MY TRADITIONAL NEW YEAR’S EVE POST

Like I’ve maintained all along, 2011 has been a mixed year for me. So many moments, so many emotions- happiness, pain, dejection, love, support, motivation and friendship, I’ve truly been on both sides of the spectrum this 2011.

Life until now hasn’t really been easy for me, but the friends I’ve made over the years and the experience I’ve gained from my failures have only made me stronger. My friends who’ve been with me throughout, thank you guys, if I am still sane( well, am i? :P) it is definitely because of you. As for those who demotivated me and/or tried to pull me down, thank you even more. It is because of you all that I put in that extra bit of effort every day.

A special thanks also to this year’s bunch of juniors. Every single one of you. You people have been amazing. :)

So yes, never before have I ended a year with such a vibrant smile on my face. Let’s just hope 2012 brings in more joy, not only for me but to every single one of you reading this post.

I’ll sign off with this short story I found out on the internet.

The Story of the Butterfly

A man found a cocoon of a butterfly.
One day a small opening appeared.
He sat and watched the butterfly for several hours
as it struggled to squeeze its body through the tiny hole.
Then it stopped, as if it couldn't go further.

So the man decided to help the butterfly.
He took a pair of scissors and
snipped off the remaining bits of cocoon.
The butterfly emerged easily but
it had a swollen body and shriveled wings.

The man continued to watch it,
expecting that any minute the wings would enlarge
and expand enough to support the body,
Neither happened!
In fact the butterfly spent the rest of its life
crawling around.
It was never able to fly.

What the man in his kindness
and haste did not understand:
The restricting cocoon and the struggle
required by the butterfly to get through the opening
was a way of forcing the fluid from the body
into the wings so that it would be ready
for flight once that was achieved.

Sometimes struggles are exactly
what we need in our lives.
Going through life with no obstacles would cripple us.
We will not be as strong as we could have been
and we would never fly.

So next time you fail in something (@ezhil arasan, I am NOT referring to failing in an exam btw :P) remember about the butterfly. Struggles are what make us fly higher.

Have a wonderful 2012 everyone.

Until next time,

Adios!

MATCHES, MIRCH AND MASTI part 2

HUNDI BIRIYANIS, HANGOVER BUDDIES AND THE KOLAVERI BHAIYYA

Pardon me for the gap between the previous post and this one, the semester has begun and I am finding it particularly hard to adjust between doing-nothing-at-home to doing-nothing-in-college. B)

Getting on with the post, part 2 of ‘MATCHES, MIRCH AND MASTI’ will deal predominantly with food. And um, beverages.

AN OVERDOSE OF CHICKEN

Now if you are a die hard biriyani fan, you will most certainly know that Hyderabad is THE place to go to for authentic Moghul biriyani. We were not disappointed. The GOLD BAWARCHE RESTAURANT that was a 5 minute walk from the pigeon hole we were put up in served some amazingly good biriyani at dirt cheap rates. Now having grown up in a city that charges exorbitant amounts for relatively small plates, when we saw a hundi biriyani priced there at 140 rs, we thought “well ok, 140 rs, that could serve one person.” But the damned thing came in a container so huge, 3 people could have eaten from it. comfortably! Not only the hundi( pronounced as hun-di) biryanis but almost everything they served at the GBR was insanely good and amazingly cheap. Being a die hard non vegetarian, such good food at such an affordable price spelt only one thing. P-A-R-A-D-I-S-E.

MACHI OPEN THE BOTTLE!

Victory and celebration are something that are synonymous with cricket tours. Now each guy has a different way of celebrating. But one form of celebration that is universally accepted and followed is “machi, OPEN THE BOTTLLEEEE!” this tour had enough rest days in between matches and the guys decided to, um celebrate. Now being someone who doesn’t drink definitely has its perks. Like sitting there watching them making an ass of themselves. And with the right amount of prodding it can be entertainment guaranteed. A few moments from the tour are classic. Buddy’s back stretch, praga’s antics, panch-o going for a jog the next morning with half boil stuck in his beard and PT banging shoulder first into the wall while trying to lie down to sleep. Truly hilarious moments! Both on and off the field, this is probably the best team I’ve been part of. Extremely talented and obscenely funny. It was truly an honour to be one among you. Love you guys. :)

WHY THIS KOLAVERI?

Just a few weeks before this tour, sony music released a song from 3, a tamil movie directed by rajnikanth’s daughter and starring his son in law. A couple of days later, the song went viral registering page hits and downloads like nothing ever seen before!

Before leaving for Hyderabad, I was quite skeptical about this entire VIRAL thing. Agreed, a song can become so popular it is played in all sports events irrespective of the language or the context. Like say a ‘chak de’ or a ‘ringa ringa’. But only after reaching Hyderabad did I truly realize the gigantic proportions this song had snowballed into. It was everywhere. Literally!

Juice shops, shopping malls, chat kiosks, breakfast vendors, everyone kept playing the damned song over and over again! And if they came to know that you were tamil, they had only question for you. “COLA-VERI ka meaning kya hai?”

Now listening to a song almost all the time is something but having it played every morning precisely at 7 is another. Suprabhadam, yes I can understand but why this kolaver di, definitely NO! Our breakfast vendor would arrive at our room at exactly 7am and start playing the song. The worst part, he would put it on loop! So every time the song ended, dhanush would start off again in a few seconds with “yo boys, I am sing a song!” the first few days it was fine, but after the third morning it became too much to bear. What was the meaning of kolaveri you asked, you should have come seen the look in our eyes between 7 and 7.30 am every morning. ;) but then, the man was genuinely good and so were his idlis, dosas and mysore bondas. So we decided to spare his life, affectionately calling him the KOLAVERI BHAIYYA. At the end of the meal, he would make calculations in his head and tell us the total amount. At 10 rs a plate (4 idlis/2 dosas/4 bondas, same rate) we never really bothered to check. C’mon this was our very own kolaveri bhaiyya, he would do us no harm! The last day though, we did. And we realized that he had charged us an additional 40 rupees that day alone! Either he had looted us from day one or he was very bad at math, we would never really know. we decided to leave it at that.

A couple of days later, we were safely back home, the train journey surprisingly being largely uneventful. ;) In hindsight though, this tour has been one among the best. We played hard and we partied harder. It was a shame though that we lost. But then failure is just an opportunity to start over again knowing what to do and what not to. SRMite and proud!

Until next time,

Adios!

MATCHES, MIRCH AND MASTI part 1

Though people might say that I wasted 2 yrs by discontinuing from veltech and joining srm, I’d still say that it was possibly the best decision I’ve taken in the recent past. Yes, it is quite uncomfortable to be explaining to my classmates from school who are now either working or doing their higher studies as to why I am still in the 3^rd year of college but then, the fun I’ve had ever since I’ve joined srm tends to overshadow the disappointment.

College cricket tours were something I wouldn’t have ever dreamt off had I continued at veltech. Because, well, the damned college didn’t really have a cricket team. But ever since joining srm, I spend more time on the field than in class.

This particular blog post is about my recent trip to Hyderabad for, you guessed it right, matches! :D

We spent 10 days there in all and had amazing fun, so much fun that it would be impossible to put it all up in a single post. So 2 parts it will be.

Part 1 of this trip, I’d like to call “CLEAN ROOMS, WATERLESS TOILETS AND A DIRTY PICTURE”

Now the bad thing about college sports tours is that we get to put up with pathetic accommodation. Storerooms in hostels, empty classrooms converted into temporary dorms and haunted faculty quarters; we’ve seen it all. During this stay in OSMANIA UNIVERSITY, the FIFTEEN of us were put up in an independent house with ONE fan, ONE toilet and ONE bathroom! Though frankly speaking, the only reason we ever switched on the fan was to keep away mosquitoes. It was unbelievably cold there.

The rooms though were clean; not as in the ‘hotel room’ clean but as in the ‘inhabitable’ clean. The only problem however was that the following morning there was no water in the overhead tank, which translated into no water in the toilets! Perfect start to the day I would say. Just what you would want a couple of hours before the match. :/

The match was a breeze though and we ended up winning by a little under 200 runs.

And fortunately for us, unlike in IIT KANPUR, our room here was very very close to basic civic amenities; like good (in fact very good) hotels, a cinema theatre and a BIG BAZAAR family store. B)

THE DIRTY PICTURE was playing in the theatre along the road; now vidya balan in any role would draw crowds but vidya balan as silk smitha was sure to, even more. Prime example- almost our entire team flocked to the theatre irrespective of whether they understood hindi or not. ;)

Vidya balan was cute, pretty and hot all in one. But apart from the raunchy dance routines and the barely there costumes and a few genuinely good scenes and well written dialogues, there was nothing much in the movie worth a mention. Truth be told, it was the comments from our gang that kept us in the theatre through the entire duration of the movie. Ok, That and the couple behind us who seemed to believe that me and the others in the theatre were actually watching the movie and not the more interesting romance scene playing behind us. ;D

The movie did end but vidya stayed on in our hearts. B)

Apart from this, we also played cricket in the backyard, bought clothes lines, immersion rod heaters and other basic stuff you might need to survive in the house, ate amazingly good food, christened our breakfast vendor as KOLAVERI BHAIYYA and made friends with the pineapple vendor in campus.

Oh ya, we even asked a few people there for directions to kattankulathur, urapakkam and vandalur! :D

All these and much much more. But to know all that you’ll have to wait for part 2.

So until next time,

Adios!

CONTESTS, EXAMS AND THE CURSE OF THE INTERNET

Between my last post and this one, its been approximately 2 weeks. 2 weeks in which dhanush has gone international, with his ‘WHY THIS KOLAVERI’ song becoming viral. Talks are on that if mayawati does manage to make UTTAR PRADESH a separate country ( you can never fathom the shallowness of the human mind) she has plans to make WHY THIS KOLAVERI the national anthem. This will go down well with the citizens of U.S.U.P.( United States of Uttar Pradesh) because it will be a reflection of their feelings towards mayawati- why this kolaveri di? But assuming the chances of this becoming a possibility are as slim as T.R. getting an Oscar for his performance in Veerasamy, we’ll move on with this post.

If this is the first time you are here on my blog, my last post was an entry for the Surf excel- Indiblogger GET SMART BLOGGER contest. The voting is still ON so if you want to read the post, you can find it H E R E.

The contest was a great experience because apart from having my blog viewed and commented upon by fellow bloggers, I also had an opportunity to visit their blogs. The level of professionalism and creativity in a few really inspired me, egging me on to if not be better than them, at least be on par with them. Following this I decided to change a few things about my blog, a few of which you can already see and others, you will understand now.

For those of you who are colour blind and haven’t quite noticed this quite-obvious-in-your-face change, yes, I have opted for a new colour scheme. The blog has now gone from boring brown to bright blue.

I’ve shuffled the widgets/gadgets a bit, removing a few, adding quite a lot. You can now find the BLOGADDA gadget(clicking on which will take you to the BLOGADDA site) and the BLOGADDA RATER where you can choose to give anything between 1 to 5 stars for my blog, though knowing how sweet all of you are, I know you would give me nothing short of a 5! B)

If you liked my post and want others to read it, you can now SHARE it on FACEBOOK, TWITTER OR GOOGLE+ by clicking on the share icons at the end of the post above the comments tab. and for those of you who actually are eagerly waiting for my updates( I know there aren’t many but I like to say it, just because it makes me sound important. :P) you can now get updates on my blog through email. All you have to do is enter your email id in the FOLLOW THROUGH EMAIL tab that appears on the left of the page and you automatically get alerts as and when I put up something new here. This would actually do you a world of good because instead of wasting your time on facebook and other social networking sites, you can now waste your time reading this. B)

At the end of each blogpost, you’ll find 3 options under the title REACTIONS, wherein as the name suggests, you rate that particular blog post on what your reactions where after reading the post. If you thought my post was good, you can click COOL; if you thought my post deserved nothing short of a booker prize nomination, you can click on KICKASS. People clicking KICKASS are of course entitled to endless goodies, treats and special prizes from the author (of course, CONDITIONS APPLY :P) but if you plan on getting your heads ripped apart by my bare hands, you can click on PHYSICS WAS MORE INTERESTING! Now if you are smart, I know you wouldn’t choose option 3. B)

And since this is about the competition, I’d like to thank naren, usaid, shals, ms. P, ms. N and everyone else who felt my blog was good and decided to promote it. The blog went on to get approximately 850 page views in the last two weeks and my entry earned 23 official indiblogger votes. Both of which are personal highs. Thanks a ton for that guys, it really means a lot.

As the title suggests, its exam time right now at srm, which literally translates into MIND FUCK. Exams on alternate days with one day in between to allow us to revise the portions(though in my case, it translated into one day to study what I was supposed to study in the past 3 months) leaves the mind gasping for breathing space. True to word, after a couple of exams, I couldn’t take it anymore. I desperately needed a break from the routine and the Chennai rains definitely weren’t helping. On the ‘STUDY LEAVE’ days in between, I managed to sneak in a couple of movies and a book.

Movie no 1 was RA.ONE. Now if you haven’t already watched it and are planning to do so now, I’d advice you not to. If I had a chance to choose between dying and watching RA.ONE, I would most gladly prefer option 1. Yes, the movie was utter bull shit. The silver lining on the cloud though was kareena kapoor. Hot. And pretty. I’ve never really been a fan of her but man was she great in this!

To eliminate from my mind the notion that srk probably sucked when it came to superhero movies, I decided to watch another SRK flick. CHAK DE INDIA. Easily one of the best sports movies to have come out in bollywood(DIL BOLE HADIPA and PATIALA HOUSE? No they dont even count as sports movies!), this eliminated any little doubt in my mind why this guy is called KING KHAN. Brilliant acting complimenting an amazing storyline make this movie an evergreen hit. I decided to forgive him for the debacle that was ra.one

And the book I managed to read was REVOLUTION 2020. Chetan bhagat has this knack of turning incidents in other people’s (and his own) lives into best sellers. Though the book was definitely not anywhere close to 2 STATES, it was definitely good. My favourite line from the book still remains the last line on page 159:

“Life is a bitch when the only woman you can think of belongs to someone else.”

So true. So damn true. Rot in hell siddarth maalya! :/

If movies and novels weren’t enough to screw me already, in case my grades drop this semester, I’ll have the internet to blame. The reason I abstained from blogging was because I wanted to concentrate on my exams. But I managed to do everything other than that in these 2 weeks- downloading movies, downloading songs, watching stand up comedy acts, watching movie video songs, workouts and everything else I wouldn’t have even bothered to if it were during the holidays. But damn that was what happened. Two more exams to go now and by typing this post and uploading it, I don’t really seem to be doing myself any good as far as the exams are concerned. Guess I’ll have to resort to what doctors say after an operation- “ini elaam andha aandavan kai la dhaan iruku!” which is loosely translated into hindi as “ab sab bhagwan ke haath mae.” ;D

Signing out on that note,

Keep smiling,

Adios!

P.S. naren was contemplating on an idea of opening a fb page for the blog. Your opinions are most welcome regarding this, all you have to do is leave a comment on this page (you can comment using your gmail account or as an ANONYMOUS USER). Criticism, both positive and negative are most welcome. However if you want to continue looking good, you would not want to choose the latter. So think smart. Act wise. ;P

THOSE EXTRA TWO HOURS

The following blog post is my submission for the GET SMART BLOGGER contest organized by Indiblogger.in, a society for bloggers. The contest is powered by SURF EXCEL MATIC.

The topic: what would you do if you had two extra hours a day?

Now before all of you self-made-Stephen-hawking-fanatics start off on how astronomically, astro-physically and geo dimensionally it is impossible to get 2 extra hours a day, let me assure you that IT IS quite possible. How you ask? Well the guys at HUL have done just that. Their latest product, SURF EXCEL MATIC is so fast and efficient, it saves you 2 hours a day by getting rid of stains while your clothes are inside your washing machine, so you don't have to spend your precious time doing it separately. So let the detergent do the washing, while you get 2 extra hours everyday.

Now that the problem of how we got the 2 extra hours has been sorted out, let’s get down to figuring out ways to spend those two hours.

To be very frank, when I first read that mail, I thought “wow, easy topic, the iPAD 2 is mine.” But when I actually sat down to type this post, I realized that I really had no idea as to what I would do if I had those extra 2 hours. So I decided to get some help, cos what do you know, har ek friend zaroori hota hai. ;)

Text messages were sent out to a select few in my contacts list. 80% said they would spend those extra 2 hrs sleeping. The remaining 20 didn’t bother to reply. Considering we live in a nation where 32% of the population is reluctant to vote, I had to admit, I wasn’t really surprised at being cold shouldered by the 20%.

80% said sleep! Astounding. The reason I figured out later had to do with the age group I had surveyed. 17-25. Engineering students or b school graduates working their butts off on projects in college or at work(miss p, you aren’t part of either group but you still chose to sleep. Hmmm, we need to talk on that. :P)

What was my opinion you ask? Well not sleep definitely. I mean, look at me. Whenever I do go to college (which is quite rare), I spend a lot of time sleeping- Sleeping on the bus, sleeping during lecture hours, sleeping again on the bus back home. So on an average, I already spend 2 extra hours a day sleeping. Which is quite bad because I am not really a sleep-a-holic. So I thought I’d use my 2 extra hours on something more purposeful.

I decided to put my grey cells to constructive use ( After all, they have to be used once in a while. ;) ) and I came up with a list of things that I could put those 2 extra hours into. Which are:

1. FIGHT CRIME, you know, the BATMAN way. Or going by current trend, the VELAYUDHAM way. :D because frankly speaking, I think there is too much corruption in the country and I feel Anna Hazare is nothing more than a publicity stunt to debase the current government.
   
   
   Oh ya, that’s my equivalent of the BATMOBILE and behind me is my able sidekick CHUBBY(name changed in accordance with the TERMS AND CONDITIONS of being a superhero). ;D
   
   
2. PREDICT THE END OF THE WORLD. It isn’t tough actually, predict a random date, submit conclusive evidence (which more often than not doesn’t conclude anything), mind fuck people and once doomsday has passed without so much as a tremor, say global warming prevented it. You could be a hit with the corporate sector because now they can claim that they were actually releasing toxic waste into the atmosphere ‘for the GREATER GOOD’. Instant fame and no death threats from the industries. 2 birds in 1 stone. I’d say that is genius! :D
   
   
3. WATCH T.RAJENDAR MOVIES. Though it is something I wouldn’t recommend for the weak hearted.
   
   
4. TRY AND GET 50 FOLLOWERS ON MY BLOG. Which I’ve realized over the 2 years that my blog has been active as being quite IMPOSSIBLE. I’ve tried everything; bribing people, begging people, blackmailing people at gun point. The only option left right now is a sex change operation. I guess that’ll do the trick.
   
   
5. TRY AND CONVINCE SRK that tamilians don’t pronounce “konjam” as CONDOM, don’t say “AYYO” at every possible opportunity and most certainly don’t eat noodles with curd. As for being brainy and having hot girlfriends/wives, I think you got that one right shahrukh. B) :P
   
   
6. TRY MY HAND AT COOKING. Because like the saying goes, the fastest way to the MODERN woman’s heart is through her stomach. Well I can already cook a bit, if you are a big fan of chicken fry, then I am already half way through to your heart. But making open cheese sandwiches using a microwave oven seems to be one thing I need to master. Mom, who was force fed that sandwich yesterday would certainly agree. ;D

Yes people, two extra hours a day can mean a lot of opportunities at doing something you would have never imagined. All you need to do is summon your grey cells to use. My list is ready, what is gonna be yours?

Keep thinking

Until next time,

Adios!

P.S.. if you like this post, you can vote for me by clicking on the picture below.

voting can be done using your facebook or twitter accounts also.