My Thoughts !

Last Thrusday, Guru mailed me from Bangalore asking when is Maddy is coming to Chennai.I replied him that he will be here next week for our pondi trip. Minutes later, I get a call from Maddy and he said he is calling from periavedu! He said he will be coming next week also for the pondi trip. Oh man. From Hyderabad to Chennai on 2 consecutive weekends with 2 days of leave for every week. Guess his company just gives salary and not work. mmmm. Anyway we all went for a lunch at Sangeetha and then suddenly decided we'll go to some movie in Mayajaal. Ravi had work and he had to return to office. We didn't force him, we we didn't have enough vehicles (my muthukarupan got a flat tyre on that day) Bunking college and going to movies is a different thing, but here we all bunked office and then went to a movie(& G Rainbow Colony - I'll blog soon with a review). Long time we didn't have this kind of gettogether and it was fun and interesting. After the movie was over, I went to office for the dandhiya night. It was fantastic. For sometime everybody was dancing with the sticks and the movements that were taught during the training session. But it was only till some point. After that high tempo songs started playing everybody dropped the sticks and it was all dabbangutthu. I was just standing and enjoyed watching it. Somehow I realized I didn' feel like dancing. I was wondering what happened to me. Either because that I didn't have any company or beacuse I'm growing out of these things. Oh! Means I'm getting older. This hurts :-( Ok. Lets forget that for a moment. The next three days were enjoyable. We went out for roaming, shopping and another movie too. This was a second show in a theater nearby. The movie was Madura - a dabba movie, (and so no blogging on that) but ok for a Rs. 15 ticket. 4 days went just like that! After a long time, I guess I'm having a looong and enjoyable weekend. Next week planned to go to Pondi and hope to have more fun.

No, I'm not dead. I'm still alive :-) Unfortunately accessing web is not so easy as before and so am virtually dead in the net. :-( Quite a few changes. At office, I moved to a different team in a different floor in a different building and I'm in the same company. At home, we moved a home in the same location, same apartment, same block but different floor.

Apart from these there is nothing has changed much. As usual things in an as usual way. Thought of switching job, but then decided not to do at least till the end of this project. Let me see. While I was browsing I came across an interesting job ad in a forum. Everybody started teasing abt the post and the author removed it. Again, somewhere in the bottom of the discussion somebody has reposted the original ad. Check this. This is cool-n-funny. :-)

Lets go techie: I discovered a nice tool. M$ has been promising the users for a integrated search for desktop and web. Don Box is breaking his head to bring out provide it in the next version of Windows. Meanwhile, google has already come with a desktop search. Its simple awesome. It can even search into word, powerpoint, Outlook mails, AOL chats, etc. Check this.

Thinking of M$, I remember one M$ guy, who has a nice blog. He can write everything from why you have to press Start button to Shutdown Windows to cooking. He has a written a blog regarding Spam. Good one.

Let me end with a nice link on Tamil Classics. This site contains lot of work from Tholkappiyam to Kalki's work. Click here.

Donno when I'll blog again. Till then 'c ya'. Have a good day/week/month/year/decade :-)

This weekend was a nice one. On Saturday we planned for a team outing in a resort in the ECR. Around 25 of our teammates were there and the whole day was full of fun. Went home at 10 PM and as usual chattings went till 12.30. The next morning I went to a place near Kancheepuram with Sels and Varda. The original plan was to drive a Santro, but as Sels dropped out from the plan, we both went in my bike. We took a short cut. Its a road after Tambaram. For a while, we were talking and didn't notice much difference in the environment. After sometime, I could see no trace of Chennai, but only a normal rural scenes. Gals moving around in pavada-thavanis and retta jadais; bunch of people sitting in tracktor trailors, lots and lots of greeneries; etc. Within 5 kms all these changes ! The purpose of our trip was to visit a plot that we are supposed to buy. There was no water problem at all. I could see a well and in 10 feets there was water. The water tastes really good too. Overall we were satisfied with the place. While coming back I was enjoying the nice sceneries around. All till the road joins the Chengalpat highway. After that alas, the ugliness of Kuvampatti hits. Dusty roads, fast moving vehicles, crowd everywhere the humidity, , , , , . mmmm soon I want to leave the city.

OK. To end with a nice techie quote:

It is time to unmask the programming community as a Secret Society for the Creation and Preservation of Artificial Complexity.

Edsger W. Dijkstra: The next forty years (EWD 1051)

OK Now that I've got an round-about-and-illegal-way of accessing net from my desk itself, hope I'll be blogging as usual :-)

I've always separated my personal life from my offical one. So are my blogs. But then I decided to shutdown my techie blog and continue only with this one. The result, you might find some techie stuffs, which are interesting to non-techines too :-)

First is a schedule of a developer! Found it here. I like the triple durex thing ;-)

And the next is the small animation about the Sun & M$ deal. Absolutely funny. Find it here.

Things do change. After I come back, there is no net in my desktop. Only way to access net is thru the kiosk systems set up in the office. As always others will be waiting to access the kiosk systems, I can't type my posts here. These machines are not connected to the company network and so there is no way to type @ my desk and transfer it here. The only possible way is to type it @ my home pc and then go to a browsing center and upload my blogs. I've typed several blogs - the elections, the wonderful novel, an autobiography, gmail, ipod, my travel, etc, etc and then one fine day my pc crashed and I've lost my interest in blogs. Recreating them is not so easy since most of the blogs reflect my mood and they are hard to recollect. I'll try my best to restore them and update the blogs, meanwhile, cross your fingers and wait for them ....

I thought I'll be blogging more with my weird American experiences. Unfortunately, I couldn't devote much time to blog. Now I realize, only three more days left and then I'll be flying back to Kuvampatti. Now, I'm having a break in my official work, so let me quickly blog abt my experiences. Here it goes:

All about Dallas

Dallas is a typical Mexican city. Actually its one of the twin cities - Dallas & Fort Worth. In the middle of these two cities is the DFW airport. For travelers in Texas and surrounding states, its a typical Madurai. One small difference is that in Madurai u can get a connecting bus to any city in the state & nearby states. Here u get a connecting flight. U can see a lot of flights around here. The area around the airport itself became a city and is now called as Dallas-Fortworth City!

The Skeleton ...

The infrastructure is very good. No dogged-up roads, no water problem, no drainage problems, no power cuts, nothing. When all those primary needs are satisfied well, people here can relaxily worry about the flea on their cats or the prescription for their dogs for weight loss or the lawn is not so greeny as their neighbor's or sue the coffee shop for not saying that the coffee is hot. They get everything at a lower cost. I can't still figure the equation of how this works. Whether its a cup of coffee or a can of milk or a can of water or a gallon of petrol - all costs the same. May be I'm very bad in maths :-(


The weather ...

Unlike India, here the season changes are more visible. When I came here, it was the end of the Winter. I didn't see much of greenery. Then the whole place changed in Spring. I open the window, I could see Tulips smiling. The same roads I travel regularly, is now surrounded with more greeny grass with lots of flowers blossomming between. The trees look good now. The weather is highly unpredictable. One day it rains heavily and the next morning, its a bright and sunny day as if nothing happened last night. The best part is u can't find the signs of the downpour anywhere. Had it been our Kuvampatti, the muddy roads reminds u the rain at least for a week. People are so obsessed with the weather changes, that there is a separate channel for weather forecasts !

Where there is a H1B ...

Compared with other states, Texas has the climates comparable with our Indian climate. Further things are cheap here. One can easily own a house here there in any other state. So you can find lot of Indians and Goltis here - don't scare at me, I've blogged exactly the same words of a Golti without any change! Well, Goltis and Indians are not alone. Lot of Mexican can be found here, mostly illegal immigrants. They share the biggest part of the Non-American population. Where ever u go, u can see the usage of Spanish. Next biggest share is by Chinese people, Chinkus - as they call. Mostly of them came here and settled down 2 generations back. Next biggest share is our Goltis and then comes Indians :-) These fellows are mostly H1B fellows and very few are Green card holders. This proves the Newton's third law of US Immigration - "Where there is a H1B, there are at least three goltis".

The problem with America is ...

In the movie 'Brave Heart', the emperor would say 'The problem with Scotland is, its full of Scotish people'. 'What else u can expect in Scotland?' - I thought. After coming here, I see that its completely other way around. 'The problem with America is its full of Non-Americans!'. I take a Cab to go to office everyday. Everyday, I find a different national - Nigerian, Chinese, Sudanian, Afgan, Paki. Finally I settled down with a Palestinian. Everyday I go in his cab. If he is busy, when I call, he used to send some of his friends to give me a drop. He is always against America and Americans. (In fact the unofficial national anthem is composed by an immigrant!) He dislikes these fellows killing women and children in Afganisthan. He start with M.F. and start using all possible combinations of the F. word against America. One day when he was in good mood, I asked him how long u've been here in this country. He said 23 years ! Our man is very orthodox. When I asked him to take me to a strip club one weekend, he said, 'No, my friend, that place is evil, and I won't take u there. If I take u then I also share the evil.' Then I've to use another cab, a friend of his, to go to Strip Clubs.

Strip Clubs

Strictly censored :-|

The People ...

This is a land of crazy people. Oru pana soothuku, oru sooru patham. I'll explain one experience. One of my teammates checked in the same hotel on a noon. Evening, I came to the hotel and asked his room number in the reception. She said, 'Sorry Sir, I can't give u the room number'.(privacy) Then she said, but 'u can talk to him. Pick up the phone, I'll transfer u to his room'. I went to the phone in the corner of the same room and picked up the receiver. She said 'now dial 0'. I did. Now she picked up the phone in her desk and looked at me and said talked to me over the phone ' Good evening Sir. How can I help you?'. Then I've to say I need to talk to my friend and then she transfered the call ! Quite a few experiences like this :-)

Podungaiya vootu ...

... namma sothu katchiya pathu. Food is something I enjoyed here as well as hated here. Breakfast is complementary in our hotel. I tasted the doughnuts and cereals for 2/3 days, but soon my habit of skipping breakfast took over. For lunch I used to go around the places visiting new restaurants everyday and tasting different food. Mostly Mexican restaurants, but I tasted Greek, Pakistan, Italian, Chinese, Indian and of course American food. I preferred Chicken, because mostly the other choices are Pepperoni and Beef. No Fanta/Miranda :-( So I had to go for Sprite/7Up. We cooked dinner in the room, if I happen to return to room before 9 or I had it in the office itself @ company's expense - which occurs mostly.

The coffee you get here is the original Columbian Coffee, which is pure and not adulterated with Chicory. Having tasted the coffee with chicory for more than two decades (Oh, I'm getting older), this coffee sucks. But now I used to this. U go to a coffee shop, you always get a black coffee. You need to mix Sweetener and Whitener (sugar and milk) yourself. There are lot of choices for both. Low-calorie, low-fat, normal, etc, etc,. These fellows care so much about health! During the dinner time in the office, every other day there is a big debate on the methods of carb cutting. (I'm a silent observer and after everything is over surely somebody will turn and look at me as if I'm a different animal from a whole new planet) You see a lot of alergy medicines, low-fat eatables, loose-40-pounds-in-30-days ads, etc, etc in the Tv.

TV Channels

Good. Nice movies, some times nice serials. I enjoy them. They don't have any cultural restrictions and there are few documentaries that I really enjoy ;;-) Some time back, I saw a documentary on HBO. It started with an American lady arrested in China. They will suspect her as a terrorist. Reason? the car that she rented for her friend had few grains of TNT in the boot. Its evident to the viewer that she is really innocent. But the Chinese guy is not ready to give the benefit of doubt to her. He will torture her both verbally and physically. They officials will not answer properly to the American ambassador. I was wondering how come Americans got the guts to tease Chinese like this. It went on like this for the first 10 minutes. Then came the twist. The scene changes. An Afgan guy will be arrested in America. The scenes are repeated again. But this time with new actors. The Americans do the same thing to that poor guy, for signing in a rental car form. Then they toggle between both the scenes with same dialogs and different actors. At the end the message is displayed. Its something like: "The first scene never happened, but the other happens very often. Its because of our in-secure feeling, we are putting lot of innocent people in trouble. Doing so will only increase the potential threats against our nation. Clear international policies are the only solution." Good HBO. You really got the guts and way of saying things. But I hope, still after viewing this 75% of Americans will want that Saddam to be executed because he is directly connected with 9/11 and a potential threat to the America's security.

Small, the next big thing

Yes, I bought an iPod. Will blog all about it later :-)

Got settled down here. I'm living at Irving, its a county in Dallas. In fact, Dallas is 15 miles away from this place. My office is in another county, Grapevine, a historical place known for wines. My company has several offices in Dallas, around 20. And I guess this is the worst building. Its actually a warehouse converted into an office building. They primarily have this as a disaster recovery center with 200 people working around here. One advantage of being outside the city, is you don't feel the traffic. Normally people stay away from the city and come into the city for work. I stay in the city and travel out for office. So the traffic is always in the opposite direction. Apart from that u don't have anything special about this place. You have to travel at least 5 miles for a restaurant. The place looks more Mexican than American. There is a big mattu panni and a kuthirai laayam around. People drive big trucks to office. The food is more spicy & hot. All Mexican stuffs. The normal working hours of the office is 8-5. But in our team most of the people come in by 10 am and leave by 10 pm. So I wake up only at 8 and go to office at 9.30-10. Will be there till 10 PM and come back. Catch a cab everyday. These fellows are very strict in time. When they say, 9.23, they are @ the doors at 9.23. Discovered that no good places to visit here. I have to travel long to visit places and see the real America, if only I had enough time :-(

Here everything is big. I can't see a monitor less than 21". The Nissan Titan, is bigger than our Tata 407. The minimum quantity of the coffee is thrice as much as a coffee you would get in Saravana bhavan. When comparing the sizes, the word "small" is equal to the word "medium" in India. Be it be a size of the pizza or the size of the bra, its true. I forgot my belt in Kuvampatti, so thought I will buy one in Walmart. The smallest size available was 30" and only 3 were in that size. When I asked the sales gal for a 28", she laughed at me and said, "search in the boys section". That was was full of kids belts. Certainly I can't use them for office. So came back to mens section and selected one of the 30 :-( I was wondering why. When I look at the Lays pack or the pepsi cup, I got the answer. No wonder u frequently see the "loose 15 pounds in 5 days" kind-of-ads here. Crazy people. Only in America you can see people ordering a double cheese pizza with a diet coke. :-)

I was lucky enough to get a window seat in both my flights. When the lufthansa landed in Dallas, I could immediately felt the Texas smell. People with cowboy hats driving the vehicles in the airport, the mud on the vehicles, the dry sun, etc. Checking out was smooth. All the tags that were tied to "unambiguously identify" my suitcase were not necessary. It was pretty easier to find my baggage. No hassles in security clearances. Finger prints, photographs, mmmmm, these fellows will never learn. Preemptive attacks for the non-existent weapons of mass destruction will not help preventing another 9/11. Rather its the other way. Its not that America is invulnerable. Its already proved in 9/11 that to bring down the two of the tallest buildings in the most powerful nation, all it needs is a perfect plan, few angry minded people and 2 knifes. No weapons of mass destruction is needed. Oops! Diverted from the topic. Then we came out and my teammates friend had come to pick us. Big sized cars, broader roads, a relatively clean environment, yes, I'm not at home. Finally reached the hotel. Some Latin-American lady speaking English with a different ascent was there in the reception. Somehow, I don't like staying in the ground floor. Esp the feeling of somebody walking outside can see my room thru the window doesn't make me comfortable. So I asked which floor is the room. She replied its in the first floor. Happily said OK. Then to my surprise the room indeed was in the ground floor. I was puzzled and asked my teammate, he replied back. Well, here first floor means our ground floor. Oh! So got bit but the cultural differences bug. Can't help :-( The suite was neat. Equipped with hair drier to iron box. Alarm clock, TV, radio, fridge, oven, etc, etc. Good. Went out to a near-by desi shop for shopping. Everything is different, the switches were upside down(or downside up?); no flames in the stove - electric heater; the same vegetables looks odd; the rice tastes different; everything is different. Cooked some rice & sambar and had dinner. Set the temperature in the AC/heater and went to bed. No fan. Without the feeling of the air movements, again it was odd. No sound too. It was dead silent. Then I heard a sssooooooiiiiiiiiiiiing sound of a mosquito in my ears. Ha! Felt home :-) Pulled up my blanket and slept.

After a loooong time & crossing all the passport-troubles, finally I'm in Dallas now :-) This was my first flight experience and so anxiously waiting in the long queue for getting the boarding pass. The lady in the counter first weighed my suitcase and then she asked me to keep my hand luggage for checking the weight. I kept my bag and she didn't respond for few seconds. She looked at me and asked ' that's it?' I was having a small bag - better to call it a pouch, and nothing else. I said, 'yes'. She laughed into smiles and said, 'perfect. You don't have to weigh this'. Travel light :-)

It was midnight when the flight took off. When the flight started moving in the land, the G-Force increases and blood starts flowing into the brain. I thought, how good it will be my Pulsar had this pickup & speed! When the flight took off, I could see Chennai, from the bird's eye view. All of a sudden, Chennai was beautiful. Singara Chennai is no more an oxymoron. But in the night, the flight was crossing many other cities and I found that not only Chennai, but most of the other cities are also beautiful, if looked from the sky. CPM buses will have better seats than the economy class seats in Boeing. Its ok for short trips, but for going half way across the globe, its certainly uncomfortable. I certainly didn't expect that the cute lady from German will be serving me kicked, oothampam and chutney as breakfast in Luftansa!!! They even had Tamil songs played in the Radio and TV in the flight. I landed Frankfurt next morning. It was fully covered with snow. The connecting flight was delayed by an hour. The flight from Frankfurt to Dallas, was bit better than the earlier one. When it was flying above Greenland, there was turbulence. Although I've heard about air turbulence earlier, I never expected that it will shook the flight that heavily! I looked out of the window. From the 35000 feet, what I could see was snow, snow and snow alone. Rarely I could see the tip of rocks. If something goes wrong, certainly u can't survive. I'm not afraid of death, but I don't want to die like this. The turbulence lasted for few minutes and then the rest of the journey was smooth. Reminded of nice quote:"Why don't they make the whole plane out of that blackbox stuff?".
By evening I landed Dallas-Fort Worth airport. At last I'm in Dallas :-)