Circle of Life

From the time I scanned all my photos (about 3 years back) I wanted to make a photo in which I shape my pics (from different stages of life )in a circle and end with one last image as a Question mark. It would finally look like a big circle containing images in-between.

But now I don't have the patience to sit and design something like that. More over I don't want to install some heavy duty photo maker like photoshop or something. So here is my first feeble attempt to chronicle my photo history :


When I was around 1 the age of innocence.... I am the King of the world. Check out the stare !!



I am flyingggg on a jet plane ;-)



Oh well looks like I had to settle for a bicycle :(



Atleast I got a motorbike now ;-)



Now that's cool right... me and my dad's Indica :-) Pretty suave huh !!



So what will be next ????????????????

Everyone of us have had an amazing journey in life and I hope we all do something worthwhile in that journey.
Sometimes we don't know when we have enough and keep craving for more in terms of monetary gains or even love.

Is it that a human being can never be sated with what he/she already has...should one attain salvation ???

a bout of sickness

It's been quite some time since i was ill, but on saturday what started as minor shivers ended up as a high fever. I was shivering in the afternoon around 3:00 PM !!!
My throat became dry and my body temperature was high. I took a couple of Crocins and laid down. I had a tough night's sleep, i was feeling terrible and my body felt so weak.
It just takes a small virus to shut down a human being.. and unlike a PC there is no Ctrl-Alt-Del for us humans. To think that a lot of us think we are superior beings but I think nature has it's own way of maintaining a balance.
I am always reminded of a Matrix dialogue wherein when Agent smith is interrogating Morpheus he would say :
" I'd like to share a revelation during my time here. It came to me when I tried to classify your species. I realized that you're not actually mammals. Every mammal on this planet instinctively develops a natural equilibrium with the surrounding environment but you humans do not. You move to an area and you multiply and multiply until every natural resource is consumed. The only way you can survive is to spread to another area. There is another organism on this planet that follows the same pattern. Do you know what it is? A virus. Human beings are a disease, a cancer of this planet. You are a plague, and we are the cure."

In fact I think that a virus is far more dangerous than a human being.
Anyway the fever subsided on sunday evening.. but I had to sleep for a long time to recover. I am still having trouble with a throat soreness so am having trouble enjoying my food :( :( ....

it's my birthday

This is my 3rd Birthday since I joined Infy and the first one in which I was at home at 00:00AM (23-Dec).
My first 2 birthdays I was at Infy working on Open enrollment stuff.
This was also my first Birthday wherein none of my old gang of friends were in Chennai. I think this will be a continuos affair as we are all going to diversify in someway or the other.
I got some other good news too, about which I shall blog a little later. It was a pleasant surprise too.
I am now 24 years old, i certainly don't know if i have achieved anything but I hope to do something good before i have to start a family.
As the years roll by I know that things may be a little bit more difficult but i hope to persevere.

I slept at around 11:30PM last night and while I was trying to sleep I certainly did not feel very special about my birthday , i thought it was gonna be just another boring day like every other day in my life.
& Even when i woke up I wasn't feeling too great.. It just felt as though I had wasted a whole year of my life. But then something really wonderful happened, my family and friends began to call me up and wish me "Happy Birthday". Obviously my Mom and dad were the first to wish me.
Around 7:20AM I got an SMS from Jim , he is a guy in my project who has the exact same birthdate as mine (23-dec-1981). Then my cousin Naveen wished me and then his sister Pavithra called up. Then my grandmom, my uncle, Naresh ( the first of my gang to call) , Arun (patti) and Rajesh (Mallu my training batch friend).
When I reached office around 10AM first my new PM Mr. Crossley wished me, then my project mate Balasambavi and IHLD (my PU)'s HR Sunitha and my cubicle mate Santhanam.
I got emails from several people I didn't even know. I got so many more wishes that I can't give the entire list.
My previous project in which I was working for 2 years organized a birthday party for Jim and myself. the guys gave me birthday bums ( wherein they lift me and kick my ass) and finally plastered my whole face with the cake.

Man I really enjoyed the day in the end. Even though my conscience says dude what have you done to deserve such a special day, my entire body and mind was screaming forget it it's MY Day and I shall definitely enjoy it.
Well my mood was certainly buoyant in the end of the day quite an anti climax from the way I felt the previous night :-) It certainly proves the fact that society affects you in several ways.

A trip to Kodai (2002)

During my 7th sem hols, in November 2002, I planned a small trip to Kodaikanal with my friends. This is the time for a brief description of my gang of friends : we were 4 , R.J.Karthik (RJ), V.Naresh (V2), S.S.Subramanian (subbu) & of course yours truly ME. We were the laziest bunch of people ever, we would make big plans to go somewhere and one of us wud have some stooopid reason to not make it and the whole plan wud fail. Anyway this time I was not gonna let them escape and I successfully planned the trip and managed to convince all of them.
In fact V2 suddenly invited the hermit of our class, vengadesh ( some of my class girls used to call him a samiyar (hermit) because he avoids going out with other people) and boy o boy we were surprised when he agreed to come with us.
(From L to R - Subbu,Venga,RJ,V2 and lying in the middle MOI)

So the 5 of us were ready to go on our first out-station trip without adult supervision :-).
We stayed in Sterling resorts (Lake View), it was a nice place it was facing the Kodai Lake.
I have to blog about some of the really nice things that we did then :
1)We wanted to go to the town so we rented some bicycles and went around the lake. We thought that we would make breakfast the next morning and so we bought some eggs and bread. This was winter season so around 5PM the entire place became very dark and so we started to make our way back. But we decided to cycle around the lake (man that was a mistake) .. the entire road around the lake was pitch dark .. there was no light and not a soul on the road.
Subbu had to carry the eggs inside his jacket and we were all expecting his jacket to be soaked with egg yolk. Imagine 5 guys who can barely see a few inches before them cycling & carrying eggs ... we were totally lost in the middle and we just went ahead on the road and finally came to a small shop, got the right directions and finally made it to our rooms.My god that was a thrilling experience and kudos to subbu to manage the trip without breaking even a single egg. all along the way we were teasing subbu that he was gonna break the eggs but he proved us wrong.
2)Of course while we were there we heard from another friend that our scores for 7th sem had been announced and I was really happy to have crossed the 9 GPA for the first time in my college life :-)

3)On the last evening we were watching TV and we saw a video of 5 Star and subbu was commenting that the heroine was kinda cute ..but i was a little apprehensive as she reminded me of another average looking girl from my college,& when I mentioned this everyone were like oh mannnn their image of the cute girl romancing the screen was now totally blurred out. Subbu ,v2 ,rj & Venga agreed that I was right and they certainly stopped thinking of the 5 star heroine.

I can't think of anyother interesting things that happened , but we all thouroughly enjoyed the time we shared together and i hope none of us will ever forget it.

-- To my friends : Guys do add in the comments if you remember anything else O.K ;-)

Moi - an entrepreneur

I recently remembered something which I had done with a bunch of friends from my neighborhood. We were 4 : Shyam, Karthik, Jainik and myself, i am not sure if karthik was involved in this event which i shall tell now.

( the photo does not have karthik - but the brats on it are ( from L to R) Shyam,Me,Jainik & rahul)

Somehow one of us got an idea to have a sort of carnival in our street and we managed to secure jainik's first floor for conducting the games. You should have seen us then .. all pip squeaks without an iota of business knowledge.
So we went about deciding what games we would have, i remember some of them being : brainvita ( the marble game) and some other small board games.. i really can't remember the details. The prizes were school items like Pencils , sharpeners etc.
And the marketing method we used then was door to door invites.. we divided the whole street equally and went to all houses which had kids. I still remember one episode when we were thinking of all the kid's names , Shyam wrote down a guy called Kanagavel as Thengavel ( which translates to Coconut-vel) we were all rolling on the floor with laughter.
It was real fun working together and organizing that small carnival.
So anyway we went to the houses and said that we were having a carnival and the entry was (i think) 10Rs per child and they could play any number of games they wanted...
I think this was in the early 1990's I don't remember exactly.

The carnival day came and kids did turn up and we were making a little money but we were just about breaking even , then suddenly Jainik's cousins about4-7 of them turned up and took part and thanks to them we made a tidy profit. The fun lasted around 2-4 hours.
The carnival was just OK ..come on what can a gang of 4 whose average age was 10 achieve huh.

we used up the entire first floor of J's house and finally in the evening we divided the profits
equally and had a little money remaining which we gave to J's mother. Now when i think about it, she really helped us a lot and encouraged us and certainly deserved more than what we gave her :-).

Now when I think about it I have lost a lot of the qualities which I had then .. I am still wondering how I had the guts to knock at several people's doors and invite them to a fair. I dunno who got the idea and I don't even know how I could have been so enterprising ..

I wish I still have those qualities hidden within me. I was looking like a bloody Martian then.
I am really glad that I remembered that incident as i am slowly forgetting a lot of my childhood.

A letter to Tatooines

I generally don't like to give unsolicited advice but i did it today. I am slightly ashamed of it , but if it was of use to the recipient then I am glad.
Anway this was the letter I had sent to Kalai after I found that she had deleted her entire blog.

" I am Senthil (SSK) one of your very recent admirers. It's hardly been a month since I started reading your blogs and now this !!!!!

Apart from your blog itself I really enjoyed reading the comments and your witty replies.
In fact i came to ur site yesterday to read the numerous comments ... but i was getting an error 404 blah blah..

I thought okay i must have somehow screwed up the link from my blog, so i went in search for the link of your profile thru Jagan and IBH blogs where i was certain that you had commented .. but even your profile was inaccessible.

In fact I used to maintain a very private blog but after reading your blog and seeing the comments and replies I thought i shud be a better blogger. Believe me u were an inspiration.

okay i have always thought that one of the things that can be given freely is advice and the other as far as i know is love.well as far as Advice is concerned the recipient can listen to it or just trash it , while as far as love is concerned the recipient has to build on it or demolish it.

But anyway my 2 cents of advice :-)
Just because someone else thinks of you in a particular way does not mean that you have to defend your self. You are you that's it. I mean though we live in a society there comes a time when we start living only for the society and not for ourselves. Somehow we want to satisfy others around us and not ourselves. And you certainly did not seem to be catering to the masses .. tatooines was your baby and people like me liked what they saw in ur blog.

I don't know why one of the causes for u to stop bloggin was because of comments from bloggers who u will probably never ever meet !!!
I hope atleast ur tatooines are kept alive in your own laptop..
& hey if it's possible please do mail ur new tatooines toons.

I shall eagerly await the Princess of Tatooine's adventures :-).
I have no right to say ur decision was right or wrong .. but if one fine day u start bloging again please do give me the link.
ennama nee chennai ponna irunthuta vetti pasanga commenta paathu ippadi feel pannitiye :(
Athuvum anna univ .. anga illatha vetti commentsaaa ..
Naanum AU thaan .. naan MIT campus ...

Seri romba overa type panniyachu .. must get back to work.
All the best in all ur endeavours.
Yethu nadanthaalum athu nallathukke nadakkum..."

chumma konchum updates - updated on Dec 8

hmmm well it's been a good week as far MBA apping is concerned.
I managed to post the docs for 3 univs : Purdue, Wash & TAMU. There is this irony when it comes to choosing my recommenders.
I asked a 3rd guy to fill the reco and suddenly that guy was sent onsite ... so I had to find another guy.
And my 2nd recommender was suddenly asked to go to Florida for some new project .. ithellam nyayame illapa ... Andava yen ithhanai sothanaigal ????
So now I have to find another person to fill the recos .. i guess i'm paying for my own procrastination .

Some good news tatooines ilavarasi "kalaai" has linked my blog from hers ... ada ada ada it's like getting Knighted by the Queen of England :)

In the work front .. i'm almost in bench time I have to report to a new PM on Monday to see what's next.

Blogging and reading the numerous interesting blogs is certainly a big anti-depressant.
Thanks BLOGGER u are the best .... And All hail GOOGLE the king of the net. ( oh well i'm getting all senti bout bloggin ;) )

anewayz gotta start writing the essay for Iowa now.

P.S Kanda naal mudhal songs are ammmazing ( a late discovery i guess)

P.P.S I had mailed She-Who-Will-Not-Be-Named about a week back and I still haven't gotten a reply from her. Looks like she is either ignoring me or she is not able to access her mail. Also another friend of hers says she is always online in YM but how is it that I never catch her online ... could it be that she has used the option to become invisible for my id alone... again i really don't know the truth .

P.P.P.S Hey stars appear brighter and the whole world looks more beautiful now :-) just kidding. But She-Who-Will-Not-Be-Named replied to my mail and i read it this morning, it seems she really couldn't access her mailbox. & for those who care I really am not hung up on her anymore , but i certainly value her friendship and cherish the time we spent together as friends.

Kanda Naal Muthal ... a simple yet good movie

Well if I had to be a harsh critic then I would say this movie was a mix of several films like Kushi and other Shah Rukh khan movies.
But to a person like me who just needs to be entertained for the duration of the movie .. well this is a great movie , You can spend your hard earned money to see it in the theatres near you.

The movie is about the chemistry between 2 human beings , how time has put them in the same cauldron where a new life awaits them. ( wooow big words from me).
anyway the hero & heroine are not the best of friends but the story beautifully develops and finally they get together.
The acting by Prasanna , Laila and Karthikkumar are laudable.. I somehow liked karthik's performance... It was very subtle.
The rest of the cast like revathy & Lakshmi all provided great support in the movie.
Hat's off to Prakashraj for producing such a nice and clean movie. Though prasanna seemed to emote exactly like Prakashraj in the fag end of the movie.

Well the movie did not have any fights, no tappankuthu songs ( In fact all songs except for 1 rap song were good melodies & the rap song was also very very well picturised) and no specific comedian was required but still the guy from Vijay TV's Kadavul Paathi Mirugam Paathi plays a nice role initially as the hero (Prasanna's ) friend. All in all this was damn decent movie ... but i guess the movie can be watched with one's girlfriend as it is a romantic movie.