10 DAY YOU CHALLENGE #2- 9 LOVES

Post no 2 and I must admit, it was great typing the first one. Though must say, this one is relatively easy.

Here it goes.

9 LOVES

1. Pani puri. Well this would come as no surprise to people who know me. :D A love affair that started in the city of joy way back in 1997 and something that keeps going strong even after moving back to sowcarpet in namma Chennai.

2. Deepika padukone! B) am sorry Sid Mallya, but I saw her first!

3. Mom’s food. I’ve got to tell you, she is simply the best. what makes it so special you ask? Well I guess because it’s a mix of sugar, spice and everything nice. :)

4. The cool breeze against your face and that smell you get before/during/after it rains.

5. Yup( for the 2^nd time in 2 days), I love looking at myself in the mirror. :D

6. Driving with no hands on the steering wheel. B) ya ya, I am a bit of a show off. :P and I also love to caraoke. That’s karaoke done in a car btw. :D

7. Reading. Everything, from comics to novels. I am one big read-aholic. :D

8. French fries. Chocolate truffle cake. Double chocolate chip cookies from SUBWAY. Plain CADBURY’S Dairy Milk. Sundal and raw mango at MARINA BEACH, briyani from KARIM MESS. cheese puff from KESHAV CHATS. chicken tikka frankie from the FRANKIE MAN kiosk outside nilgiris and bananas and watermelon.

9. Damn! How could I forget! Jennifer aniston, Jessica alba, Natalie portman, priyanka chopra. Amala paul. Priya anand. Vedika. Asin and many, MANY more. oh btw, Sorry for cheating on you deepika! B)

Until next time,

Adios!

10 DAY YOU CHALLENGE #1- 10 SECRETS

Well, this one is tough. Very tough as a matter of fact. I mean, 10 secrets? Duh! Its supposed to be a secret! Silly me, I should have thought about this before accepting the challenge! :/ but then.

Well, here goes nothing.

10 things you didn’t know about me. Until now:

1. I love looking at myself in the mirror.

2. I get shouted at by mom for doing 1.

3. I get uncomfortable around strangers/ in crowded places.

4. I get sick while travelling on a bus. But since I need to travel by BUS 45 kms every day TO(fro would be another 45 kms), I prefer to plug my headphones in, play some loud music(by my standards, it is loud. But to people used to death metal, it would be barely audible) and go off to sleep.

5. I have very sensitive skin. Pinch/hit and I would literally die from the pain. But Rub gently, I would fall asleep. :D

6. I have had 4 stitches on my right eye brow, 7 stitches in my lower jaw, my nose is out of shape and I guess my left and right ring fingers are too.

7. I always prefer a yellow grip on my cricket bats.

8. I have travelled in a lorry from college to the railway station. All to watch a movie. :D This happened when I was studying in veltech engg. college

9. I used to sketch when I was young. I have got a framed line sketch of a cheetah and its cub which i completed on the 2oth of april 2006, hanging in our hall.

10. The only time I ever failed was when I was in my 4^th standard. It was in hindi. I was so scared that I hid the paper. Mom eventually found out. She also found a bamboo stick by its side. Half an hour later, there were two bamboo sticks. B) well, that was the last time mom hit me. I’ve never let that happen again.
p.s. well there were a few times when I did push my mom to the edge, but she kinda managaed to hold back. So ya, as a collective effort, we never let it happen again. B)

Well to be very frank, I didn’t really let out too many secrets , you know, my deep dark ones. But ya, I think what I did reveal were interesting enough. ;D

Until next time,

Keep smiling,

Adios!

the 10 DAYS YOU challenge

The past one month has been quite hectic. So much so that all i could do after getting back home was eat and hit the bed. But then inspite of all this, i managed to sneak in a blog post. But now, reflecting back, I guess I have not quite given my readers[the few that do follow my blog i.e. B)] enough.

So here's a surprise. Starting tomorrow(i first thought of starting today but then the procastinator that i am, I eventually put it off until tomorrow :D) i will be coming up with a series of posts, 10 in all in accordance with the 10 day you challenge that i stumbled upon on a friend's friend's friend's friend's(B)) Blog while blog hopping. :D
And as a special bonus(:P), here are the 10 topics that i will be blogging about.

Well If you wanna get to know me better, keep coming back to this space. ;)

Until tomorrow(or next time),

Adios!

P.S. i will be racing against time the following week as well so the blog posts will not exactly be updated every day. but i promise that the 10 posts WILL happen. so long. :)

TRAINING TRAVAILS

Considering that the majority of my readers are/were commerce students, I guess I’ll have to do the honours of introducing the NOVEL concept of INPLANT TRAINING. Well, at INDIA’S NO 1 PRIVATE UNIVERSITY we are advised (‘forced’ rather) to finish 2 weeks each of inplant(or is it implant? O.O) training(or in their words, HANDS ON INDUSTRIAL EXPERIENCE) before the commencement of the 3^rd and 4^th years.

As far as the workers in the company are concerned, the last thing they would want when they are trying to finish making 2000 jobs a day is a bunch of over enthusiastic students pestering you with questions. So what do they do, they ask us to OBSERVE. Which, actually means “go sit in that corner and pls, for heaven’s sake, leave us alone!” so 7 hours a day, u go and sit there in a corner of the factory ‘observing’ what is going on.

If you are lucky, you get to go for 4 or 5 days but still get the 15 days certificate required. But when lady luck isn’t exactly on your side, you get to travel 2 hrs to a factory just to sit for an additional 7 hours on all 15 days in a factory.

Now at SRM, we aren’t required to maintain a record of day to day training. So what normally happens is that people enjoy for 13 days, attend 2 days of training and submit the report. Which is quite sufficient because truth be told, 45 mins is enough to understand the entire working of the factory. But Veltech Dr. RR and SR technical institute have this custom of torturing people with useless paper work. I was a victim once. And I just got screwed by the same people again.

The company me and my friends went to had these old dilapidated buildings housing offices on one side and the factory with huge, I mean HUGE machines on the other. It was a reputed company having once supplied parts to DAIMLER-CHRYSLER (Mercedes to the common folk) but then the people running the company never bothered to upgrade the machinery and hence the orders started declining. But that’s another story.

About the people in the company, well we had no trouble with them really. All of them seemed to be pretty happy to let us wander about on the company’s huge green campus, only requiring us to report to them once in a while. All but ONE. We decided to call him ANNIYAN THATHA cos with his glasses on he was strict, mean and always shouting. But without his glasses, he would literally like cajole and spoonfeed us! Very ANNIYAN like, so ya the name kind of stuck on. But the only problem was that whenever we happened to meet him for something important, he always had his glasses ON! :S we weren’t spared even on the day we went to collect our ‘completion of training’ certificates!

As for me, life was hell there. But I’ve become so accustomed to the difficulties of a cricketer pursuing engineering that it seemed like a walk in the park for me, albeit a long and difficult one. B) wake up at 5.30. get to the ground at 6.30. team practice till. 10. Get back home by 10.15. shower and eat. Get to the company by 10.45. go there get shouted at by anniyan thatha for coming late daily. Report to our allotted section incharge at 11. While away time till 4 pm. And ya, since this was a manufacturing plant and not an IT company, we didn’t really have a place to sit also! :S

Anyways, this continued for 15 days. Eventually, we decided to cut short the time we spent in the factory. I got permission from the DGM, HR about my practice timing woes and thus didn’t have to get scolded by thatha everyday. The others decided to reach just before thatha arrived (which was usually 1 hr after the usual company timings, very punctual on his part :/) just as to look punctual. We would leave for lunch early and get back late. And towards the end of the training, we would normally leave the place by 2.30 itself.

The 15 days kind of sped by. We took turns bunking, we got caught by anniyan thatha on occasions more than one. We took pics in the factory and uploaded them on fb. We had the worst canteen food anyone could ever think of. We broke rules. We became friends with the junior engineers there. And to some extent, we did learn a thing or two as well. But eventually, when we did walk out of the factory with our certificates in hand though, we had only one thing in mind. Even if it was the last thing on earth, we resolved never to come back to this factory. Be it for training or for work! :D

Until next time,

Keep smiling,

ADIOS!

SMS PICK OF THE WEEK

The longer you wait for something,
the more you appreciate it when you get.
bcoz anything worth having
is definitely worth waiting for.

THE PANI PURI PHENOMENON

Before I start, let me remind you all that I am a panipuri-holic. BIG TIME! Kolkata was where this addiction started and it has continued, age doing no good in ridding me of the addiction. I for one make it a point to try out pani puri at every city/town/village I have been to(ok that was a bit of an exaggeration. I haven’t really been to any village yet that serves pani puri. B)) I guess Moving back to our ancestral house in sowcarpet was a blessing in disguise because back then you could get QUALITY pani puris only here.

My pani puri mate through all these years has mostly been my cousin who is two summers younger than me. After we joined college, we’ve not been able to spend much time together but whenever we do(mostly for shopping B-)), we make it a point to have a plate of pani puri along the way. Today was no different. Having made our customary pani puri pit stop, we headed off along MINT STREET.

MINT STREET. Interesting name. History books say the street was so named because of the presence of presses along this street where money was MINTed back during the post independence area(or was it the british era? Am not too sure. Besides, I was never good with history anyway :P). But now, considering the amount of chat shops on this road and taking into account that whatever be the dish, the main ingredient happens to be mint chutney, I guess the place couldn’t have been more appropriately named. B-)

Which brings me to my point.5 years back, the nearest pani puri shop was a 15 mins walk from my place. Now, there is a minimum of two in every street. And believe me, am not exaggerating! Take the case of mint street. I did a little survey today of the pani puri shops along mint street and the figures are quiet stunning. There are a total of 27 shops selling pani puri along a 400m stretch! The numbers are approximate, cos, What the heck, the count might have increased as I type this post. :P

What makes these shops tick u ask? It might have something to do with the steady growth of the north Indian population here in namba chennai. It might have something to do with the Chennai people becoming more OPEN to north Indian food and customs. Or it might simply have to do with the fact that pani puris are SIMPLY IRRESISTIBLE!

Whatever be the case, recession or ‘End of the world’, as long as its sowcarpet or kilpauk, the pani puri phenomenon will keep going strong. If ever you plan on becoming an entrepreneur in the future(like that kid in the CYCLE REPAIR SHOP ad ;)), try opening a pani puri shop. Small investments, big rewards guaranteed. :P

Until next time,

Keep smiling,

ADIOS!

BRAINSTORMING, THE EASY WAY

Well if you aren’t already aware, facebook has COMPETITION! And when it comes to the World Wide Web, there can be only one company capable of overtaking the now hugely popular FACEBOOK, yup GOOGLE it is! For those unaware, Google+ is here folks!

As this page suggests, Google+ seems to work like a kind of Twitter/Facebook hybrid that allows more control and looks great. There’s a nice quote by Shimrit at Epicenter, “On Facebook I overshare. On Twitter, I undershare. If Google hits that spot in the middle, we can revolutionize social interaction.” Well, as this site suggests, google seem to have done just that. Only the days to follow will tell if google+ is as successful as facebook.

But while the world is going all ga-ga over google’s latest brain child, people on forums are crying foul over the novelty of the concept. Google+ apparently is a rip off of tubri.com, a not so popular social networking site. Which brings me to this blogpost’s subject. Just how difficult is it to steal someone else’s ideas on the web and post them as your own? Not very difficult I guess.

Here’s a personal experience. blogging societies into which bloggers are registered organize contests from time to time encouraging bloggers to reach out , connect or innovate based on the company sponsoring the competition. At times, they promise a laptop for the best entry(well they do give them so no issues on that) and in the process end up getting tens of thousands of ideas. Am not complaining here but just go through this particular blog post. The competition was to encourage bloggers to innovate, to make the already ‘smart’ phone even smarter. One of the ideas in that post(the projector phone) was implemented. about 7 months after that post was published, a lesser known mobile company comes up with a projector phone! Am not saying that the company stole the author’s idea, am just saying it is possible that that particular post could have acted as inspiration. Besides, that is the whole point of brainstorming right? A group of people coming up with weird ideas those eventually materialize into something fruitful.

Whether google+ becomes a hit or not, we would never know. But one thing is for sure. If you are short of ideas, all you need to do is spend half a day surfing the world wide web instead of spending a fortune arranging a board meeting in a five star hotel. To all you business people out there, Just saying.

P.S. that particular post was written by me in October 2010. I am happy that atleast someone happened to have the same idea. Cheers! B-)

Until next time,

ADIOS!