RandomPost#7

Thanks to all those grass out there, without which people would have never experienced trance nor would they have gone tripping!

Kavitha#1

Something stuck my mind while I was in a meeting at office, and here is the result. 

Have I started becoming a revolutionist? Hmm.. lets wait and see. 

RandomPost#6

I have always been mesmerized with the fact that the stars that twinkle and shine at us at night might not be there right now! The light we see now can be the light emitted from those stars thousands of light years ago. In the mean time during the journey of the light from that star, the star itself may have died.
Awesome! It's fascinating what lies behind the those celestial bodies and those galaxys! And I still feel like a small kid when I stand there gazing at those stars, perplexed with a thousand questions about them.

Amen - Reviewed

Amen – a divine comedy! 

One film aptly titled and even better captioned.

Theatre : Nila, Trivandrum 

Show : 11.30 AM

Amen takes place at a picturesque village called Kumarankiri. The innocence, wickedness and the beauty of the village are captured brilliantly in the film. As they mention, there is no one in the village who hasn't hummed a song or hasn’t had a love story to tell. This sums up the nature of this village perfectly.

In many ways, Amen can be seen as a fight between the good and the evil, or in lighter terms the rivalry and competition between two brand groups at an annual event, or the lover story of two innocent people. In whatever way you look at it, the movie takes you to a completely different level.

The dazzling camerawork, mesmerizing background score and surgically-precise direction makes you feel that you are watching a fairy tale. The movie doesn't specify the time-period at which the story occurs though we can conclude that it happens in the 70-80’s era going by the costumes and dialogues.

The songs blend to the story so impeccably so that we even wonder whether there were any songs as such and fail to count the no. of songs that were actually in the movie. It’s awe-inspiring that the ‘shap-song’ was taken in one take.

Small yet simple, wonderful and not so wonderful things about Amen

• Lijo Jose Pellisery, hats off to you Sir!
• Fahad Fazil has matured a great deal and has delivered his best performance so far.
• An awesome love story between Fahadh Faasil as Solomon and Swati Reddy as Sosanna poetically portrayed.
• Indrajith as Father Vincent Vattolli gives a godly feel with his dialogue delivery and presentation.
• Joy Mathew as Father Abraham Ottaplakal steals the show with a superb villainous display.
• Rajesh Habbar as Estappan, Sunil Sukhada as Kapyar, Natasha Sahgal as Michelle, Rachana Narayanankutty as Clara too stands out with their great performance on screen.
• Kalabhavan Mani as Looyi pappan, though one of the pivotal characters in the movie looked and felt as if it was not up to the mark mainly due to a poor makeup and dialogue delivery.
• Movie was dragging at times and bored the audience.
• Profanity has been used brilliantly to portray the emotions. While a couple of other instances of profanity could have avoided. That did no good to the film.

My verdict: Amen is a simple story told in a never-seen, never-told before way. It made me astonished, laugh, enjoy, cry and at times made be bored and confused too. Awesome direction, cinematography and background score deserve a standing ovation. All the cast has performed brilliantly. A one of a kind film and the best till date by the director, Lijo Jose Pellisery. Hope it will get the credit what it deserves both in theaters and among critics. Amen gets a healthy 4 out of 5 in my book.

Go ahead and ‘experience’ Amen!

A good website to compare books and buy them

Thanks to my colleague, Rameez who shared this wonderful site with me! 

http://www.indiabookstore.net/

As they say in their site, India Bookstore is a meta-search engine for finding books across all popular Indian book stores. And boy oh boy, it does that superbly and comes up with results from various popular books stores in the country.

It also fetches the price from each of these stores (given below), so that we can compare the prices and save a penny here and there. 

Stores: Infibeam.com, Flipkart.com, Crossword.in, Bookadda.com, Landmark,Uread.com, Homeshop18.com, IndiaTimes.com and Snapdeal.com

Great, it also provides a hyper link to product page of the respective store as well.Thanks! You saved a handful of my time there. 

P.S: I bought Yuvraj Singh’s The Test of My Life from Cricket to Cancer and Back from uRead.com.

RandomPost#5

‘There are some things in life that won’t happen when you wish for and when the opportunity comes to have it at your will, your whole life might have turned upside down’.

End of an excel sheet!

Yes, do you know how many rows and columns are there in an excel sheet?

Well I found it out purely by accident.
I was trying to copy-paste in my worksheet and accidentally pressed the arrow keys holding down the control key.
To see the last column in an excel sheet, Press à arrow key after holding the Ctrl key and to see the last row  Press á arrow key after holding the Ctrl key.

On google-ing, I found that these limits vary according to MS Office versions and in Excel 2010 there are 1048576 rows and 16384 columns. Quite a large sheet ;)

Move on,please

Awesome, the video speaks for itself !!

One movie which I have watched umpteen number of times and my favourite scene in the movie.

Track login and logout time

They say necessity is the mother of invention!  There came a necessity to track my office hours as my current organization doesn't have a mechanism to track the in and out time. To be frank it is a blessing as it doesn't give an opportunity for the higher management to micro-examine the hours I log in office.

So I came up with a small tip (can’t call it as an inventionJ) to track my in and out time (system login time and logout time) and log it to a file.

Here is what I did

• On system login, capture the system time & date and log to a file.
• On shut down (once shut down is initiated), capture the system time & date and log to the file.

How I did?

• Create a folder named Trackers and inside it create a new file named TimeTracker.txt.
• Create a .bat file named LoginTimeCatcher.bat with the below content.

REM To log the login time and date at start-up 

echo LoginTime  - %date% : %time% >>  C:\Trackers\TimeTracker.txt

• Add a shortcut of LoginTimeCatcher.bat to start up folder - C:\ProgramData\Microsoft\Windows\Start Menu\Programs\Startup
• Create a .bat file named LogOffTimeCatcher.bat with the below content

REM To log the logoff time and date at shutdown
echo LogOff Time  - %date% : %time% >> C:\Trackers\TimeTracker.txt

• Add LogOffTimeCatcher.bat to shutdown
• Open run and type gpedit.msc
• Navigate to Computer Configuration-Windows Settings –Scripts(Startup/Shutdown)
• Right click on shut down shown in the right window and click on properties
• Click on Add and browse to the file : LogOffTimeCatcher.bat
• Click on OK in all open dialog boxes.

Now we are all set. System time and date will be captured and logged to the file (TimeTracker.txt) every time we login and shutdown in the following format.  

Login Time          - 14-03-2013 :  9:28:25.08

LogOff Time         - 14-03-2013 : 18:07:57.87

Login Time          - 15-03-2013 :  9:38:33.25

Hope this helps! You will be able to add scripts to login and shut down by editing registry too. I took the easy and safe way J

One of my all time favourite song

It has been more than a decade this I have heard this song for the first time. Still it gives me shivers every time I hear this wonderful song.
One of my all time favourite song and one of the very few non-Malayalam songs of which I know the lyrics.
Biggest irony is that I am still to watch this movie. 

Problem != Problem, if you think!

Over my course of almost 4 years in the software service industry, I have seen people complaining of various difficulties that they face to get the job done. Some of them were very genuine, but the majority of those that I have seen are due to people not thinking about it.

This is particularly relevant when it comes to a job where you are supposed to handle various tools for getting your work done. They (read those who had problems) seem to work in a predefined way and once they hit the road block, the only think they do is straight away ask for help from others to get that fixed. But what always surprised me why don’t they think of what caused the problem.

May be they were so interested in getting that fixed in the minimum amount of time, they asked for help. That's well and good. But the problem solving and debugging mentality seems to be missing with many people I have met. 

For me, the way of drilling down to what caused the problem through simple basic steps has always worked. Asking basic questions like where it failed, what changes were made, what will happen if I revert those changes, what is the alternative etc. helps me understand where I stand with respect to that issue.

For all those who are complaining with so called big-problems and are reluctant to think of your own there are even two simpler things that you could do.

1. Google
2. Read the fucking Manual

Cheers!

Happy Birthday,AMMA

Aum Amriteshwaryai Namah

AMMA - No matter how many times you say/call that word, you don't feel jaded. That's the power of that word and the love AMMA brings to all of us.I have always been amazed by you and your smile amongst all the sorrows that people keep on telling you. 

Every time I meet you, it gives me more and more reasons to love you and come back to you.

Happy Birthday Amma, and I miss being in Amritapuri on this day. 

Inked Again!

Yeah...!! \m/  In less than 6 months after being Inked for the first time, I got myself a second tattoo.

Ever since I had my first tattoo, I have been thinking of what my second one should be and I was all set to do a Lord Ganesha tattoo, but this Shiva-Trisool-Dhamaru trio design really got me thrilled.

Tattooed this from GOA - One way to remember my first GOA trip forever!

Death seems Peaceful

Death is Peaceful, Life is Harder - Stephenie Meyer, Twilight

When was the last time a movie song made you think,  made you disturbed ?

Well it was one of those movies that I saw it from theaters and left it there itself, but some how or other quite unexpectedly I 'really' heard the song again  -  a handful of months after I heard it for the first time in cinemas. I was speechless when I heard it again, don't know how many times I have heard it over the past couple of days and with every time I hear, it plunges me into thoughts that go beyond life and death. Awesome lyrics and apt music makes it a very good song to hear over and over again. Never have I been so mesmerized by 'death' and there seems to be something special that makes me fall in love with this song and the very thought of death.

Bye Bye Infosys

That's it. Thank you Infosys for all the good and the bad.

What makes you successful in life - it all depends on how you define the word successful !!

Why a tattoo??

Why a tattoo?? That was the first question that I received from many folks days/weeks after I got my tattoo. Well with my tattoo aged almost 6 months, most of the questions have subsided, to be frank it has become a part if me and one thing that defines me.
It was a long cherished dream of mine to get tattooed and I am so happy I could fulfill it this soon! And I'm already planning to be inked again \m/
Let see how it goes !!

Grand Master-Reviewed

Happened to see one of the worst directed films, I have come across in Malayalam.
Could relate to each and every line in the below given review, so no need for mine :)
http://movieraga.indulekha.com/2012/05/03/review-grandmaster/

P.S: Still confused on why so many people liked the movie !

RandomPost#3

There are some people who leave an everlasting impression on you life. I had my share of such people too, one to be precise!

Born and brought up as a single child, I was never the one who hogged the lime light. Instead I always stood back and waited for things to happen. I was never the smart kid in the block and always had problems going along with people whom I don’t know much.

All these had me an introvert and I never shared my feelings and thoughts with anyone. It doesn't mean that I lived isolated nor I never talked to anyone. I was lucky to have some the greatest friends one could dream of and I am so happy that our mutual affection still lives on. But you don’t go about talking on hours on end in detail on about each and everything that happened. I was happy with it and to be frank I didn’t know that you could talk to someone this long and intense until I met her.

Like most of the girls she was talkative, but she was special - She made me talk. She would fight with me if I didn’t talk! So after 17 years of my existence in mother earth, I finally found someone whom I could share anything from politics to fantasy to cricket to rubbish and all those under the sun, my dreams, my past, my passions, my sorrows...everything...!!

But like all good things in this world it didn’t last long or I should say long ‘enough’. We had to part and one thing I miss the most is her ears! I miss everything about her, but most importantly I miss someone whom I could talk being myself... I miss you!

The King & The Commissioner - Reviewed

Boring, that the best word to describe the combined sequel of two one of the most celebrated malayalam film of yester years.

The story is based at New delhi with Thevalliparambil Joseph Alex IAS,played by Mammootty being appointed as the head of Special Investigation Team to investigate the murder of a senior scientist, who was brutally murdered as he intercepted confidential information pertaining to terrorist attacks on Indian Prime Minister. Bharathchandran IPS,played by Suresh Gopi assists Joseph Alex in his investigation.

Apart from a couple of dialogues by Suresh Gopi and Mammotty which are re-used from their earlier films, there is nothing in the film that grabs our attention. The whole plot of the movie is revealed in the first 30 mins,even before Suresh Gopi makes his entry and the rest of the film is a cat and mouse chase. 

Same clichéd stuff of power politics,Pakistan's terrorist attack over India and a Spiritual Guru who decides everything are three and only ingredients in the film.

The film lost its flavour and couldn't match up to the glory of the originals because of a rubbish script and dialogues which felt like Renji Panicker's personal blog. His opinions on all the current affairs, starting from Anna Hazare to Foreign Investment in Retail are mentioned and discussed unnecessarily in the film which doesn't do any value add to the story. It only disrupts the viewing pleasure which is already well below par, thanks to a direction that makes us wonder whether there was a need for a director.

On the whole, movie is a great disappointment. Because of the hype created and also due to Mammootty , we could see this film in theatres at least for a couple of weeks more, which  is undeserving for such a film. 

RandomPost#2

Wow, that so much good news over the past couple of days – Marriages, engagements and even news of my best friend becoming a dad! Hmmm... at the age of 25, that sounds a bit early. Well it’s that time of your life, the mid twenties; you move on from your bachelor life and look forward to the long journey of life in front of you.

People are getting married and settling down soon, may be to cure that void that gets created a couple off years of workmanship. I used to talk among my colleagues that boredom may be one of the prime reasons for people getting married soon.

Each and every student(read YOU) pass out of school eyeing a spot in one of the good professional college and as soon as you step your feet on the campus you will be bombarded with  stuff that equip you to clear the interviews that happen at 3^rd or 4^th year. All through these days at college, you have one goal to keep you going- Placement, a well paid job in a reputed organization. You achieve that too, pass out of college in flying colors and earn the ‘ideal boy’ image and become the talking point among your friends and relatives – Now what ??

After a couple of years you look forward and find that there is nothing to leap for. Nothing much to dream for, expect for periodic company hops!  Then you think of settling down in your life and having some one to hold close all through your life. Some one to have long drives with, some one to sip hot coffee together cuddling under a blanket, some one to fight with over silly reason, some one to rage your anger upon and to apologize later .

With all these sweet, romantic dreams you end up marrying someone who would be equally busy and running around to earn a living. Still you have yourself settled and entered the most important phase of your personal life.

At least my friend circle, all the marriages have been love marriages with both knowing each other pretty well before marriage and deciding to fight it out the rest of their life together with the blessings of their parents.

God bless you all, who showed the courage to move on with your love! Happy life.

Just Jockeying

Couple of days ago, I saw an ad in newspaper about a sale happening in Chandrasekharan Nair stadium.It was Jockey's sale for factory seconds. And today being a Sunday, I could visit that place for my share of shopping too. To my surprise, there were other brands too which included Reebok, Adidas, Levis and Reid n Taylor. But the surprise made way to disappointment as most of the garments over there was way too small for me and the largest of the largest section was too low in number and variety. Even among the scarcity, I could literally pull out a XXL Reid n Taylor full sleeved t shirt which seems a good deal for 400 bucks. 

Jockey has bee one brand which taught the people to wear their jeans well below their briefs and that has been the so called first requirement in the transformation of a person from a normal man to a 'dude'. The trend has grown from bad to worse in the last couple of years.It has even made police intervene and arrest those people who are self proclaimed models of Jockey. And going by the rush I saw there, we are gonna see a lot of low waist jeans-ed dudes in the coming days and busy days ahead for Police & Moral policing :-)

Once again in cricket whites

It has been quite a while since I played cricket on proper cricket ball, or on stitch ball as we normally say. So I was amazed to say the least when I was asked to join the nets last Monday for practice. Couple of net sessions and a handful of days later, I played proper competitive cricket today.

If I remember correct, today is the first time I am wearing cricket whites after I played in coimbatore for my college team. That seem so long back and it is so long back; it was in 2007. 5 years- that some time !
Well all through these five years my physique has gone from bad to worse and so has my performance. Feeling very sad on that aspect, still happy for the fact that my love for the game has been the same if not grown more and I was able to perform pretty okay today though I had nothing much to contribute both with ball and bat. Got a few bruises on my leg and hand, thanks to a mind which still thinks I am young(which I am!) and a body which has grown out of bounds.

Looking on for more. God bless!

Oh you!

I know it’s harsh, but you waited all these four years and still you chose the worst possible time to come. In fact I understand that you don’t have much of a choice. But you really put me in trouble by shifting the salary day to one day further – February 29^th; you could have leap-ed some other better time. 

Marriage is such a crazy thing, it makes some one whom you have never met in my life - your enemy!

P.S:  I am not married yet!

RandomPost#1

Of late I am carrying a lot of notions about a lot of people and it isn't helping me either. May be I have become prejudiced  I don’t know for certain. I have never been bothered about how people are and how people behave to me. I never cared to be frank. And I took each and every thing as it came. Something has changed and resulted in formation of some residue in my mind. And as I said it NOT helping me.

The reason is that I got it wrong in forming a conscience about a couple of people and over the past couple of days, I understood it really well. You (read as I) often opinion-ed someone as one who never lends a helping hand and that person helped me without me asking for me. That helped me big time in saving my face from a heap of shit. That really made me think and hence this post.

Let’s face each and everyone as they come. Yes, I will!

Tattooed

2011 - One year to forget

Today is 30^th December 2011 – staring at another new year let me look back at the last 364 days of my life.

To be very frank to myself, 2011 was a nothing year for me. I did nothing that is worth mentioning or may be let me put it this way; I didn’t have the fervor to do anything that’s worth remembering. Instead I went about my daily routine – which ONLY included going to office & staring at my desktop and coming back home & staring at my laptop and at times sleeping with it ;)

2011 was one year in which I missed my friends and family the most- one to be precise! Never in my life have I thought that loneliness could cause this much pain and discomfort. Many a time, I wished I could go back home right after I swiped out of office. Not because I had too much work but cause I had nothing and absolutely nothing to look up to after work.

Yes – I have to move on and I realize that. Wonder much many more days/months/years that I will burn in process of getting myself heated up.

As I look forward positively I wish I could (I have to) make 2012 count. Thank god for all your blessings and patience though I would have questioned you on a couple of things that you decided for me in the past year.

 I believe in the saying ‘everything happens for a reason’ and that’s one thing that’s pushing me forward.

Wishing you a wonderful 2012! God bless. 

Chappa Kurishu-Reviewed

Watched malayalam movie, Chappa Kurishu today. 
The movie looked promising because of the hype created by the  promo and the good music, but it turned out to a movie with lacked good story and script. Primarily the movie was dragging and left me looking around the theatre to kill time. 

The movie develops with a story of two people - one played by Fahad Fazil(Shanu) belonging the upper strata of society who lives the life he wish and enjoys all the privileges money has to offer.Other one played by Vineeth Sreenivasan who fights hard to earn his living. Their lives meet eachother in a strange circumstance and the movie tells us the story of them trying to meet eachother and the various happenings that occur after.
The movie lacked a strong good story line and leaves many questions unanswered. On the top, the movie finds hard to keep people glued to their seats as it unnecessarily prolongs the climax. The script had no content for a 2.5 hour long movie and would have looked a whole lot better had it been wrapped up in 1.5 hours.
The movie has a handful of positives of which the music by Avial Fame-Rexx Vijayan tops the list. Fahad Fazil has evolved as  an actor and improved a lot from his first film- Kaiethum Doorathu. Though the characters played by Fahad Fazil and Remya Nambeesan resemble a lot of their respective characters in Cocktail and Traffic, both have performed well. Remya Nambeesan portrays the strong bold woman of the modern era and made a strong statement by performing intimate romantic scenes which didn't looked vulgar at all and perfectly blended with the script. 
To sum up,  Chappa Kurishu is yet another malayalam movie which looked promising from its promos and songs, but didn't live up to its expectations. 

A list to live LIFE !

Today morning as I was talking to my colleague on the principles/quotes that inspire me to live by, I thought it’s time to update my blog with it.

So here goes the list

• Everything happens for a reason!
• Time heals everything, give time some time.
• Think at least a hundred times before sharing your sorrow with others, because majority are just curious and not concerned!
• Have the courage to say NO !
• Love somebody truly at least once in your life.

Not adding any explanation to the above as they are self-explanatory. Aren't they?

It's now or never

I flipped through the pages of the book,gazing at those huge numbers.!! The book was a mix of fiction and reality and i always wished it had a good happy ending.. But going by the looks of it and with the heavy heart it was written with, it was turning out to be another damn sad story..
Last couple of months have been tough..It was hard to digest that something that drives me so happy eventually would make me so low and uncomfortable..but that's how the life goes and that's what life is all about..Its not about swimming with the current , sometimes you have to start a new saga of your own and swim against the current with all your vigour and courage..
Yes its time.!! its time to Switch.!! As I gazed at my petrol bills for the last two months and wrote it down in my account log book, I made up my mind that I need to switch to diesel for good..
The time has come..Its now or never :)
And I don't have to look further any more. The answer is here :
http://fiat-india.com/upgrade_to_multijet.aspx?partner=id8&cat=upgrade&city=null&event=null&src=yahoo&det=112,fiat,300x250,fl,max
[Post written for IndiBlogger's Contest themed-Switch to Diesel!]

Get Inspired!

If any video can be termed inspirational, then nothing beats this video.

No matter how many times I have watched this. It never ceases to touch my heart and make me inspire more. We all blame on our small worries and miseries, but none of our misery is worth a mention in front of this man.

Watch this!

Life moves on,so do I

For the past handful of weeks, I have been counting my miseries and playing the blame game. I cursed the fate, complained on the lost opportunities, grinned on as I made way for other people. It have been preparing this never stopping list of negatives in my life and the list goes on as I keep on finding faults with all that has happened to me and all that I have been part of.

But last night as beating away my routine of contemplating and cursing the life, out of the blue moon a thought crept into my mind– Is my life that bad? Am I at the receiving end of all miseries in life- the answer is/was NO!

Aged 23, I am employed in one of India’s most reputed Software Company and have been receiving a good pay check that is more than enough to support my living. I am happily living with a bunch of great friends and we make it a point to celebrate each and every occasion in our lives.
I thought it was high time to think about the positives too that have happened in life. Life is never an easy ride and it’s certain you will run into some potholes on the way. If you may move ahead cursing the potholes that caused you trouble and made you fall you will invariably fall into another one and the series goes on. Each pothole teaches you a lesson, it’s up to you whether to learn from it or not. Still there are some potholes which you cannot do anything about, you are destined to fall in them and you cannot avoid them- we call it fate. Understand it, move along there is a better life waiting for you.
The more you fall, the better person you will be and it makes you strong and resilient. The deeper you fall; the ride ahead tests your attitude, tests your character and tests the person in you. Live moves on and you too should, coz there is a better tomorrow awaiting you!

Cheers! God bless.

RandomPost#0

Time flies...Seriously !!!
I joined engineering 6 years ago
It has been 1.5 years since I have bought my car.
It has been 2 years since I joined for Infosys
I did my interns in Mysore 3 years ago.

We are not safe

Today is July 13- As I am writing this Ajmal Kasab India's most protected person is enjoying his 24th birthday, at the same time many poor innocent people in the streets in Mumbai pity their faith on being struck with bomb blasts for the second time in a handful of years.
As per the latest news reports, 3 blasts took place in Dadar, Opera House and Zaveri Bazar areas. At least eight people have been killed and 70 others injured in the bomb blasts. Not only Mumbai the whole of India is traumatized hearing this news.Let's hope this bomb blast won’t grab much lives and hurt more people.

The terrorists might have decided to give a wonderful birthday present to Kasab by pushing all the Mumbaikars into a state of fear and frenzy with the bomb blasts. Long live Kasab, You have found a prefect and safe asylum in India. Its in our country where you can live peacfully and happily!
My prayers go to each and everyone affected in this blast. Don't know how many more we have to suffer before we eradicate the cancer called terrorism from our motherland. 26/11 and 13/7 teaches us a lesson, that we all ignore.The complacency we show towards all these will make us pay a heavy price in the near future.
Image taken from -http://static.ibnlive.com/pix/sitepix/07_2011/blastsupdt_kajal3_271x181.jpg

a crazy pass time

How many of you are actually concerned about the font you use in documents or in emails?  Majority of us don’t ever care about it and keep on using the default font the application provides. I have seen lot of people in fact almost all using Calibri as their font for emails from Outlook 2007 and rest using Arial/Times New Roman for Outlook 2003. At my workplace the majority of the people resort to Calibri itself.
I wish to walk alone in this regard. Trying a different font other than the normal ones will help you get identified among a chain mail or a group conversation and also I give much importance to the look and feel of the message/e-mail content. That doesn’t mean that I go for flashy fonts and messages in my e-mails. There are plenty of good, human readable fonts in your applications that doesn’t violate the corporate and email etiquettes.
Then the confusion starts-When it comes to selecting fonts am always at sea. I love to switch between various fonts and I keep on doing it now also. I check various fonts from the font’s dropdown available in outlook/word and every time I see a new good readable font I will set it as my default font.
Over the past two years at work, I have switch back and forth between the following fonts
Calibri- Trebuchet MS- Tahoma -Segoe UI - Tahoma - Times New Roman- Cambria - Book Antiqua - Comic Sans - Luicida Sans Console - Berlin Sans FB-Verdana- Eras Medium ITC- Candara-Andalus-Verdana
But still not have I identified/discovered/finalized the font that I should use always. The search continues....
PS: I know I am crazy and sound so silly :)

You can now LIKE my blog posts!

That was too easy ! Many thanks to http://www.allblogtools.com/tricks-and-hacks/add-facebook-like-button-for-blogger-blogspot-and-customize-it/

I just incorporated the Facebook LIKE button to my blog. Its very simple and easy and I got this done in a matter of minutes.
A great way to publicize your blog and bring in more readers/fans to your blog.

Edit: Blog spot now provides an option to integrate the social buttons as post options. Hence removed this above trick from my blog!

How NOT to cook biriyani !

Things were looking pretty fine and peaceful till morning today and we (read Kottaram boys) were ready as ever to spent a wonderful lovely lazy sunday in our own way- by eating and sleeping. We have tried and tested this get-off-the-couch-only-for-food principle/theory/routine far too many times in the span of last two years and need not to say we have passed in all those tries with flying colours. The proof of this can be seen on every kottaram resident who has piled on more and more weight during the stay.

So today, totally against the run of the play, my dear friend Rohith a.k.a Mallapally suggested that we should try cooking biriyani ! What- guys, you heard it right? he seriously meant COOKING!!!
So as loyal friends we showcased our full support to the initiative by accompanying him to the supermarket in order to procure the raw materials(read vegetables, oil, spices and all those required for making biriyani). In the mere excitement of cooking ourselves we over did the shopping which meant that we had no time to cook the biriyani for lunch so we postponed the cooking plan for dinner and had our lunch from a nearby hotel.
Clocked ticked slowly and hours passed by as various discussions and ideas accumulated on how to actually cook biriyani. We sought help from mallapally's mother who helped us with all the process and procedures that needs to conducted to convert all those things we bought from the market to some thing that can be called as biriyani. So after revisiting those tips a couple of times,we decided to start the cooking !
It was absolute chaos in the kitchen as we had multiple views on each and every thing starting from how to chop the onion to how to check whether the rice is ready. It reminded me of an old story(click here for the story) that I learnt in primary school of 6 blind men visiting an elephant and each describing the elephant in his own point of view. We were running around the kitchen like nomads and multiple calls that we made to cross check the correctness of the process we tried didn't help either. How can we expect some to tell us over the phone whether the rice we cooked looked like biriyani rice?? :p
After trying and testing for almost two hours we some-how made a large bowl full of biriyani ! Then came the most disheartening part, we moved in to check and taste of the fruit of our hard work and foolishness.
Man - it was awful ;) Not even in our wildest dreams did we think that we had such damn pathetic cooking skills. But instead of throwing the entire thing to the waste bin, we decided to  eat whatever we have cooked. After all we did invest our precious time and cash on that. We contemplated on what all we could have done during that precious two hours rather than smoking up the entire kitchen and preparing a once in a lifetime biriyani which tasted like thirusaadham and looked like gruel. 
As we were engineers, we made a thorough analysis of where we went wrong in the Cooking Life Cycle- We understood that 

1. Requirement was ambiguous
2. No clarity in the process to be followed
3. Communication medium turned out to be inadequate
4. There was no quality assurance mechanism to check whether the food we prepared as edible or not

Lesson learnt :  How NOT to cook biriyani !

PS: Battled and bruised but still alive,we have decided to give it an other shot in the coming week. Hope it doesn't turn to another disaster.

Do we really keep in touch?

In today's world, almost everyone has a Orkut, Facebook, Twitter and of late Google plus account. We login to these every day and keep on checking for notifications, new posts and photos uploaded every hour. We celebrate the special days in the web by spamming the wall of our loved ones with wishes,posts and photos. We poke each other and pull each others leg in the web world. 

But are we really keeping in touch with each other by doing all these ?
Do we share all our feelings,sorrows,joy in the web. The answer would be NO for sure. We share (only) the happy part of life that we want to publish to all. Other feelings we keep to ourselves. 

People - Grab your cellphones and give a call and TALK to your loved ones even though you meet them on-line everyday in facebook/orkut/twitter. Nothing can make you feel better than actually talking to your dear ones or the best way is to meet them in person. :)
PS: I just did and it feels great! 

Padhmanabhan and his treasure

Why are media and people making so much fuss about the treasure that was recovered in Sree Padhmanabha Temple last week?

The humongous treasure residing there is a proof of a golden dynasty that prevailed in Kerala during that time and the owner of the treasure is no one but Sree Padhmanabha. It speaks volumes on the vast tradition and wealth that Indians had earlier which made intruders make their way to our Mother land and loot this wonderful place centuries ago.

The cry for treasure to be divided among the public or used for constructive purposes or to be taken by government is utter rubbish and people who are pleading for them are deliberately forgetting the antique and historic value that the treasure possess. Right from the day committee started the search in the temple the so called creative geniuses have made up numerous stories to inveigle people by portraying the treasure as a common property! This is illogical and atrocious.

How can a treasure which is divine and marks the culture of a community called a public property. In that case why can't we take all the precious things residing in various museums and claim it’s for the public??

And speaking about using this treasure for constructive purposes and for good deeds, it all depends on your definition of what a good deed is. The treasure is divine and the historical value it possesses is something that cannot be explained in words. It reflects the history and culture of the life that existed centuries ago.

People are also concerned about the security threat that the treasure brings into picture. That was first to be considered by the honorable high court which gave the permission to open the treasure and publicly disclose all the details on the petition of a single individual. So does it mean that I can go out a file a petition to check all the worship places belonging to Hindu, Christians and Muslims and ask to dig them for some hidden treasures? Will the court give permission for a similar thing to happen in a Mosque or a Church? You know the answer - it’s a NO, no matter whoever asks and they blame all those asking for it saying it’s a discrimination of the minority people. Aren't the Hindus who are in majority in this country having the rights to protect their beliefs and worship places?

And creating a wrong notion that it’s better to sell off the treasure rather than keeping in the temple itself is nothing but conspiracy to destroy the divine tradition that is associated with it. People are making all sorts of stories to convince themselves and others that the treasure is their property and creating controversies.  

Media needed to act more responsibly and sadly it’s too much to ask from our media. We belong to a country where the controversy driven and media actually helped the terrorists to kill Indian soldiers by broadcasting the live footage of the rescue operations at Hotel TAJ on 26/11. The footage helped the terrorists know exactly where the soldiers where and what our forces’ strategy was. We paid a big price for the irresponsible act by the media who were in search of petty techniques to boost their television ratings.

It’s really sad that some newspaper published the map and the detailed footage of the different chambers of the temple where the treasure is located. They are creating security threats themselves and then crying over it!!!

And why are we concerned about providing security to this treasure?  It’s really pathetic to see a country spending crores to provide Z level security to a notorious terrorist and is reluctant to protect precious possessions of a divine culture.

One question - why is this discrimination against Hindu Temples/Hindu Customs and beliefs always?

A handful of months back, we saw high court asking the dewasom board to give explanation on the MAKARAVILAKKU. Be it whatever that made the court to seek such an explanation. No body and absolutely nobody have the right to question one's belief- be it government or any court. Government and the court should make efforts to bring in better security and facilities rather than blame it on an age-old tradition which millions of people believe in.

And adding more to the discrimination on the majority, why is there an autonomous body to handle the different temples in the state. What makes other religions not affiliated to this autonomous body? Answer is the same- Minority is enjoying all the privileges and making them unassailable to government and law.

Doesn’t the MAJORITY deserve a place in this minority driven country?

Finally all those who are cat fighting for Sree Padhmanbhan’s treasure – Shut up and be proud that you are the proud descendants of a wonderful country which is rich in culture and tradition. Haven’t your parents taught you the good deeds- not to be greedy on some else’s riches. !!! Padhamanbha Swamy’s treasure belong to Sree Padhmanabha Swamy itself and no body else.

Disclaimer: Though I got a bit aggressive and irritated by the recent happenings, I am not a religious fanatic. And for the records, I am a HINDU and I eat beef.

ബ്ലോഗില്‍ മലയാളത്തിന്റെ ഹരിശ്രീ

മലയാളത്തില്‍ കൂടി എഴുതിയാലോ ഒന്നും ആലോചന തുടങ്ങിയിട്ട്  ഒരു പാട് കാലം ആയി.  കടലാസ്സില്‍ പേന കൊണ്ടെഴുതുന്ന സുഖം ഓണ്‍ലൈന്‍ ബ്ലോഗ്ഗിങ്ങില്‍ കിട്ടില്ല എന്ന് മനസിലാക്കി കൊണ്ട് തന്നെയാണ് ഇപ്പോള്‍ ഇങ്ങനെ ഒരു ശ്രമം.
മലയാളത്തില്‍ കൂടി ബ്ലോഗ്‌ എഴുതാനുള്ള ഈ സംരംഭം എത്രമാത്രം വിജയിക്കുമെന്ന് കാലം തെളിയിക്കെട്ടെ!

a nice evening well spent..

What would you do when you are alone on a boring Sunday evening and want to make yourself happy and excited! Shopping/ Movie / Bird watching – Naaah

I would drive down to a good restaurant and then have a great dinner. I would eat to my heart’s content and feel happy & proud about it. After all, anything we do in this life is a struggle to find out a day’s meal!

Well the above passage is more than enough to brand me as a FOODIE- Well I accept it. Good Food has always been my weakness.

Just back me after such a wonderful dinner! Yummy……….

What next !

Its been almost two years since I first swiped-in at Infosys. To be frank, it has been a nice time as my company has not choked or squeezed the life in me with hectic work nor have exploited the creative, workaholic  gentleman in me.Instead it has always helped me with less work and blessed with fat pay checks and occasional life savers in Salary loans!
Much has not changed since I joined Infy in my career as I have been part of the same project and made a large commotion recently to change my project/department which went in vain. Still I am happy with what I got in making me transforming me from a Manual Test Engineer to an Automation Test Engineer.
I can sit back and relax for at least the next 5 years and pile up on my bank balance- But is it what I want? To be very frank - I DON'T KNOW !
But I would love to make my life large by adding a pinch of action, adventure and risk to it. I may quit the IT field once for all and go in search of those which interests me. But can I win the battle between my aspirations and those fat pay slips which always excites me :)
Or what about going for Higher Studies, shall I fly aboard for a PG degree- then comes the next question. MS or MBA - I have never been a great student of Computer Science and seriously doubt me going all the way in completing a Masters or PhD. But does it mean that I don't like my subject nor have the will to learn - No, I do have and like to explore the subjects that I deliberately missed to learn in my college. I may eventually go for a toss of the coin to decide among these PG courses :p
Oh God, Am confused... Damn confused... But I will fly away..Some day..No shackles can keep me tied down to earth for long.. And its just a matter of time before he hear that I have started my journey to chase down my dreams!!!!

Endosulfan - Do we really need it ?

Its high time India shed the tag of biggest producer and consumer of this poison. India consumes almost 4,500 tonnes of endosulfan and injects cancer to the poor workers who are left with no other option to spray this poison in their farm lands without any protection.
Just imagine the grief and suffering the victims are upto. Too bad the government doesnt show the courage and heart to ban this.
I couldn't understand why our leaders are so adamant in not banning this substance which is banned in more than 63 countries.
Kerala is the worst affected state in India and I pity the politicians who make the ban on endosulfan another way to fill up their ballot boxes!
People, dont back away - Spread the word (atleast in) Facebook or Twitter or any other media, join in the revolution against this evil and fight till this is eradicated from our mother earth.

The weekend that was!

Had a handful of wonderful off days from work starting from last Wednesday till yesterday J

Casted my vote for the first time .I was a bit anxious while waiting in the Q for my turn to press the blue button in the electronic voting machine which will determine who will lead us tomorrow !

The next two days was fully dedicated to VISHU- Malayalam New Year. Was too busy running around making arrangements for the feast, bursting crackers, accepting and at times demanding VishuKaineettam from elders. It was fun.

After vishu,paid a visit to Sabarimala with my father- he was visiting the temple after a gap of almost 30 years and even at his age he had very little problem climbing the steep hill while I was down and almost out just as I started  climbing thanks to my sedentary life style and healthy(:p) food habits .

On the whole it was a super long weekend and just like any other holidays felt them got over too soon.

Now back to work ! Keep reading   God bless

I am an Automation Engineer !

More than a month since I have penned down anything here!

Blame it on the change of track in my project. Finally I said finally after trying for more than a handful of months I got absorbed to Automation track.  Was doing manual testing for the past one year and staring at the same website and clicking the same hyperlinks over and over again made me feel like a zombie. Though automation also deals with the same website and the same hyperlinks it’s a relief from the monotony that I was a part of all these days.

Let’s see how my new track goes on. It’s a change that makes me stare at thousands of lines of java code and wonder what will break in the next run.??

As per my initial ‘experience’ report automation demands more MANUAL effort from me than manual testing

Keep reading. God bless.

Its a new look!

Finally finally I decided to change the look and feel of my blog.Its been more than a handful of years since I started a blog and my blog had the same design ever since then. Black has always been my favourite colour and no surprise in it being my first design.

So here comes my blog with the new design and hopefully more number of posts. Keep reading. God bless.

It sucks !

OMG - How on earth can someone name a cricket team 'INDI COMMANDOS'….

The name sucks big time...and their logo too.

There seems to be lot of dick heads in this IPL team management.First they proved it by picking Ravindra Jadeja for a whooping 950000$, now their name and logo.

Someone rightly tweeted; Ravindra Jadeja is only the second worst thing to happen for the Kochi IPL team.

PS:  Heard the team is seriously considering shifting their home ground to Ahmadabad; that means Kochi IPL team will soon be shedding its Kochi tag too  

Stumpy-mascot of 2011 world cup

Meet 'STUMPY' the official mascot of 2011 ICC world cup. I came to know about stumpy today only,some 194 days after it was unveiled. As the saying goes 'Better late than never'....

Hope stumpy serves as the lucky mascot for this world  cup and help India win the title after 18 years.

Read more about stumpy here.

weekend

yet another weekend..thought of going home this weekend, then realized that my GATE examination is going to happen this Sunday-tomorrow. Oh god - that will be a wonderful 3 hours..where I can ponder am i actually a computer science graduate...

Recently weekends have become more of a time to get some rest and bust some stress and irritation of work rather than possible two days of blast,hangouts and booze.

Weekends mean different to different people. For me its time to discover myself,put my thinking caps on for more ideas, re-investigate the progress towards my dreams and spend some quality time with family.

Happy weekend all.. God bless!