The GOAL

After a long time....finished a book on the same day as i bought it.
5 and a half hours nonstop from 11 30 in the night to 5 o clock in the morning.

The Book: The GOAL by Eliyahu Goldratt

Chandramukhi versus Nagavalli

Was watching "Chandramukhi" the other day..and was stuck by the changes that were made to the movie from the original mallu version, just so as to appeal to the type of audience the tamil audience are..no offence meant of course!For instance, there is the famous "Vidamatte" scene done by Shobana where, at the end of the dialogue, she lifts a double-cot bed in fury (posesses by Nagavalli) with her single hand and the scene is conveyed so powerful, albeit in a subtle way.

The same scene in Tamil version, in order to convey the power of the character, they had to have a scnene in the beginning of the movie where 4 people are shown carrying the cot and the heroine asking the hero why 4 people are required to carry a cot and the hero saying that it was a very heavy one and 2 people cannot carry it!! That way, people would be able to understand the power of Chandramukhi when she lifts the cot up with her hand!!

Another instance is when Thilakan (the famous astrologer in the movie whom the elderly folks trust more than the psychiatrist-protagonist) makes his entry and the way in which he recognizes Mohanlal. It was done in an almost natural way!Here, the parallel character had to be shown as having hatred of Rajni and then he had to be convinced of Rajani's power (seeing a "Jyothi" on his face) before he could do some research and be aware of Rajni's powers!!
And what has Jyothika done? maybe she should watch the original..but then she is going to get so depressed when she comapres her performance to Shobana's that she might just decide to quit acting!
We had started watching the movie with the mindset that its going to be a combination of the mallu movies "Manichitrathazhu" and 'Aaram thamburan".But then it turned out to be a mix of the one's above plus ..........The Anaconda, Crouching Tiger...etc!!!

Mirajkar Selected!!

I just loved the new ad of "Times of India".It is yet again a theme which we have seen in one flavour or the other before, but what stands out here is the characters chosen for the ad. All of them have done a terric job, the best part being that the characters are sooooo natural.The old man's action, after looking at the news of his grand son getting selected into the team and the old clipping about him being dropped from the team, was so endearing.It kind of symbolizes the fact that newspapers are with us during our times of misery and happiness and it does not differentiate between the emotions when reporting the truth..be it sweet ....or bitter!!Amazing ad..

Hectic!!!! and loving it!!!

They say that working in one of the best IB in the world prepares you to handle anything in your career!!
Thought that held true only for traders...!!
But....working for 16 hours every day has made me believe that its true for techies too!!

but, the best part of it is that...........
I am loving it!!!!

AK,
Was Tagged by GWBE and my list is the last post...its not complete, so i might oblige you by putting down what i was able to squeeze in my reading schedule after the last post!!!
:-)

hmm.....

First of all.....our bundle of joy came into this world on Oct 4th!!! :-)



Was Tagged (a loooong while ago!!) by GWBE.
wokey!!

Last 5 books read

English August upamanyu chaterjee
Brave new world aldous huxley
Catcher in the Rye j d salinger
To kill a mockingbird harper lee
We, the living ayn rand

Currently reading..

Sidhartha
Geeta and the art of successful management


Planning to read..

1984
Catch 22
and a whole lot of 'em!!!


All time Favs
Diary of Anne Frank
Fountainhead
Atlas Shrugged
To kill a mockingbird
English August
No Comebacks (A collection of short stories by Frederick Forsyth)

luv these too...
Erich Segal books
John Grisham books
Kane and Abel
The Day of the Jackal


hmm..well...my list of "bloggers i visit" have been subjected to this ritual of tagging.....so me kind of not excercising my option (call or put?!!! lol)

Do you play International Cricket...

Location: Duane Reade Pharmacy Store
I am standing at the pay-counter waiting to get my bill so that i can pay for it and hurry to catch a metro to finish off my shopping. The guy behind the counter is looking at me in a strange manner.
"Say, can i ask you a question" he questions.
"Sure ..yeah" i said.
"Hmm..dya play cricket?"
I was caught by surprise by this question of his because cricket does not happen to be one of the most popular games out here.
"Yeah..i do"..i said.
"Are you from Pakistan?"
"India" i said a little miffed..
"Dya play international Cricket" the next question.

Suddenly i was confused. Was he asking me whether India has an international cricket team? well if he knew about cricket, then he wouldnt be that stupid not to know about Sachin, would he?
"Err...Do i play international cricket" I asked for confirmation, stressing on the "I"
"Yes, yes" came the eager reply.
"No" i said.
"Oh man, O man..you look so much like one guy i say playing in the West Indies. Cant remember his name, but i swear you look like him. When you walked in, i was like..Hey this is that cricket star..."
I was shocked. People have told me that i look like X or Y, but this was the first time that a comparison was made to a cricket player.
Needless to say, on the metro, i was thinking about which cricket player he would have meant, but sadly have not been able to figure that one out!!!!
Well..they say that there are 7 people in this world who looks like you...and one of my look alikes happens to be a cricket star!!!!

Disturbing..

Got this from the postsecret blogspot and it was disturbing...
whoever it was, please realize that the very fact that u have posted it shows your remorse for what u have done...so u can start feeling less guilty..
http://photos1.blogger.com/img/296/2612/1024/sooner.jpg

With Honors..

A beautiful movie which tells the tale of how a "bum" can make a difference to the lives of four Harvard students...
Old one, just came across it and watched it twice already.
http://www.mooviees.com/1190-with-honors/movie

Fire God Angry...

One of the most luxurious hotels in the world..the Ritz Carlton...as seen from my apartment!!

november rain

'Cause nothin' lasts forever
And we both know hearts can change
And it's hard to hold a candle
In the cold November rain


Don't ya think that you need somebody
Don't ya think that you need someone
Everybody needs somebody
You're not the only one
You're not the only one

Why dont we have these kind of good music not created these days???

My first attempt at cooking

"I will teach you cooking". This came from my senior colleague who had travelled with me to the US for a training stint. I looked at him with amusement and told him "My wife has been trying to teach me cooking for the last 2 years and has not succeeded. Now you think that you can do it in 1 month(duration for which we are here in US)!!!!He laughs and takes it up as a challenge.I think about it and work out the economical gains of cooking for myself. A proper dinner in US costs you around 8 Dollars (Big Mac or a tandoor restaurant run by a sardarji - choose for yourself) and if i were to cook, then not only it will save me some real dough, but i could also make the food according to the likings of my palate. Got excited about it and wanted to start cooking immediately (I am like that. If i get excited about something, i immediately want to start it off. Guess its like that with most of the Aquarians!!).So the next day, i go and get chicken, oil, tomatoes, chillies, chilli powder and sauce. And then i start my experiments with cooking. End result - amazingly tasty chicken fry which i very magnanimously shared with my colleague who was shocked to find out that i could cook really nice. "This is really good" were his words and i was left thinking how i could achieve this feat when i hadnt even made an omlette before in my life.Guess the reason has to be that of being tired with the angrezi food and wanting to eat something really spicy.Well whatever the reason is, i have decided that i love cooking and am gonna make fish fry tomorrow!!

Called up my wife and told her that i cooked a real cool chicken dish and that my friend liked it and she responds "Well. Good. Once you come back, you can take over that job!!":-)

I Love.....

My new NIKE Shoes!!!! :-) :-)
Its soooooooooooooooo comfy...

Wow!!!

I am in awe. Found out that the project that i am working onright now used to have a member who went by the name of Anna Hahn who incidentally is the US womens chess champion (http://www.uschess.org/news/bio/hahn.php) and another parallel system used to be headed by none other than Fischer Black(http://www.mayin.org/ajayshah/MEDIA/1995/black.html

Wow.

And there is a sybase guru in my same department who has written books on sybase and who is one of the people who were actually involved in writing sybase!!!!

True Friendship - Myth or Reality?

Is there something called as true friendship? If it exists, then what is the criteria for a person to be your true friend?
If he helps you with money when you are in desperate need, then is he your true friend? If he helps you to finish off your deliverables when you need to rush off to meet your spouse for an emergency, then is he your true friend? If he offers to cover up for you when u need to take a vacation, then is he your true friend? If he offers you free advice when you are down, is he your true friend?
Doesnt true friendship mean that we accept the other person as he is? If i expect him to act in a certain way and if he doesnt and if i say that i no longer want to be a friend of his, then arent i being a bad friend? Shouldnt i go back to him and ask him why he acted in the manner he did?
I can say that, he didnt do this, so he is not my true friend. He can say that, i didnt bother to find out why he acted in the way he did, so i am not his true friend.
Friendship is complicated. Or is it?

From New York.....

My first trip outside my india and i should say that the experience has been rather nice till now, except for the fact that i really miss my better half (particularly during this phase) and my near and dear ones.
I had always maintaned that americans were those egoistic ones, but then, i am slowly in the process of changing that opinion. Hey come one, aren't we indians also a little too much proud of our country? Same applies to all people.
but what stuck me so different over here is the general friendliness of the people. Stangers in lifts greet you with a bright good morning or how-are-u-doing. At least a nod of the head is granted for sure. If you are crossing the road and if there is a taxi speeding down on you, the guy actually stops for you and then puts out his hand and waves to you to cross the road and waits till we do that. I was just thinking if the same sitatuion had happened back in india, the taxi driver would have speeded up and made sure that he went first and then probably would have put out his head and spit out some abuses for trying to get him into trouble.
Well, its only been one week, so its not enought time for me to pass a judgement that americans are more courteous than indians......surely time will tell....

While it's raining hard

Perumazhakkalam (While it's raining hard).
The most striking feature of this beautiful film(mallu) by kamal is that the central character of the story is not a human being , but its the rain. Not the light and soft rain, but fierce and powerful one. Its there when tragedy strikes and its there when the characters in the movie are having a happy time too(althogh this is very less).
It takes guts to make a movie in which the lead hero appears in a song and probably some 20 other shots and the second lead hero has only a song to appear in. We have had lots of heroine oriented movies till date in malayalam, but even in those, hero will definitely feature throughout the movie. Perumazhakkalam differs from these and stands out as a beautiful and sad poem.
Two strong female leads played by the most talented heroines currently present in the malayalam film industry. The film is a full emotions film. The anguish and fear for one lady at one end of a river(kallayi) and the loss and pain for the other at the other end of the same river (kalpathi). Two people on two different banks of the same river, tied to each other by destiny. One of them at the mercy of the other for getting her husband pardoned and the other silently asking god why she had to lose her husband at such a young age and at the same time burdened by god with the responsibilty of making a decision to spare a life. To giver her pardon for the man who killed her husband.
Taking another man's life is not going to get her husband back and so ganga does the god's work for raziya and we end up having that feeling of heaviness in the heart at the end of the movie, that which we get when we see a movie which moves us. Not by gory scenes and wailing heroines, but by the play of emotions from the lead pair. And when i say lead pair, here, unlike other typical mallu movies, its meera jasmine and kavya madhavan (In that order!!!!!!!)

Moving from the first job - painful

Its always a painful process when you move from your first job..well at least for me it is!! 4 years in the same company for my first job had made me helplessly loyal to it. Stuck on even though the pay was atrocious and the work was not cutting edge. Me being sentimental didnt help. After all, this is the company that took me straight from campus and then moulded a raw engineering mind into a tough(?!) software professional. So i should be loyal right?
Threw this one to a friend and pat came the reply "Arre yaar, if u have got something from the company, then they would have made the most use of you too and would have got more that that from you". Probably true. I was not lazy and was dedicated througout and i dont think i have even one supervisor who would tell me that my work used to stink.
But still, moving after 4 years feels like u are cutting something away from yourself and going to a new place feels like walking into a room and knocking on a door, without knowing what is inside there. The friends you have made over the years are not going to be there. The comfort zone is not there. The easy access to HR and Admin is not there. Being known as on of the "old" (as in, around for while) employees is not there. And the most important thing is that you need to prove yourself at the new place!!
Its going to be a whole new process again. Making friends (I am very poor at this cause i take a looooooooooong time to be friends with someone!), getting into the flow of the place, proving your mettle and in the whole process learning a lot of things. Its going to be a change and hopefully for the better.

Impact of Change Of Job!!

Came across this one ....and though as not dramatic as this(!!), i was left wondering what impact, the change of job (which is going to be next week) is going to have on me.....



A taxi passenger tapped the driver on the shoulder to ask him a question.
The driver screamed, lost control of the car, nearly hit a bus, went up on the footpath,and stopped centimeters from a shop window.
For a second everything went quiet in the cab,then the driver said:
"Look
mate, don't ever do that again.
You scared the daylights out of me! "The passenger apologized and said, "I didn't realize that a little tap would scare you so much."
The driver replied, "Sorry, it's not really your fault.
Today is my first day as a cab driver - I've been driving a van carrying dead bodies for the last 25 years."

There is something about sabarimala!!

There is something about sabarimala that makes us want to go back there again and again. Other than the fact that we get to see ayyappaswami only once an year, he seems to have a magnetic influence on the devotees. After the difficult climb and the darshan for a few seconds in the jostling crowd, when you climb down the hill and reach pampa, the feeling in your mind is NOT "Whew, i need to get back home as soon as possible", BUT, "Swamiye, i will come back to see you next year" and THAT is the magnetic appeal of the manikandan.For me, ayyappaswami is the embodiment of all the good things in the world. He is the god that i can relate to and who gives me a sense of being "real". A god, who did not perform miracles which cannot be fathomed by human beings, but again was not a mere mortal.His life had a meaning, to destroy an embodiment of an evil and he had as a friend, a muslim, which was a strong social message during the old times. Thousands and thousands of disciples go to sabarimala every year and on the way they visit the curch of "Vavar" who was ayyapas close muslim friend. The famous playback singer yesudas is an ardent disciple of lord ayyappa and everyday night at the sannidhanam, lord ayyappa is put to sleep by singing "Harivarasanam", which is the recorded song of yesudas. Where else can we see such a strong sense of unity of all the relegions? This is one of the things that make sabarimala a unique experience.http://www.manoramaonline.com/advt/sabarimala2004/index.htm