Pune Chala Mere Dost

My roomie, Hridish or Gunny as we call him, got transfer to Pune Infy for short term and left Mysore today.

'Mumbai se Aaya Mere Dost' ho gaya 'Pune Chala Mere Dost' !

Now that Gunny is nearer to his home Mumbai and is looking to complete his ME from his college there, he must be going to feel much better there in Pune..

'Seemandam' function

I was lucky to attend the 'Seemandam' function of my friend's elder sister. I was not aware of such a rituality involving the relatives of the preganant woman, believed to comfort the baby yet to be born. The function is found only amond brahmin communities and it involves poojas performed by pundits. The woman and her husband collects rice grains in the pallu as a token of blessings showered upon them by their relatives.
The function ended with the sadya to all those who attended it and giving away of home made sweets and coconut in a small bag before leaving. The whole function gave me a feeling of pride in being part of rich traditional indian culture.

Serena Williams beat the Russian queen ..

It was dominating tennis played by Serena over Sharapova to win this year's Australian open championship.
Though Serena didn't have much tennis at international level for some time, her experience in the tennis court spoke for her and she grabbed the Cup within in no time after 6-1, 6-2 win over Maria sharapova.
I enjoyed watching the tennis of power from Serena, wondering how she manages to hit the ball hard onto empty corners..

my Mandolin

I had decided to start learning a musical instrument and had gone to Mahesh who teaches Mandolin, Guitar and Keyboard at his place in Devraj Urs Road, Mysore. I didnot know what exactly a 'mandolin' look like until Mahesh showed it to me.

I decided to go for it - it had a cute appeal, of being small and artistic. I bought a brand new mandolin for 1750Rs and got it tuned and was ready to learn for first time any musical instrument.

I learned to play the fundamental scale of S-Re-Ga-Ma-Pa-Da-Ne-Sa' by pressing my left hand fingers along the frets and using my right hand to strike the string with the pluctrum. It was a fine learning to bring music out of few metal strings by pressing my finger hard and striking it in rhythm.

the movie 'Guru'

It was a smashing style statement from Abhishek Bachchan. The Mani Ratnam movie was just the perfect one for Abhishek to showcase the character of Gurukant Desai and for Aishwarya, I have not seen her as beautiful as in this.

The movie is both a drama - of that of Guru rising from rags to giant and a mature love story - of that of Guru and Sujatha who goes throught the ups and downs of life.

I liked the movie very much for the great style in which the movie builds up, the feel of power of achievement built into the audience thru the character of Guru and the fight of a man against all odds. The role of Mithun Chakrabarthy, Vidya Balan and Madhavan also added to glitter of the film amidst wonderful performances from Abhishek and Aishwarya!

Video conferencing with Ankit Fadia

Ankit Fadia is a legend by himself, one of the youngest computer wizards known for his extensive explorations in the world of hacking.

We had a video conference with Ankit at Reliance Webworld at Devraj Urs road in Mysore. He gave us a short introdution to hacking, and the need to tighten the security of cyber world.

He has already authored 6 books for guidance in hacking and by enrolling in the course offered via Reliance webworld, I have received them and I hope to expose myself to the wonders of hacking.

Planning for a Social Cause - 'Soften' Meeting

Few of us, the members of SOFTEN (Social Forum to Enable the Needy) held a meeting today to discuss the planning of imparting vacation classes for class X students to equip them better for their career ahead.
The action plans included identifying the governments schools in Mysore, selecting few interested students, bringing out a short course aimed at improving their English and analytical abilities and delivering the course effectively during their vacation time.
SOFTEN aims at helping the children with poor financial background to come up with good education and career and if steps like this if implemented well would gain good appreciation.

Friendly Weekend

This weekend was pretty fine with me and I did a few things like enquiring about purchase of a new Honda Scooter, bought a drawing board, went to Tojin's Place, went to Dinner with few friends of Tojin, went to Devraj Urs road with Narayanan, stayed at Tojin's saturday overnight, went for a film 'The Guardian' at Multiplex and enquired about a mandolin class in city... wow.. that's lot of things in two days ?? apart from lazying around and sleeping !!

'The Guardian'

The movie gave me a wonderful experience for its breath taking picturisations in ocean and the story of a great moral Coastal guard.

The story is centered around Randall (Kevin Costner) who is an expert coast guard rescuer training the new joinees at the United States Coast Guard's Aviation Survival Technician (AST) Program and Jake Fischer (Ashton Kutcher) is a hot-shot candidate for AST who is ranked as a top competitive swimmer.

The movie title is introduced by a mythic tale: People lost at sea often claim they feel a presence lifting them to the surface, breathing life into their bodies waiting for help to arrive, "The Guardian".

I feel lucky to play Tennis

I feel lucky whenever I go the wonderful blue tennis court in our infy campus here in Mysore. I throw myself hard into the game and doesn't feel exhausted because I love playing it.
I played yesterday night at the my favourite court with a chinese girl named Amilie. She was enthusiastic and new to the game. With my limited playing for last 3 months, I was able to help her play better tennis.
I was, as always inspired of playing under flood lights in a calm and cool night, running after the ball and trying to improve my returns !

"Learn from Zakir Hussein"

Myself, along with other faculty of E&R were exposed to seminar presentations by few experienced infoscions anchored by Satheesha. The seminars were on topics 'Software Development- A practictioner's Perspective', 'Experience Sharing- Grass Root Reality and Expectations from SEs', 'Latest Trends in J2EE' and 'Being a Global Educator'.

I had quite a few take aways from the seminar on 'Being a Global Educator' where the speaker explained the 'Learning - Teaching' Model with quadrants of Let Me, Help Me, Tell Me and Show Me, which is now expanded to Challenge Me, Connect Me, Prepare Me and Check Me.

The presentation also had few minute video of Zakir Hussain performing on Tabla, which the speaker said was a role model for all of us because of the basic principles of 'njaana','upaasana' and 'anushthaana'. Njaana was the process of gaining knowledge which the performer might have done for several years, Upasana the practice, which too essential to be in right tune and finally Anushthaana, which is the actual performance.

I was quite impressed realising that Zakir's Hussain's Anushthaana of his magical fingers on Tabla for a few minutes was the result of years of gaining Njaana and Upaasana.

Travelling into the New Year

I was on my way to Mysore along with my friend Vishwesh, travelling in a Semi Sleeper AC ksrtc bus when the New Year bell rang at midnight. But the ambience in bus was not silent; there was a group of few who were singing and clapping all along. The songs they sung included broken film songs, customised malayalam slang songs and mappila songs.
I am not sure whether my friend was liking the songs being sung by them, but for me they were inspiring and refreshing for the new year.

Around Calicut in an Autorikshaw - same place coming more than Twice !

I had my friend Vishwesh at my home in Calicut for attending the marriage of our batchmate Sonia. So our first task at hand in the morning of an perfectly fine Sunday was to buy a gift for her wedding. We started walking searching for 1) shops which are open 2) open shops which can sell us good gift items.
Though we managed to buy a big wedding card, we never found any worthy wedding gifts after roaming around Calicut City in autorikshaws from one point to another and then back & forth different points in city. We finally decided to have a big basket bouqet of flowers as our gift item and it clicked.
Here I am sitting in the Mananchira Square park area of Calicut, while Vishwesh clicked me with his camera mobile.

My Batch Mate's Wedding

I had a wonderful experience of christian wedding at a Church in Calicut where my batchmate, Sonia wed George. It was for the first time me attending one of my batch mate's wedding or any colleague's wedding for that matter. Me, Vishwesh and Aswathi was present right over through the wedding in church and the reception arranged in Calicut Towers hotel.
I felt the entire event to be quite well with sonia appearing like an angel in her christian wedding attire beside her groom in front of the holy priests. The food at the reception was a bit more than delicious with fish fry being my favourite. Me and Vishwesh had gifted the couple a big basket bouqet and big wedding card to make the occasion quite big!