1st Marriage Anniversary

 

Today 4th September 2009, My Wifey and I are celebrating our 1st Anniversary. So far we have been overwhelmed by the ecards, emails, phone calls and text messages of congratulations and blessings from relatives, friends and well wishers.

Last year when we tied the knot in India, I was happy for manifold reasons. One of them was, I was no longer spending time searching for a mate.  Today as I look back, I see so many positives of the married life.

I must give due to my Wifey who is a smart, cheerful, understanding, down-to-earth and a conscious person who is aware of the world around her.

She also impeccably keeps complete balance of her life and mine with a smile. For me Good Food has always been a great starting point and quite a few of my Friend’s spouses are great cooks. I have been treated royally when it comes to food by some of my friends and thanks to their ‘prayer's’ my Wifey is one of the best cooks.

Guess what, yesterday I was treated with a ‘Home Made Burrito with Tortillas’. Come On, How many of my Indian friends can boast of having ate a ‘Home Made Burrito’?. Anyway during the first 3 months, I had almost a different variety of ‘curry spiced rice’ for lunch that I ran out of count, I never knew this dishes existed. Each and every one of them was spectacularly cooked and delicious.

Now that we have moved from Maryland to Virginia, We are looking forward to keeping up the promise of hosting our friends very soon.

To celebrate our Anniversary, We are driving to New York this weekend and intend to have a memorable time.

:-)

Ganapati Bappa’s Blessings

 

This year 2009, My parents celebrated the 25th anniversary of hosting Lord Ganesha’s Idol as a part of Ganesha Festival celebrated yearly in most part of the world. We host Ganesha for Five days. The Lord is hosted for 1 and 1/2 day, 5 days , 10 days and in some cases 21 days if not retained for a year. For all the hosting days the Celebration is carried out when you have guests trotting in and out visiting Lord’s idol and praying for blessings.

Born in Chennai, Brought up in Mumbai is something which I oft repeat to introduce myself, Ganesha Festivals are a key event in the calendar year for me during which the activities are impressionable.

Of the many names of Lord Ganesha one is ‘Vignaharta’ (Destroyer of Sorrows). You can read more about it here. 

Being in the ‘Photographic Memory’ time during years till I left for USA, I have great memories of the wonderful time during the festival.

To jot down a few on the top of my mind

1. All of us decorate the ‘Room’ in which the Lord’s Idol is Hosted throughout the night with ‘Paper Flags’ , ‘Themocol Cuttings’, ‘Light Bulb Decorations’
2. We never close the ‘Main door’ of our home day or night.
3. We keep the ‘oil’ lamp flame alive during the duration of the hosting Lord Ganapati.
4. Our town Roha has often witnessed umpteen floods during monsoon almost every year but it has never occurred during the time of Ganesha festival.

There are other memories of when my dad almost drowned one year, I got smacked when I was jay walking near the river bank during visarjan etc etc.

It is said that the family which plays together stays together. I have experienced and tend to believe ‘The family that PRAYS together Stays together’. I wish even this year I was with my parents to celebrate this festival with them.

Please have a look at the videos which show the dedication with which the whole festival time is being carried out.

May Lord Ganesha bless one and all with all the Happiness and Peace possible.

Ganapati Bappa Moryaaa !!! Phudchya Varshi Lavkar Yaa !!!

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Microsoft Sketchflow – Excellent Presentation by Frank La Vigne

 

Almost since the start of the year majority of my software developments efforts have been in Microsoft Silverlight/ASP.NET MVC and jQuery.

When on 9th July Microsoft released Silverlight 3.0 alongwith Expression Blend 3.0, I immediately downloaded the trial version. One new ‘tool’ released within blend was ‘SketchFlow’.

Yesterday I attended the CAPAREA.NET presentation on MS SketchFlow by Frank La Vigne, which was a fantastic introduction for a developer mindset person like me to the designer world of presentation UI with the help of Sketchflow.

The attendance was in single digits, but the enthusiasm and humour filled delivery drove to the point the excellent capabilities of MS Sketchflow, which I believe now is the holy grail for Developers to use for building ‘Mock’ Prototypes.

Glad I could attend. You can find the presentation slides by visiting Franks website www.franksworld.com

Thanks to CAPAREA.NET for arranging back to back presentations on two consecutive days by Steve Michelotti and Frank La Vigne.

Technorati Tags: Silverlight,SketchFlow,CAPAREA.NET

Kandhasamy – Meets Expectations.

 

A couple of years back, I had received an email forward mentioning that if all the ‘corrupt’ money deposited in Swiss banks by Indians is returned back to the country, than India will be the richest country in the world. I did not take this email seriously because of so called procedures which are more or less determined to protect the bank customer.

Ever since the initial launch of this Susi Ganesan movie was announced, I was eagerly awaiting to watch this movie. But multiple delays and a long wait, the expectations from this Chiyaan movie after the debacle of Bheema was not sky high but hopefully it should be worth the ticket price.

Yesterday I watched the premier show of the movie in Loehmann’s Theatre Fairfax VA and was entertained. There were only a handful of movie goers for the show and the price of the ticket an exhorbitant 18 USD per head, I wondered whether there would be a surprise visit by the Celebrities of the movie. :-)

When you make a movie about current times you always run into the risk of entering a stale issue. I always wondered what kind of issue was being raked up by this movie so that it stands out the test of the time.

Over the years an actor ‘Chiyaan’ Vikram has been competing in the mutiple ‘getup’ arena with Kamal, Rajni, Ajit et. al. It would seem Vikram prefers action over acting, commercial over content.

When the movie started with a silly make up as a ‘SuperHero’ Kandhasamy and cooka-a-cooku dance by Vikram trying to really seem funny rather than fearful to the villan, (may be targeting towards the kids) it seemed a bit odd at that time. And the Phantom punch with a indelible mark leftover on the cheek. Eeekkkkk….

As the movie progressed steady with introduction of Vikram (who looked surprisingly young and handsome), Ashish Vidharthi, Shriya, Vadivelu the movie picked up steam and kept up the attention of the viewer.

At intermission it seems it would be a revenge saga, but post interval the movie takes a little bit of dip in mexico (pun unintended) and comes back to the steady height of entertainment and moral intent behind the ‘Robinhood’ actions.

One of the key questions asked in the movie was ‘Why should you overpay for the services !?’.

It was a paisa vasool movie with catchy music, decent choreography, good acting by Vikram, Ashish Vidharthi.

Very few movies in the recent memory has stayed back in the hangover the day after, this is one such movie. The questioning style of Vikram to Shriya in their very first encounter, Vadivelu’s bath dance in the Water Treatment scene are memorable.

Vikram dressing up as Aishwarya and dancing to the tune of ‘Dola Rey…’ was very nicely picturized.

BTW if you can watch it with kids and not squirm in your seat, it is a good movie by my standards and Kandhasamy meets expectations.

As a critic we can mention ‘soft editing’ which loosens the pace of the movie a bit and lot of Glaring Bright Flashes and camera angles which are a bit distracting.

Is it not Obvious ?

 

“The irony of mastering something difficult is once its mastered it no longer remains difficult.”

When it comes to problem solving like puzzles, even thinking outside the box still remains thinking within the problem or the solution domain.

Today I read a news saying General Motors is announcing Volt will give 230 mpg in City Driving. (See Link Here)

Just yesterday I read about what was the supposed reason for the huge spike in Oil Prices last year in 2008 summer. (Here)

So just remaining firmly within the context of this two I think obviously there is going to be more speculation about drop in Oil Demand which in turn will raise the prices to ensure the Oil Companies able to sustain their ‘profits’ and ‘investments’.

What Say !? Is it not Obvious ?

Twitter Trends

 

Whatever I know about human behavior is more or less based on what I have acquired by reading, analyzing and what I have experienced. One of the common pattern is unpredictability. Human behavior is accepted to be a direct result of what the person is thinking at that point in time and also it is based on previous thought jumps and previous experience of the person.

This is so hard and complex problem to have access to the data behind human thoughts and the result of the reaction to that thought in that instance for that person.

Our forefathers and every generation has always learnt by listening to others and by experience that it is very easy to ‘influence’ a individual, if we show some interest and attention to the individual. For some this works instantly and for other it takes some time. To influence a Mob, the science or factor’s are not much different. Even you must have heard of discoveries of Ponzi schemes eventually running out of time.

Essentially the unpredictability of human behavior in a way acts against the very crux of forming a society, but as we know there exists a social life and we as a social animal behave rather consistently with the expectations of the society. So this in my limited experience and knowledge interprets as ‘thinkers’ and the rest. You can say reactors, followers, advantage takers, critics, haters, indifferent etc etc.

Whenever I look at twitter trending topics I find that most twitterer’s are followers and yes people rather than reactors. The trend of twitter topics in general is very similar to Email Forwards and Spam Scams. There are a lot of specifics, but in whatever data I have seen and uncovered, it seems, twitter can be a tool in influencing human behavior once the thought put out by the individual is immediately acted upon. I wouldn’t be surprised that in future some autobot accounts will reacted individually to many individuals and influence genuine twitter user’s based on need/goal/aim of the ‘Big Brother’.

What Say !?

Another Bundle Movie – Review – Love Aaj Kal

 

1986. 6th grade.

English Teacher to the class : “So how many of you have read “The Invisible Hat” ? Raise your hands”

Even though I had read I did not raise my hand. My classmate prompty stood up and said “Raghu already read it and says its Bundle.”

English Teacher : “What do you mean Bundle ?. Last week you said movie Naseeb was good. I saw it and seeing Hema Malini ride her bike over cars stunt, it was bundle”

Some words haunt you for life. The above is a true story.

Today :

Bundle is a colloquial used in Marathi lingo meaning “Its Idiotic”.

Anyways Last friday my wifey and I watched a hindi movie named ‘Love Aaj Kal’ whose songs I had grown to love in the last month or so. I can boost to know all the lyrics today. After a long time has any hindi album fascinated me with tune and lyrics.

About the movie, the lesser said the better. I have nothing but disappointment with the story, screen play, acting and choreography. The only saving grace is catchy music.

Great one liner’s do not make a great movie. An idea is never good enough, but complete only when its sold, executed and followed through in its entirety.

In the initial frames Director Imtiaz Ali builds up a promise to a different point of view of love and lovers, but ends up repeating the run of the mill formulae of lover’s discovering their love by absence so late that it totally disassociates the viewer from identifying themselves with the on screen characters.

The patent of Yashraj movies, Discovering Love in Absence by many characters aka discovering the importance of electricity during Load shedding is now a well known formulae to the movie goers and fails to create a impact.

Oneliners by Saif Ali Khan like “Hum Cake Khane Key Liye Kahin Bhi Jaa Sakthe Hain”  or “Either Hamaari Dosti Gehree Hain yaa yeh Photo 3D hain” or even “Ladke isiliye aage chalte hain kee Ladikyon ko Raah Dikha Sake” are refreshingly charming and memorable.

But one like “Main ekdum defective piece hoon, Jyaadaa der SAD nahin reh sakta” are all so made up and not meet the standards of SAK.

Deepika looks superbly good but still fails to mask her non acting ability. Listening to her say “Yeh Angle thoda alag hain” made me squirm. Yikes.

‘Harleen Kaur’ looked lost with a made up halo and looked too young for the role.

All In All One Bundle Movie with foot thumping music. Waste of my time.

What Say !?

The Sonu Nigam Explosions 2009 Show

 

This was my first attendance to a Live show in the USA. It was in VA on the 24th July and a music filled entertainment package from 8:00 pm to 11:45 pm at Patriot Center.

Ayub patel, Gunjan, Sunidhi Chauhan, Hard Kaur and the ultimate multi-talented Sonu kept all the audience in enthralled with back to back performances mixed with Rock, Blues, Oldies and Rap.

Some of the highlights of the show were

1. Billie Jeans rendition as a Tribute to MJ

2. The Moonwalk

3. The Tabla playing by Sonu on a bench

4. Singing old songs and new ones without music and mesmerizing the audience and playing with their attention in lyrics and beats.

5. Last but not the least, the rendition of the ever popular ‘Beedi Jalailey’ to conclude the evening on even a great heights from which it started.

You can find youtube videos linked at (shot by my Iphone 3GS)

Overall Another great evening !!!

Me Think Google Chrome OS for desktop PC will Flop

 

As I am reading about the announcement that google will release a Google Chrome OS I cannot but wonder why do we need another operating system. In the last 15 years Linux has not been able to make much of a dent in the OS market let alone capture the enterprise acceptance.

Whatever or whenever they release the OS, I am sure it will not be accepted by the corporate world for quite some time.

What am I missing ?- Air India employees go on two-hour strike

 

As I read this “two hour strike” by Air India to protest delay in salary payments, I am trying to figure out what and who is wrong.

Are the leaders of the union so Myopic that they cannot see the recession in its peak across the world ? Don’t they realize a Rs 4000 crores loss in the sector only in the last fiscal year means almost they might have to close down ? Bankruptcy anybody?

Does the GOI think Air India is too big to fail and too big to close ?

My limited learning informs me ‘Change is the only constant’ and ‘what has a beginning has an end’. It’s your deeds which determine your outcome sooner or later.

Me think, things do not look great for Air India employees.