mYbOnNyLaSS

Yipeeeeeeee! I've got a new girlfriend now. I desperately needed a change and was looking for a girl whom I can hang with. I knew what kinda girl I want and waited so long to find such perfect girl. She is really really beautiful and has a very sweet voice. I was completely floored when I saw her the first time and heard her singing. She is wheatish, her skin is flawless and silky. She has a bright smiling face always. Though she weighs little heavy (yes I've carried her) , she is the exact size that I've dreamt of. Now I can take her to places where stag entries are not allowed, dance with her, sing with her. Yeah! She is my perfect match. Wanna know about her?

She is my "Yamaha FX370C Natural", electric acoustic guitar. I haven't named her yet, I am searching for a good name. Suggestions are most welcome.

Happy Birthday!

I've known this guy for the past 23 years. A good friend of mine and has been my guide, my counselor and a maths teacher (for some time). He has helped me out in taking some serious decisions in my life. If not for him, I wouldn't have made it in Bishop Heber College. If he hadn't advised me about an interview 2 years back, I would have been a Bangalorean now working with Infosys. He trusted in me where ever I go and what ever I do. He has been my opponent only in the game of carroms and I love playing with him. He is a good biker too and has experience of travelling more than 200Kms at one stretch in bike. I love this guy and I call him "Dad". (Is mummy staring now?) I love her too.

Happy Birthday Appa!
Wish you a long life and success in your business.

I thank the Lord for my parents!

1st Anniversary.

It's now one year old. 365 days since I started this blog and it's my "First Anniversary" today. It had been a nice experience in publishing posts on different topics. Jamming sessions with my keyboard day and night, gazing at the ceiling for new topics, skipped meals and much more. I found this could be one of the fastest way of expressing things to a huge mass.
When I look back and see of how I've been through all these days, I just thank the Lord for everything. If not because of His strength, I wouldn't have managed to come so far in my professional, academical and spiritual aspects. I've learnt a ton of things since I started using internet.

Blogging, I found that spending time in blogging while connected to the internet could be of some value. I've invested every single minute of my spare time into this. The labor of one year is now published on the internet.
I take this opportunity to thank everybody who have been my source of inspiration, those who have been helpful, those who mentored me, who corrected me when I went wrong, all my friends, relatives and my parents. Thank You all! I'll keep going.

Did I become a writer now? and how long can I keep up with blogging?

How did Chrome get its logo?

I've always been a great admirer of logos of different companies. It not only represents the company, but has greater potential in advertising and taking the brand to the public.

The logo that I most liked is of "Sun micrsystems"

The word SUN can be read however you may turn the logo.

Few other logos that I like are..

BENTLEY : The other name for Luxury


BOEING : Taking you to space.


NGC: Simple but very effective.

The list is big which includes Google, Apple and Nike. But, this one is strange.

What is behind the design of Google Chrome's logo?
I've been using this browser from the day when it was released. It is pretty fast but sometimes it fails to load heavy pages with CSS, java and flash plugins.

Where did Chrome get it's logo from?
Is this what they call as "trouble the goose that lays golden egg"?

CCA Youth.

CHRIST CHURCH, ALANDUR.

Youth fellowship.

It has been two years now since I've attended the youth fellowship last time in Christ Church, Alandur; though I still pay a visit every time I cross Chennai. Those were great days, juggling my ball between my trainings and the Church. My training sessions spanned only for 4 hours during weekdays and 2-4 hours on Saturdays depending on the volume of LAB exercises we had. This gave me enough time to spend on other things.

CCA Youth - One dynamic group of young people, bound together by the love of Christ. They (We) :-D meet every Sunday after the church service. We start with couple of songs and this problem always existed - feeling very lazy to sing. To solve this problem somebody in the group will come up with this "so called *mind blowing*" idea of singing an "action song". Whew... I am game!. One secret thing is, initially I found it difficult with the actions because, they were different apart from what I've learnt. But, as I always had a good talent of imitating , I started managing my show. Most of the time I've succeeded when tried doing new actions flawlessly. This is followed by a time of worship and Later comes the time of testimony. We then get into the message. Every week a different speaker is arranged and it really really would be a great time learning the Word of God. Finally we wind up by praying for each other and few prayer points. So did every Sunday pass away.

There were exceptions too. Inter-church competitions made the difference. It is actually a one day event organized by most of the churches accross Chennai. It involves a package of songs and a whole bunch of competitions. The event starts after the church service, which ever the host church it be.

I vividly remember my first day when I stepped in being a part of CCA Youth fellowship. I was introduced to the youth secretary, Deepan Francis. I found him to be busy with a paper and a pen writing something. I didn't understand what he was doing. The moment I was introduced, he said; "Paul, good to have you with us. You will be participating in a competition called Ship Wreck. We will be leaving in a while". I was thrown flummoxed. I told him as this being the first day, let me sit and watch everything first, then will join you in all other competitions. He never seemed to mind my plea and didn't excuse me. One thing that concerned me a lot was, I didn't know what 'ship wreck" meant. :-P Did I ever say them this? The gentleman in me again played his part. Finally what? We won a prize! I accompanied the group in many other Inter-church competitions. It was all fun, I say.

We organized one too. Titled as "Anchorage", one big event by our fellowship with a big budget.

It was really a good experience doing everything from end to end. We practiced for the singing sessions, prepared charts, score cards, fiddled with the background curtain decorations, designed our T-shirts, blah blah blah blah... and many many more. The event on the whole was a great success. End of the day, we planned to go to the beach and have a gala time. Eventually, ended up hitting our heads against the pillow after a fully packed busy day. I lost the opportunity in marking my footprints along with the youth members on the sands of Besant Nagar beach.

I've spent ample amount of time with the Sunday school children too. They were awesome. I pray for every children out there, that they may grow in the knowledge of God.

I owe a lot to the fellowship. This was the only source which kept me running closer to God in the marathon of my life; all my days in Chennai precisely. I thank every youth member there. If my memory is not that bad, here are some to be mentioned... Deepan Francis, Eben, Alphonse, Beryl, Joshua, Chinna, Inba, Dani, Justin, Calvina, Caroline, Sarah, Deborah, Diana.... and many more. Sorry people if I had failed to mention your names. You'll have to blame my poor memory.

The last Sunday after which I had to leave Chennai, I stood outside the church compound, on the road looking up the cross over the Church. Tears rolling down my eyes, I thanked the Lord for all that he had taught me during my three months stay in Chennai and for giving such a good fellowship to be enriched in Him. I payed a standing ovation.

I didn't know if I will ever comeback again to join this dynamic group. But, I made a choice to never loose any opportunity in landing down here to pay a visit. I also prayed for a similar fellowship where ever I go. Yes, I knew I was leaving for Hyderabad. After a great sigh of accomplishment, I left home.

I am in Hyderabad at present. He has proved Himself faithful again. I have a good fellowship here.

Later!

CompuMania

Have you ever had the experience of being caught with CompuMania? You should have been, but might not be aware of. As I write/type this post, I am seriously suffering with this disease. This thought just popped in my brain for a moment, "What the hell would I be doing in the world without computers?"
I think, I should start practicing "Star gazing" well before that age arrives. What else would I be doing then? Breaking stones? Not a bad profession indeed! We needn't be bothered of our deliverable, target dates, goals, accomplishments, meetings, hike negotiations and in fact no BOSS.Let me start here. - I'm typing this post, yeah, I need computer and I've got one. It runs Windows XP operating system with SP 2. Are there other operating systems out in the market? Yeah, how about DOS, UNIX, Linux, Solaris, Machintosh. There are many more and Linux has numerous distributions. Machintosh? Costly, but worth every penny you've spent. Intensive and heavy graphics is less difficult than a cake walk on Machintosh. Alright, though I am not using my favourite operating system, yes, Linux, windows has always served my needs.

I wanna publish my blog. To access the blogger I need a browser. Bowser? Which one should I use? Internet explorer, Opera, Mozilla Firefox, Flock, Apple Safari... there are many more. My choice is always Firefox. Oops, should I be knowing HTML coding to publish my blog? Not exactly, but still it is always an added value to your blogging spree. I knew very little, and the result is my customized page as you see.

Okay, where are my blogs stored? In Google's servers? Whew! What amount to speed and capacity should that server have to serve billions of blogs. I know that Google uses Linux servers for all these purposes. LINUX - what is that? A command line operating system with black and white window? Nope. Linux is an advanced operating system with billions of colors. It can be configured even from answering your phone call to waking you up in the morning playing your favorite music, video, whatever. On what language is Linux written? C , C++?

Ah.. here come the languages. English, Tamil, Hindi,.but does a computer understand them? Thus computer languages are developed. Two decades back who in India would have known otherwise that C is just another alphabet? But, where did the languages era start? Assembly, Basic, COBOL, FORTRAN, ALGOL, C, C++, C#, curl, Java, Perl, Ruby, Python, J2EE, J2ME. If you wanna believe this with me, there are approximately about 218 programming languages. Uh! ( Big sigh). Would have I known this about 10 years back, I will now be speaking in Java and Perl. (Yes, I am still learning perl)

This again is interpreted or complied to machine understandable language. Wondering what is that? Zeros and Ones. Now that I have my blog wirtten, I have to publish it so that I can be viewed by the public. The moment I press "Publish Post" button, my blog is taken care of the TCP/IP protocol, reaches my WiFi Access point in the hall, then through the hubs on the post opposite to my house, through the underground cable running round the city via secunderabad, minister's road, Necklace road, through the smelly Hussian sagar lake, Banjara hills, Madhapur, Hitech city and reaches the VSNL building. Gets into the routers, switches, cables again and finally Boom...makes it into the server. 01010111000100100010011101010010001 01001 01001 010 10 010101010 10010 10 01111001010101 01010011001 110 010 10 01 0 0101001 01 101 01 101000011101010 010100101 110110100101 100 01010 000010 10101 01 10 101 010110101 01 01 10 0 10 01 1 0010110101 01 01 10 101 1001010110 10 10 101 010101

Press ON

What is it the world up to? What does it wants from me? Why did it make living so difficult, Or did we? How do I react when the whole world treats differently? Times when parents lose trust, friends give up, relatives *some* as usual are least bothered. Times when there is not a single soul to tap your back and say "keep going", when you go unrecognized for all the good things you've done, when you're deliberately denied of privileges you deserve, when you are rejected by your fellow men, when you are ignored, when your own body fail to co-operate, when your health gives up, when there's nobody to care, not a soul mate to share, when there's nobody to walk with, or laugh along. When your bed turns out to be your only companion, and your pillow, the only one that has learnt the language of your tears,
when you tend to forget what day and date today is and when the whole world seems to spin only around you....

In all, when it is said that you are in "Perfect Ditch", don't forget that there is still little hope where you can cling on.

Bible says "Fear not; for I am with you: be not dismayed; for I am your God. I will strengthen you; yes, I will help you, I will uphold you with my righteous right hand." Isaiah 41:10.

If not for Jesus, there is no reason worth enough to live in this world.

Practice Law?

I just completed reading a couple of novels written by John Grisham. Last one that I read was "The Partner", kept me glued to it until I reached the last page. I love reading books and this is the first of its kind - "Law". I never had a vast knowledge or bright view over that field, but Mr. Grisham, threw me into lime light after reading his collection. He kept me turning page after page, extremely fabulous and completely suspense packed.
After reading good volumes of Law, Firm, Court, Notice, Bills, Jury, etc etc... I happened to come across this piece of information which I found very interesting.

These are from a book called "Disorder in the American Courts", and are things people actually said in court, word for word, taken down and now published by court reporters who had the torment of staying calm while these exchanges were actually taking place. Enjoy reading it!

ATTORNEY: What gear were you in at the moment of the impact?
WITNESS: Gucci sweats and Reebok.
____________________________________
ATTORNEY: This myasthenia gravis, does it affect your memory at all?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: And in what ways does it affect your memory?
WITNESS: I forget.
ATTORNEY: You forget? Can you give us an example of something you forgot?
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: What was the first thing your husband said to you that morning?
WITNESS: He said, 'Where am I, Cathy?'
ATTORNEY: And why did that upset you?
WITNESS: My name is Susan!
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: The youngest son, the twenty-one-year-old, how old is he?
WITNESS: Uh, he's twenty-one.
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Were you present when your picture was taken?
WITNESS: You're kidding me, right!?
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: She had three children, is that correct?
WITNESS: Yes.
ATTORNEY: How many were boys?
WITNESS: None.
ATTORNEY: Were there any girls?
WITNESS: Are you shitt'in me? Your Honor, I think I need a different attorney. Can I get a new attorney?
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: How was your first marriage terminated?
WITNESS: By death.
ATTORNEY: And by whose death was it terminated?
WITNESS: Now whose death do you suppose terminated it?
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Is your appearance here this morning pursuant to a deposition notice, which I sent to your attorney?
WITNESS: No, this is how I dress when I go to work.
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Doctor, how many of your autopsies(Post-mortam) have you performed on dead people?
WITNESS: All my autopsies are performed on dead people. Would you like to rephrase that question?
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Are you qualified to give a urine sample?
WITNESS: Huh....are you qualified to ask that question?
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: ALL your responses MUST be oral, OK? What school did you go to?
WITNESS: Oral.
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Do you recall the time that you examined the body?
WITNESS: The autopsy started around 8:30 p.m..
ATTORNEY: And Mr. Denton was dead at the time?
WITNESS: No, he was sitting on the table wondering why I was doing an autopsy on him!
______________________________________
ATTORNEY: Now doctor, isn't it true that when a person dies in his sleep, he doesn't know about it until the next morning?
WITNESS: Did you actually pass the bar exam?
______________________________________
The Best of all

ATTORNEY: Doctor, before you performed the autopsy, did you check for a pulse?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for blood pressure?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: Did you check for breathing?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: So, then it is possible that the patient was alive when you began the autopsy?
WITNESS: No.
ATTORNEY: How can you be so sure, Doctor?
WITNESS: Because his brain was sitting on my desk in a jar.
ATTORNEY: I see, but could the patient have still been alive, nevertheless?
WITNESS: Yes, he could have been alive and practicing law.

I couldn't stop myself reading it over and over again.

Night Study - Climax

To be very clear, I would suggest you to read Night Study Part I first.

Heart pounding, without wasting another second I shouted at the peak of my voice - RUN!

I clearly knew that I am in real danger of being smacked by the people in the bus. My legs were swift enough to carry me away as fast as it can. Though it being a uphill road, I managed to run with my school bag on my shoulder. I was already 100 mts away from the bus. I didn't scramble the cards, as I still had hopes of continuing the game. I turned back to see my friends, there were not to be seen. I thought the commuters in the bus should have caught them, I was scared. The road was twisted and dense with trees, I know they were searching me. Out of curiosity to know about my friends, I stopped. turned back powered ON my torch light pointing towards the direction where the bus is. Right at the next moment, I heard the people yelling "there he is". Oops, did I let them know where I am? I didn't waste another second and started running as far as my legs could take me without a break. After reaching a particular point and when I felt that I was safe from the commuters sight, I sat down behind the road side block. I prepared myself as how to escape even if they are going to come here. There were tea bushes on the side of the road where I was sitting and I know it can provide me good cover in the dark and even in moon light.

I was gasping for breath, but managed to keep myself silent lest, letting them know my hide. I waited for my friends to come. When they reached, I interfered them. They didn't wanna speak with me and were very serious. After a dozen of sorry, they agreed to tell me what happened. Before my friends realized that something had gone wrong, I was already 40 mts away from them running at my top speed, the commuters caught them. After a long slew of scoldings, the commuters finally agreed to listen. As my friends didn't have a powerful torch and as the commuters had seen me running, they agreed to leave my friends. They also planned in such a way that from the next day when the bus comes, the driver will run the bus over me and my friends should hide when this happens. I was almost about to wet my pants. But being a gentle man, I tried my best to keep up my stature. My friends were so good that they agreed to save me from the bus.
That night I didn't have a good sleep. No, I didn't wet my bed.

Next day came, I was all prepared to face whatever is about to happen. After the night study we started our ususal walk and the wrestling card game. As we knew the time when the bus usually crosses that place, we started taking cover behind a tree and let the bus go. This started becoming our daily routine.

One day, while we were taking cover, we waited and waited but the bus never showed up. We were already running late. We finally decided to move, we thought the bus should have left much earlier than the usual time. We walked as fast as we can. My legs were trembling already. If ever the bus should come, I thought this will be my last day on earth. We were in no mood to play the game anymore, we just concenterated on all the head lights that were flashing on the road though they were just one or two.

When we still had 15 to 20 more minutes of walk, suddenly we heard the engine sound of the bus. Dhanu was the first to see the head light. As it is downhill for the bus, it was pacing at greater speed. We all knew that within 5 - 8 seconds the bus will find us. We didn't know what to do and had very little time to react. My legs gave up. I looked to the left, there were tea plantations. I shouted again, JUMP!

All three were down one above the other struggling between the tea bushes. Did we know that it was 10 ft. deep before we jumped? Still, lying flat, we saw the lights passing by, it wasn't the bus, but a local Jeep. Uh.... with a heavy sigh, I managed to get to my feet. We struggled again to climb up the road. We all had bruises all over the body. My arm hurted a lot. Both my friends gave me a staring look. This time I very well knew that dozens of sorry will not help. I kept my mouth shut and we walked home.

We never saw the bus after that. Later we came to know the timings have been changed. We also stopped our game as we lost most of the cards in that deadly jump and we started concenterating on our studies.

Night Study

January-March, 2001.
I was doing my 10th grade then. Crucial days of my education "they say", but did I ever care? It so happened during this season, as we had to face the public examination by end of March, our school has started something called "night study" (evening study *these days*) which lasted from 5:30PM to 7:30PM. It was complete fun, I say! We were allowed to play from 4:30PM - 5:30PM and do you think we stopped after that? Staying back in school and pretending to study under the supervision of our most beloved teachers was really a wonderful experience. Well, the truth is, it really helped our final exams to a very great extent

We were given a perfect study plan. It had selected portions from each subject stretching for two days respectively. We had evaluation tests too at regular intervals. Our Principal always stayed back with us supervising, helping, mentoring, and yes, big time scolding. Mervin Earnest, my best pal right from KG used to share the bench with me. The other guy who joined us was Albert Ravish. If ever our principal happened to see all three of us sitting in the same bench, she'll throw us to different corners of the classroom. I always had the gift of acting on perfection, pretending to be completely immersed into my book all the time when my Principal walks over. Sometimes this works out well as she'll think not to disturb us by changing places. Whew! OSCARS.

Our class ends at 7:30PM sharp. Girls were to evacuate the classrooms (and the campus) first, then followed by boys. But it never worked. :-D We did have our school bus arranged to drop us in our respective places, but were charged heavily. We always had an option to choose our own means. Nataraja Transport was mine - this is by which I commute to and from school, covering almost 5.5Km one way. Mervin opted for government bus. We both stayed almost at different poles. Albert joined with me, there were two other guys Dhanu and Jithu who joined us later. Did I mention that Nataraja Transport is nothing but walking?

Everyday, I brought my yellow torchlight as I had to walk through tea bushes on my way back home. Mervin on the other hand had manufactured a tiny rechargeable torch by himself using some rare kind of cells, common wires and bulbs. We almost spent most of our time in the study experimenting different combination of cells, bulbs and wires to make it burn as bright as ever possible. We were always successful to a great extent at every step. Dhanu and Jittu both had one torch to share.

It would always be 5 - 10 minutes past 7:30PM by the time we gathered for our journey back home. I would bid goodbye to Mervin at the bus stop and join the crew - Albert, Dhanu, Jithu and I. We discussed on various topics - science, technology, politics, astronomy, global peace, global warming, ecnomic crisis. Good that we didn't have a nuclear deal then.We argued over these all the while we walked and found it started becoming boring as days passed. One fine evening when we were walking half the way, Dhanu came with a brilliant idea of playing wrestling cards through out our journey. Wow! He's the man, I am GAME. He also promised to bring 3 brand new sets of cards that he had.

From the next day it turned to be an interesting journey. Knowing this, the number of members in our crew increased to grow in number. There were two more additions - Sunil and Kapil. Albert, Sunil and Kapil will take a diversion half the way; Dhanu, Jithu and I used to continue till the end. It really became interesting day by day, we started enjoyng our night study. The usual 40 minute journey started stretching up to 1 hour. Now that my parents might know the truth :-D

Almost a month passed like this. I was always waiting with eagerness for all of us to gather down in the road and begin our journey along with the game. Here starts the best part. We didn't have street lights those days, there were very few in our way. The torchlight I used was a powerful one and I had a way of fixing it in my monkey cap making it resemble like a searchlight, this helped our game of wrestling cards.

At one particular stretch of the road, we always came across a mini-bus. I, being so mischievous started developing a habit of throwing light from my torch directly into the face of the mini-bus driver. We started having a bit of fun. Everyday, I made it a point to shine my torch at the drivers face. My friends warned me about this, but the mischievous guy within me didn't give up. He wanted to take a risk. At times the driver would enact like driving the bus over us and we would get scared. Days passed by.

One fine day, the game was going at good pace. I had the good choice of cards, Undertaker, Kane, and all were mine. Just then, there came the bus! Mr. Mischievous in me woke up and got ready for the mission. Its time, I said to myself. I turned my face towards the bus and raised my head. Hope you remember the torch is seated in my head. Looking at the driver and giving him a broad smile, dramatically I let my torch shine in its glory, very bright right into the eyes of the driver. Wow, I enjoyed the moment when he struggled to hide his face from my burning light. I felt like a champion.

All of a sudden something struck my brain, the screeching sound of wheels brought me back to my senses and I realized something has gone bad. I could smell it. I turned back only to see the driver bringing the bus to complete halt with the screech of brakes. I could also see people gushing out of the bus with a loud commotion yelling at me. Thanks to my brain as it acted fast, my legs were already set on fleet. Heart pounding, without wasting another second I shouted at the peak of my voice - RUN!

To be Continued...

Former or the Later?

Dad used to give us a measly Rs. 20/- per month,
in that we were not only able to eat stomachs fill,
but we were able to save too!!!
Now we earn a sum of 20K, we have no idea
where it goes, let alone saving it!!
Which was better, the former or the latter???

6 subjects per year, 6 different teachers!
One project since we joined
and just one manager!!
Which was better, the former or the latter???

We used to make notes;
we used to study for ranks!!
Now we scan thru our mails;
we struggle for our ratings!!!
Which was better, the former or the latter???

We have still not forgotten the people
in the next section!!!
Now we don't even know who sits
in the next cubicle!!!
Which was better, the former or the latter???

After getting back from a tiring play,
we used to do our home work!!
Now who knows/cares about home;
all we do is just work!!!
Which was better, the former or the latter???

We knew our history and economics!!
Now let alone reading books,
we don't even catch up with the daily news!!!
Which was better, the former or the latter???

We had an aim in life;
behind our backs we had our teachers!!
Now we have no idea about the
future nor do we find any
one who would tell us anything!!!

These few lines that I found in the internet really took me back and made me think about it this early morning!

Three Months Chennai

"Life is a book, one who doesn't travel has read only one page of it."

I enjoy travelling . It all started from my 11th grade when I was put up in a residential school in Coimbatore, I started traveling. June 2006, I came to Chennai for a corporate training after completing my college. The training was for 3 months and I had to stay in my Aunt's house down in south Chennai near St. Thomas Mount.

This is the third time I had been to Chennai; first was on 1993, second trip on 2004 and the now in 2006. The moment I stepped in the soil of Chennai, I smelt the flavor (should I say so?) of electric trains. My Dad had already given me enough instructions as how to reach my aunt's house, "You'll reach Chennai Central, get out of the station and don't heed the voice of auto drivers. Keep walking straight until you find a subway, get in there and you will know how to get out. Once you're out you'll be heading directly into the entrance of "Park Station". Get yourself a ticket and climb over to the next platform, never try to step into the tracks to cross. (Shhh.. did I mention that I didn't use the over bridge to cross the platform?) Now, wait for the next train that goes to Tambaram .When in train watch out for station names where ever the train stops, also try to remember them. Don't forget to jump out of the train when you see the station named as St. Thomas Mount." This was more than enough for me and it took me to my aunt's house. Thanks Dad!

I took an auto from there to reach home. I knew that I am going to have a good stay there. God provided me with everything that I needed. (More than what I needed). Good church, a dynamic youth fellowship, happy family environment and many more. My training sessions were for about 4 hours 6 days a week and had to cover huge syllabus. In spite of all the studying part, it was the children who always kept me entertained all the time and refreshed my brain. This blog is dedicated to all the children who kept me going all my days in Chennai. Cheers!

Let me start from the eldest.

Keren, my niece. She is pretty and I love her so much. She has a good talent on crafting and keeps nibbling with things. She is also a pianist and has recently completed her 6th grade. She plays in the church too. The little one is Felicia.



Matthew, Keren's brother. He is an amazing guy who keeps track of all sports channels. Either be it cricket or football, he will have the latest scores and updates in his finger tips. Do I call him a "Cricket freak"?


Silas, my nephew. He is just another computer freak. He spends hours on computer games and is capable enough to find cheat codes from the internet. He is interested in trying out every possible thing in computers. "Did he crash it anytime?" No idea.



Sunil, Silas' brother. Scientist, philosopher a genius... what would I say about him? He is always silent and is immersed in deep thinking about how to solve problems in nuclear reactions and rocket science. He would become one, I'll bet.


Felicia, my little niece. All the days I were in chennai, she used to sit on my lap and play. An active pretty girl. The last time I saw her, she was speaking. She is obedient and is very good in taking care of her belongings.

Thank You Kiddos!

MyGirlFriend

Now a days I seem to spend most of my time with her. Yeah, she has become a part of my life in less than a year and always steals most of my time. She is not that pretty as other girls out there, but, she still suits the best for me. She is lovely, intelligent, she understands me and always try to coupe up with my speed. Her face is always bright, she has this habit of winking at me every time when I look directly into her beautiful eyes. Her lips, the rosy cheeks, sorry I cannot explain everything; she is mine! I am in love with her.

She always hangs around with me where ever I go, neither be it for the church nor for shopping, friends house, neighbors place, she is always there to accompany me. She has her own standards, style of making things happen and she helps me a lot in my work too. When I am in trouble, I always have her for my rescue. I can rely on her when I need things to be done as fast as possible. One special thing is, unlike other girls she doesn't take a long time to get ready. Give a word, 2 minutes - boom; she is ready.

She is always encouraging, a never give up heart. At times she feels to be on a hot stove when ever I start eating her brain for a long time, but she would never give up.

Wondering what her name is? I call her "Debbie" though her parents have named her as "IBM Think Pad". Yes, she is my laptop that I daily use and I am crazy about her.

Looking out for me? I'd rather say go and search a good "Debbie" for yourself.......unlike me!

Lift and Shift!

"Lift and Shift", this term is actually derived from the IT corporate world. It explains the process involved when US based projects are outsourced to various other cost-saving(cutting) countries like Brazil, China and yes, big time INDIA. India is considered to be the fast developing or outraging IT market for these kind of business. There are lot more involved before and after "lifting and shifting" the project, but I don't wanna screw up everybody by writing them down here.

"Lift and shift" does have a real hard impact in my life. It really meant what it should when I had to pass through such situation and experiences.

It was on a Saturday the 31st May 2008, long awaited weekend has finally come. I had several plans for the evening. We were three friends staying together in a rented a house at Hyderabad. The place where we stayed is called as Moti Nagar - a very bad place nearly 6 KM away from Hi-tech city. After completing our half night shift we were still in bed sleeping, knowing that we had nothing to do this day as it was weekend. We all had different plans for the evening, we decided upon the place where we could take dinner after going for a fabulous shopping spree. Yeah, our salaries were already credited and as usual, it doesn't stays there keeping quiet. Unexpectedly I heard a knock at the door. Now that I've been disturbed in sleep, felt very lazy to get up from the bed and open the door, so was waiting for some one else to open it. As usual none of my other two friends refused to move a single muscle. The lot fell in my name again.

I woke up, went to the main hall and opened the door only to find it was one of the broker assigned by our land lord waiting for something. He had come here early that morning (it was 11:30 AM in fact) to inquire when we were vacating the house? I was completely flummoxed. I woke my other friend Robin and here started our traumatic experience. Early in the month , we had told our land lord that we will not be paying the rent as we will be vacating the house by month end. He too agreed. We, being lazy guys, didn't put efforts to search for a new house in the place where we liked. The month is already over, we thought one of us will ring the land lord and get permission to stay in the house for one more month. We being too lazy didn't even bother to do even that. I knew the high risky step that we were going to take.

By this time our other room mate Abhilash woke up too. The broker was demanding us to vacate the house as soon as possible. Robin rang the land lord *now* and told him the situation of we not having found a house yet. He was least bothered to listen to us. The next thing he said really blew us. "New tenants are waiting in the downstairs, so please vacate". By this time we knew that there were no second chances except to vacate the house. Still, sheer try again, we called up and asked for one more day extension and promised him that we'll vacate the next day, Sunday. There was a green light.

This broker guy offered to help giving some contact nos from whom we could find a house easily in the place of our preference. After he left, we sat down and were looking each others face for quiet sometime without uttering even a single word. We all knew deep in our hearts that we will be without a roof this evening. All our plans for the evening were shattered too. How sad!
We were ready within no time to start our house hunt. I really didn't know where in the heavens we will get a house in one single day.

Abhilash had his bike, Robin joined him and I was left alone. We agreed to go in real opposite directions for the house hunt. I came down to Secunderabad by bus and that almost took 2 hours. The broker whom I already knew has shut his shop and had left for the day. All my hopes were gone, I still roamed for about 3-4 hours and didn't find a single house. By this time, Robin had found one but was not satisfied. He called me up to say that we can have this for emergency. Having found any, I returned back home and reached by 11:45PM. Robin and Abhilash were busy packing their things. There was supposed to be our last day under a roof.

We packed all our things by 3:30 Am Sunday and were ready to vacate but, didn't have a place to go. I was not much worried but still had some hopes down in my heart. We again planed to search until afternoon then get back home on either successful or unsuccessful status. We took the same directions as yesterday, the only difference is we were out for the hunt by 7:30 AM. Which also means, we haven't had enough sleep.

I prayed that we might get a good house and I strongly believed in it. I reached Secunderabad even before the broker opened his shop. The moment I said that we need a house right now, he started looking at me up and down. But I explained the problem clearly, now he was willing to help me. He showed me couple of houses but they were worth less. He then took me to a different broker. This new-broker was polite, he also spoke good english. Now I knew and hoped that we already got a house. He said it is little expensive but he would negotiate with the land lady on behalf of us. I said OK.

I was riding behind him on his bike and he was taking us exactly to the place where we were desperately looking for. It was 1:20 PM. The moment he showed the house, I jumped in joy! My heart was overfilled with happiness on having found a good independent house. The land lady was sweet too. I couldn't wait to callup Robin and tell him that we found a house in the place where we liked. He had to travel another 45 minutes to reach this place, until then I was jumping and dancing on the road out of immence JOY.

I had one more work pending. I was supposed to take the Bible study on James the same evening and I haven't prepared much. Robin and Abhilash reached by 2:45PM , we payed the advance, had our lunch and left for the old house by 3:30PM to bring back our things. We finally hired a mini-auto by 4:45 PM, loaded our things and waved bye bye to Motinagar by 5:20 PM.
On the way back, sitting besides the driver in the auto, I opened my Bible and prepared for the Bible Study.

We reached our new home by 6:10 PM and I rushed for the study which was scheduled at 6:30 PM. The Bible Study went well, later as I kept meditating on James, as it dealt directly on how to live our day-to-day life, I was able to relate many things from my life and it helped me to a greater extent.

I was back at home by 9:00PM and we all went for dinner. We were happy about the new house, it was nearer to my Church too. I thanked the Lord with a grateful heart. He proved himself faithful again.

Computer world! But whose?

Two big software giants, one huge market, they seem not to mind each other but there is really a wild competition within. The way they rule the world by the products they develop is really amazing. Yeah, it is Apple Inc. and Microsoft Corp. Both have their own "Operating System" OS, commercially available for the consumer world, OS X (Macintosh) and Windows respectively.
Which is greater, efficient, robust, secure, fast and stable? It is not that easy to validate them on all these aspects.

IBM, I would say "The Father of all" was first to manufacture personal computers(initially the "microcomputer", built with Intel 8088 microprocessor) branded as "IBM PC" . It wanted an operating system under its hood to make it fully functional. In 1980, IBM approached Microsoft CEO Bill Gates (possibly believing that Microsoft owned CP/M "Control Program / (for) Microcomputers" due to the Microsoft Softcopy, which allowed CP/M to run on an Apple II). But it was actually owned by a company called Digital Research. IBM was sent to Digital Research, and a meeting was set up. However, the initial negotiations for the use of CP/M broke down—Digital Research wished to sell CP/M on a royalty basis.

IBM came back to Microsoft again, by this time Microsoft purchased 86-DOS initially known as qDOS ( Quick and Dirty Operating System) from Seattle Computer Company which developed a variant of CP/M.) allegedly for $50,000 and called it as MS-DOS. This was re-branded as IBM PC DOS to run on IBM PCs (in fact IBM licensed it in no time) but, Microsoft kept developing MS-DOS within and distributed them to other IBM PC compatibles.

Believe me, there were 'n' number of other DOS distributions too. "PC-DOS, DR-DOS, Novell DOS, OpenDOS, FreeDOS, FreeDOS 32, GNU/DOS, PTS-DOS...etc"

Microsoft Corp. :
Personal Computing started with this three letter Operating System "DOS" Disk Operating System. Microsoft released its version called MS DOS in 1981. IBM PCs gained the majority of the market running either MS DOS or IBM PC DOS. All these were on a black and white screen and was command driven. It was all MS DOS for the majority of the personal computing world until late 1985 when Microsoft released something called Windows 1.0. It was not a complete operating system, rather a GUI extension over MS DOS and gained little popularity. Windows 2.0 was released in December 9, 1987 with little extended features. It was Windows 3.0 which came to the market in 1990 gained much popularity and had a few of Microsoft Office applications. It also supported overlapping of windows and improved capabilities of its native applications. Later we had Windows 3.1 in 1992, Windows NT in the same year (32 bit, first of its kind). It was after Windows 3.11 Microsoft came up with a new consumer oriented version in August 1995, yes it is Windows 95, the most successful version of operating system in its series. Windows 98 in June 25, 1998; Windows Me (Millennium Edition) in September 2000. The next release made a revolution by living long in the market from 2001 - 2007, Windows XP which still remains the most preferred operation system for the personal computing world. The latest - Windows Vista was released in January 2007.

Apple Inc. :
Well, what's special with Apple? At any cost, it's already bitten - the apple. To tell the truth, I knew very little about Apple until when it released this small little white biscuit kinda thing called "iPod" which revolutionized the way the world listen to music. Later, when I tried to make a little study on this company, there were quite many things which literally put me in surprise. Here is the history if you want to know.
Those were the days when Microsoft was pouring all its energy on MS DOS to capture the market and was also walking with its collars raised. Believe me, Apple Computers Inc. ( this is how it was then called and is recently re-christened as Apple Inc.) was already computing in the Graphical User Interface world, isn't that great?

The first product from Apple was Apple I in 1976 which was sold with out a monitor or a keyboard. It was hand designed and manufactured by Stephen Gary Wozniak, (co-founder of Apple Inc.) in Steve Jobs living room. Later when they ran out of space they shifted their manufacturing division from living room to the garage. Apple II was introduced on April 16, 1977. Jobs and several other colleagues were inspired to build a fully GUI driven computer after seeing Alto Computer in Xerox PARC in the year 1979. Project Apple Lisa started in 1979 and after 3 long years of development, it was released on 1983. While Microsoft was still in hype with MS DOS, Apple, in contrary had its first leap into the GUI world. Apple Lisa was the first personal computer that had a mouse with it. Apple Macintosh was released in 1984, it was more enhanced than Lisa and was a huge success. Jobs resigned Apple ( chucked out from his own company?) in 1985 and founded NeXT. Macintosh Portable in 1989 which was bulky, Macintosh PowerBook in 1991, System 7 in the same year, Power Macintosh using IBM's PowerPC processor in 1994. It was on December 20, 1996 Apple bought NeXT which made Jobs come back into Apple again. August 15, 1998 - iMac, Mac OS X (operating system based on NeXT's OPENSTEP and BSD Unix) was released in March 24, 2001. Mac OS X aimed to marry the stability, reliability and security of the UNIX operating system with the ease of use afforded by a completely overhauled user interface. Several versions of Mac OS X were released and were named after "Big Cats" namely Cheetah, Puma, Jaguar, Panther, Tiger and Leopard which is the latest.

Isn't it really amazing that Apple was the first in introducing many revolutionary products to the personal computing world? Right from the GUI interface, the mouse, True Type fonts, yes Apple (Steve Jobs) was the one to design the True Type fonts. Apple also changed the way we listen to music after introducing iPod and now the revolutionary iPhone. I really wonder what in heavens are they developing next that would blow the world.

Now, whose computer world is this? Apple or Microsoft?
Apple: Really cool looks, beautiful desktop themes, hard and stable unix kernel within, fast, secure and also comes with a beautiful hardware.
Microsoft: Huge market value, occupies the majority of the desktop market, Vista - equally good in look and feel as Mac OS X and also secure.
I would say it's neither of them but all YOURS. When Apple could have stared in a garage, Infosys in an apartment, I'm sure that there are many such garages and apartments vacant all around the world. I don't literally meant that you have to start from there, but I would like to make you understand that there are equal opportunities for each and every one to start a revolution in this industry in particular.
I liked the speech given by Steve Jobs in Stanford University, I'm really thrown back by the phrase that he used. "Stay Hungry, Stay Foolish". All you need is a creative mind, thirsty heart and a will to do something. I love computers,this made me write this blog. Linux is my Operating System and I love it.