou shalt reap what thou sows:-))

Articles scream about the rise of Ambani to the pole in the list of the richest...(and a response from Reliance that he is not..http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/Business/India_Business/Mukesh_Ambani_not_worlds_richest_man_says_Reliance/articleshow/2502073.cms).. I was reading through some message forum in Rediff where someone said..India's wealth is being concentrated into a small number of hands and it hasn't reached the larger masses...more important was his/her point where he stated the wealth is in no way proportional to the amount of work done by the individual..with specific references to NRN, Premji and the Ambanis..

With my inclination to socialist tendencies this idea does appeal to me but references to these figures is what pulls me away from this guy's remarks..this would have worked out perfectly in the erstwhile Soviet union...still the truth is..yes these guys do possess money and a lot of it in fact...but the money is not merely a quantification of the man or his labor...it is the 'idea', the 'vision' that sells...
NRN - starting a company with 10k and growing to a 2B$ enterprise is no child's play
Premji - turned a Vegetable oil manufacturer into a software biggie
Ambani - King of them all..Dhirubai..started as a hot water supplier at a hotel...not Anil and Mukesh..they had a solid platform to start work on...but their contribution to the growth of the Reliance empire was by no means lesser than any of the above

and these guys do have a social responsibility (CSR) index that is far higher than what so many other IT MNCs in India possess...they do their bit for the society..i call it 'a bit'...after all Business is all about cut-throat competition, profits and every rupee of it on your balance sheet counts...that should provide an answer to my dear unknown friend on rediff...

Mark not the man; for he is mortal..but his idea...........survives and thrives...

Paartha Vizhi..

I've wanted to write about so many songs that i end up writing nothing....and i heard this song today prompting me to write this blog...

One heck of a song..that is what 'Paartha Vizhi' from 'Guna' is...There are too many good things:

1. The chorus portion all through the song where Raaja stands tall...
2. The conch and cymbals that come for a brief moment before the pallavi starts..
3. Yesudas... astounding vocal abilities..gifted.. is all i can say..and more so in this particular song when he shifts to a higher tempo towards the end of the song...his voice glides so smoothly (call it kural izhaithal in Tamizh)
4. Screen Portrayal..where Kamal sways in the queue to get a piece of prasad from the heroine..(interestingly this part makes amma go wild!!! and i find it an amazing piece of art )
The boundless joy that emanates on his face when he gets it is captured so well (akin a bhaktha blessed with darshan of the Divine) ..
5. The movie as a whole...

This is something i remember from long back..Kamal said this in some TV program...this was how the song sequence was explained to Raaja...the song was to evoke a sense of divinity, longing and love..the actor and the director wanted it to be in the lines of the Carnatic song..'Kaava vaa vaa..Kandha Vaa Vaa'..and Raaja's response was 'Paartha Vizhi'...i had a chance to listen to 'Kaava vaa' on radio some time back and the similarity in the emotions that are evoked by the songs is striking...call it the same raaga base or taala or shruti ..what else and what not...Music is Divine...!!!should get to know what raaga this is based on??

Jackpot..

Am watching 'Jackpot' on TV now and am left wondering as to why people sing, dance, recite poems ( in quality Tamil, to a hostess who finds it difficult to pronounce even the least complicated words of this language) on this show...!!??the lure of being 'on-air'..???

weekend..

This weekend is coming to an end finally;one where I had to stay indoors all through the Saturday and Sunday because it has been raining cats and dogs and no respite still!!

I was so frustrated when i received this call from my team member on Friday at 2100 hours asking me how to implement something in ASP/Javascript and asked if she could work on Saturday and complete that. It was her wish;why would i need to be informed about that??!!. i told her i couldn't be of any help unless i had access to the code and asked her to send it across. Told her that we could work on Monday.. and the thing that i most feared came true..she sent the ASP file as a .Txt attachment..ammaaaaaaaaaaa...(i just hate when people do this..there is an extension for each file and an application to open each file type..then why do these freshers find it interesting to send across code files as .txt files..)

i know we are running on a tight deadline but still i had my limits. i was already feeling bad that i couldn't go home even though i started from Office at1700 hours because of what else but rains.
then this useless exception comes up for a build that is to be installed only the week after this and i've got to fix that ASAP (all these acronyms people invent to save time are useless when they have to explain what it means to someone who isn't acquainted with this stuff. Work twice over...Why don't they just say 'at the earliest' or 'as soon as possible'?? !!!)..this 'investigation' went on until 0100AM and was fixed and i started watching 'Pudupettai (Survival of the fittest)'..

I couldn't keep awake beyond 0300 and dozed off midway through the movie..completed it on Sunday and what do i tell about that??? it is one of those movies that creates great hypes and manages to fail perfectly on all fronts..hmm..can't call that though. the music and BGM were fantastic..found BGM in a lot of scenes to be inspired by the 'Godfather theme'.. it was like one of those computer games where your objective is to bash whoever comes in the way just for the heck of it..blood and gore in abundance throughout the movie...probably the director this would more than make up for the lost storyline..the picturization was excellent..(though the quality of playback from the DVD that i had was not too good)...to top it all the hero doesn't fit the movie's tagline even infinitesimally!!!

Then came the weekend's most comical part. I had copied this movie 'V for Vendetta' couple of months back and clicked on the the file that said 'AVSEQ1.dat' and watched it to the full 50 minutes. i was surprised to see that the title slide came in the end...i had a preconceived notion that the Wachowski's brothers (of the 'Matrix' trilogy fame) movies are complex but this came a cropper..i had no idea as to the head and tail of the movie...something struck me..were the files named incorrectly???..i clicked on the file 'AVSEQ4.dat' and voila!!!here comes the Warner Bros music...hmm...completed watching the first 75 minutes of the movie!!!i could see a lot of semblances between 'V' and our own Samurai, Indian , Citizen...I've got no idea as to which of these movies sparked off the idea..but the dialogues were a class apart...real good ones...the movie also gave me something to search on wiki - 'The Gunpowder treason' (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gunpowder_Plot)

not to mention great home made meals on both the days.!! a weekend to remember..??!!

moha mull..

I've been looking to listen to songs from this movie for so long. If am not wrong, this was a novel by Janakiraaman (Yup..did a google search and it proved me right!!) and received rave reviews. I've not read the novel but did watch the movie in my school days.

Didn't have such a good ear for music then..but then when i really took to Raaja, there was one song in this movie that seems to have left such an impression on me..Sollayo vaai thiranthu (sung by MG Sreekumar, resembles Yesudas' voice, every mallu singers' voice is that way!!)..am listening to that on raaga.com..(http://www.raaga.com/channels/tamil/movie/T0000664.html) and it still remains as fresh as ever. I guess the singer's voice blends so well with the minimal BGM in that song evoking a strong feeling of a lover pining for her counterpart. Surprisingly even the interludes in this song are so minimal, which is so un-Raja-like.

I really have no idea of carnatic music but somehow felt the pallavi of the song 'Yengae Yenathu kavithai' from Kandukonden Kandukonden strongly resembles 'Nenje Gurunatharin' from this movie and that is when i started looking for Mohamull's songs.

Should read this novel sometime soon. To me, a book is always better than the celluloid. One catch though, is that, if books were not made on celluloid, I would have missed out on some great music!!

Mr.X again

This is going to be about Mr.X again. I do know that my messages are filled with Mr.X's antics but I have no other option. Here is what happened:

X: hey man how is it going
[not again you fool..how many times will you ask this question without any context]
I: Good.
X: So what are you guys talking about
I: [blabber something about a recent Production issue and tell him sarcastically that we should fund a project to migrate the database from MySQL to Oracle Grid]
X: Hahahaha..that is a good project right??What about the other proposal that you had sent to onsite?
[it must be noted that the proposal was since accepted and the project approved]
I: yup. we have delivered the mock ups and business is impressed.
X: great. So what are we waiting for? When are we getting started??!!!

i had no clues to this no-brainer. How do i make him understand that mock ups are part of the analysis phase and we are into construction now?

Can someone save me from this? Perhaps X is a God Sent resource (too much IT talk harms your communication this badly. i can't find any other tem to fit here :-( ) to make my work hours more enjoyable!!!

hmm...appreciation mails!!??

So amazed by the stupidity of this client of mine..

Initially there was this problem with Mysql going crazy each day and tables crashing; then the batch component that was using this database consuming higher processing power (there was this guy from one heck of a tech-fundoo company who said that on a quad-core machine, 25% consumption meant you were using 1 processor for yourself!! Not sure if it works that way but sounded too illogical to me and wonder what they will do with the other 75%?!)..We can came up with some stupid approach to clear the so-called back log of over 4 weeks..To be true we had planned to load only 3 weeks of data..all said and done..this bugging process took 14 hours to clear 4M records and mails started pouring in from all over appreciating 'your hard work, perseverance, commitment' and whatever adjective you can think of.

To top this all, the appreciation mail from Mr.X copying his manager was too comical.he is still of the view that all this happened just because we had a job turned on which was not supposed to be the case..ooph..sometimes you just have to leave people that way..there is perhaps some use even in speaking to the wall..not sure i need to meet him tomorrow(ooveee..)

Who knows that all data on that data store built specifically for this purpose is only junk; even if you can be so generous to call it that way.nobody on earth wants to know what is in that store and are looking for some crap count that comes from this table...!!!

This still is not resolved and we are to identify if this high CPU usage is because of our component.Some things never seem to end!!


oo.so many things happened last week that i am just not able to put it in any order..just remembered that one day the DBA said one table was missing after the repair database operation and he did not have the back up files because his laptop was out of space!!and people were searching all over the network for one copy of that file..luckily they managed to find it out..!!whew...

India wins!!

Looks like people never tire watching cricket here in India...Australia bowled out for 193..and India manages to score that in 46 overs after losing 8 wickets..Karthik should've bowled brilliantly for his 6 wickets...Good comeback.. another face saver from India

en iniya udhavi melaalarin gavanathirku

How easy is it to make statement that doesn't speak about anything in particular yet manages to speak about everything? And this guy thinks he has perfected that art!!! What a meeting that was? One that i didn't want to attend but had to just because I am a so-called 'Team lead'. Mr.X started the session with a stupid mistake. He mis-spelled the initiative's name on the board. What a way to get started.

Then came his list of generalizations:
1. 'You would have suggested decommissioning some job or removing a dataset or migrating to tape, thereby offering a cost saving. Similarly i need data for all projects from Jan 2007'
-- How do i make X understand that this applies to only Mainframe projects and not to Open Source projects? he listens to all my talk and says it should be easier to quantify savings for Open Source projects..!!i am pretty sure i didn't mean to convey that..perhaps i have a problem in working with dumbos..should check out...

2. 'You will have start time and end time for the query. Subtract them and you get the time saved.'
--What does this guy think? Every god-forsaken query has to be run just for noting down the time taken and no idea to what that gives as an output?

3. 'There are tables without indexes'
--That was told with an obvious reference to one of my 'killer' projects. By that time though i had no idea as to how to put across ideas into a brain that X thought was in abundance but never seemed existent to me. Virtual reality!!



End of it all..i had managed to waste 45 minutes of my precious time at Office..yup..that was tea time for me!!

Sweet Dreams!!??

Good Night and Sweet Dreams..Right when i thought i could close my eyes...someone pings me this message prompting me to crib as usual..how do you classify a night as good and a dream as sweet???

hmm...maybe am just too sleepy to come up with answers or am right in that these phrases are all stupid with no meaning attached to them (what we call 'asai sol' in Tamil - added just for the sake of poetic beauty)!!!

will try to see if i can remember this sometime later and update this post!!

Back Again

Not that I have some 'only-he-knows-this-stuff' material to be posted...jus thought i would sink in one more before sleeping...i was reading this book called 'kite runner' (suggested by many of my colleagues)...didn't like all of that but did go well at some places...

I really don't find a reason as to how these publishers manage to get reviews with 'devastatingly beautiful' , 'work of a millenium', 'compulsive page-turner' and all that hoo-haa stuff about some crazy novel..(not that i call kite runner a crazy one though this book had all such fundoo items on its covers..)..can't stand this...

and do i end this post now???

Finally!!

So much for creating this thing called a blog...couldn't think of a name for this...don't know where from this weird word called 'rattle' came into my mind....
must be for the umpteenth time am repeating this even during typing this first post: will i ever return to post something else??