My Thoughts !

Recently Forbes listed the billionaires in the world and as usual Bill Gates tops the list. He is in that position by giving us, such insecure, unstable and resource hungry softwares! I'm not so happy about it - and so are the other tech companies. Say in another 5-10 years what might bring down Bill Gates in that list? A combination of several things:

(*) Use Firefox. After long long years, M$ decided to revamp IE just because of Firefox reduced the above 95% in the browser share of IE. Firefox is clearly a browser which will beat IE. Now with Google's official support to Firefox, Firefox 2 will have above 50% of the market share.

(*) M$ biggest cash cow is Windows. With all your fav applications, games and drivers for your digital devices revolve around Windows, Linux/Mac is not going kill Windows. The only killer will be its own huge base of installation of existing versions. From Win 3.1 to Windows 95, it was a great leap in the OS in terms of funtionality and user interface. After that nothing much has occured. M$ claimed Vista is the next big thing happening to Windows. Many promises made during the initial days of Vista are now abandoned including the revolutionary file system and the faster desktop search. May be its not worth for the change in UI. So people stop ugrading from their current version.

(*) M$ next biggest cash cow is Office suite of products. When Sun purchased Open office, many thought its going to kill M$ Office. But it had pathetic performance and made it unusable. 3 days back Google acquired Writely. That a web based Office suite. That is good news for all except the folks working for M$ Office.

(*) More companies provide support for Linux based servers. This will reduce Windows's in the server market.

(*) All web based apps. Starting from Gmail, Google had come a long way to writely. Once it has made all the regularly day-to-day software in the web, we don't need a PC with 2 GB Ram & 4 GHz processor. People can get a Linux based low end hardware for Rs 5k and use all the applications from the web. No M$!

Interesting tail pieces:

(*) Next to US, India has highest number of billionaires !
(*) Before Google acquired Writely, I believed that Thinkfree.com's Open office is the M$ Office killer. Try it, its cool anyway !
(*) Ben Doogler has written a brief history about Firefox. Read it here
(*) Its not that M$ sells only softwares. It also sells hardwares like keyboards, mice and x-box!
(*) When Windows 95 was released people waited in long queue from midnight, to get the software. Its the first and last in the history!

I didn't update about what was the "fun-innovative-things" that Apple introduced in the special event I mentioned earlier. Although with the introduction of the iPod speakers, Apple is taking a dominant place in the living room, analysts say its a much hyped event. I too think so. Speakers specially made for iPod are not new - Bose and Altec Lansing had it for a long time. Apple is just following the trend. The mac mini's with Intel Dual Core were much expected. So people who has got much expectations were disappointed. What lies ahead of Apple?

Something which we have to note is, that from Intel, AMD, to Microsoft is trying enter into the living room and connect all the available entertaintment devices like your music system, home theatre, DVD player and TV. Till recent past, Apple has not ventured that arena. With the introduction of Front Row software, it also jumped into it. The newly introduced intel based Mac minis now packed with Front Row and a remote control. Now think of the possibilites. During the next Mac World Expo, Steve Jobs clad in is usual dress says "Just one more thing" and introduces a wi-fi enabled iPod with Bonjour running in it. Then he says "Just one more thing" and shows the new Mac Mini loaded with a TV tuner card and the Front Row software can now pause live TV and can record your favourite TV shows at your absence. He says it has a huge 1 TB disk space, so you can record a lot of programs. The crowd roars. To make all the apple fans to dance in joy, he show a live demo. The Mac Mini exquipped with Airport extreme, connects to the wi-fi router and you browse the iTunes store and buy a video song - all with a wireless remote. Your Mac mini is already connected to your TV thru the S-Video port, so you immediately play it in your TV. Meanwhile, thru wi-fi, the song is automatically synced with the iPod across the room. You can pause and record TV shows. Your friends have come home and the photos you shot during your vacation is still in your laptop. No probs. Using Bonjour thru Wi-fi, your Mac mini automatically discovers your Laptop with zero configuration (even if its running on windows!) and you import photos in the shared folder with iPhoto and display it in the TV.

Its not in the far end. It all takes an wi-fi iPod and Mac mini with a Tuner card. If that happens, I'll be getting a Mac mini (and if its less than $400) for my home :-) The next Mac World expo is due in another 10 months. May be Steve has got more for me during that wonderful day!

I was chatting with Viv yesterday. He said that he has bought an mp3 player. Which one, I asked, hoping that he too might have joined the proud iPod owners club. But he said that he bought some Samsung player. The model number was YP-T8. I was browsing to find the features of it. Check Samsung's website. Samsung says that as King of Flash players. It has a big LCD screen (1.8 inch); it has a photo browser; it can play videos; it has an FM radio; it has a voice recorder; it has a text viewer; it has a game functionality; it can act as a USB host - means you can connect your camera or any other USB device and do a data transfer; ...

What the heck? At Rs. 15k, it gives you a complete set of entertainment devices as a single device with a whooping 20 hours of battery life. I know he likes 007 very much and often whistles the tunes when he was at technohut. But I never knew he has decided to become a bond with those next generation gadgets! Any luck with beautiful babes Viv? You are not a complete bond without few gals around you!

Following the story of a saree, here comes the story of a shirt. Again, x% of real mixed with y% of reel ...

A nice, bright, sunny morning. He is getting ready for the office.


He : Sheee. enna pannikittu iruka?
She : kalan kaathala kathatha da. Sudoku fill pannitu iruken
He : mudichitiya?
She : illa. innaiku konjam kastam pa. innoru 10 minutes aagum
He : oh. innaiku 'hard'aa?
She : chee chee. hard ellam easy pa. innaku medium
He : (totally confused. but didn't want to ask any explanation) seri enaku office iku ippave time aachu. pogum pothu petrol veda podadum. enaku dress iron panni vaikariya? naan kulichitu vanthuduren?
She : unaku enkitta ethachum vela vaangalina saapadu erangathe. seri. entha dress iron pannatum?
He : ethachum onnu pannu
She : vendam. apuram kulichitu vanthathum, ethuku itha poi iron panninenu kepa. neeye sollu
He : hmmmmm antha black T-shirt + Lee blue jean
She : ennathu wednesday ellam T-shirt, jean pottutu? olunga decenta kalyanamaana paiyan mathiri oru shirt pant pottu po
He : (its already late and don't want to argue on anything) okie ... appa antha red shirt and black pant?
She : un kitta irukara formal dresslaye athu onnu than urupadiya iruku. atha adutha week Sree reception ikku podanum. vera sollu
He : hmmmm atha black checked shirt?
She : venam, atha intha maasam mattum 3 thadava pottutu poita. unaku vera shirtae illayannu officela kindal panna poranga
He : seri, seri. antha light blue shirt? atha romba naala poda naan
She : athu venam da. athu konjam palasu aana mathiri theriyuthu. atha inime nee office ku podatha pa.
He : aaah. appo antha plain brown shirtu?
She : athuku matcha white pant than nalla irukum, but antha pant alluka iruku. thuvaikanum
He : seri, time aachu ma. nee ethayavathu onnu iron panni vai. naan kulika poren.

[He takes bath and comes out only to see that the red shirt and black pant is ironed]


He : Hey She. ithu Sree reception ikku podanumnu sonniye?
She : illa pa. Sree reception ikku unaku puthusa shirt onnu intha weekend poi vaangikalam. neeyum shirt vaangi romba naal aachu illa?
He : seri
She : appadiye enaku oru Saree eduthidalam pa. nee mattum puthu dress potutu naan palaya dress potta nalla irukathu. enna ok thana? Seri unaku office ikku neram aaguthunnu sonna illa? masa masa innu nikkatha kilambu pa. poo. poo. poooyaaaaa.
He : ......

As I said in last post, Google is a very innovative company. It has many of the very finest talents in the IT industry. Gmail is a wonderful application that is changing the way web is being used. XMLHttpRequest and async javascript is not new to the web. Its been used in very little places. But Gmail extensively made use of that and created gmail. The rest is a history. Now the combination of XML, Javascript and XMLHttpRequest is put together in a buzz world called Ajax and its driving the world crazy. Every major web technology company is already providing support for Ajax or promised support for Ajax. In the early days of gmail, I myself has tried out recreating an small existing web page with Ajax. With barely no support from any of the IDEs of that time, it was too hard. The worst part making it stable and maintaining it. Conventional techniques of web page state maintenance is all null and void with Ajax - no matter what is the technology used to create dynamic page(JSP, ASP, PHP, etc) Now the user is not going to click on a button and wait for the response. The UI is still available to him and he is allowed to click on any other button. The result is similar to a single threaded application converted to multithreaded application! Ajax is not the only thing gmail introduced to the world. There are several other hard-to-do and highly impossible things that has been accomplished. Have you ever looked at the "Attach file" option? Without showing the browse button or the text box, gmail allows to us to attach a file. Its a really tough thing to make it work. Another impossible thing to do is it allows us to dynamically increment the number of file to attach. (For the curious, here is the reason) I've tried my best to crack down how they do it. But cudn't :-( Can show several examples like that - chat in gmail, spell checker etc, but enough of the positive side.

Now here comes the ugly face of the of Google - application integration. Applications are good as individual units. But integrating them is not that easy. Think of these two applications from Google - Picasa and Google screen saver. With Picasa you can change several settings of an image (contrast, color correction,..) and can do basic fixes (crop, red eye removal, ...) Google screensaver can show pictures when activated. It doesn't respect the changes that Picasa has done on the images. As a result, Google screensaver shows raw unedited pictures. Those pictures look odd and the screensaver is less useful when it can't even rotate the images properly.

Another simple instance. Google has a wonderful spell checker in its search engine. It would automatically suggest you the right spelling (try this), but its another product, blogger.com has one of the worst spell checking engine. It can't even recognize the word blog! Its kind of funny. A company which has one of the best spell checker and which has a separate blog search says blog as a spelling error in its own blogging portal. itha than yaanaikum adi sarukumnu sollurangalo?

Google has been innovating and making us to think the way we used to look at web. They make web as a platfrom and create applications that are as useful as a desktop client. Gmail and Google reader are the classic ones! Now here comes Google Creator - a web based HTML editor and free hosting like geocities. Within two hours of opening, I tried to create a page, but the maximum number of uses has already reached :-/ Only a very limited users were allowed to use Google Creator. Guess what? One of them created a page against Google's censorship policy in China. Check this!

Apple is famous for the marketing hype they create for the product launch. Steve Jobs Macworld keynote was observed thru live blogs by millions this year (including me). But the ‘Just one more thing’ was not that great surprise, as the intel based Macs and laptops were on highly expected list. Surprisingly enough, Apple has sent invitations to media persons for a launch of some “fun” product. Whats that? Just like everyone else, I am curious and waiting for Feb 28.

Now-a-days, many people started asking me, 'How is married life?’. The shortest answer I can give is: "Look at the change in my e-mail's signature". For those who didn't notice it yet, it has changed from "I drink, therefore I am" to "Talking between men and women never solves anything. Where we think, they feel".

Things are much different now. One classic example is the way I look at purchases. Earlier it used to be simple. All I have to do, is browse over the T Shirt section and find a nice looking one and try it. If it fits, buy, else reject it and keep searching. Same for a jean. Either blue or black ones which fits me. Now this simple algorithm is no more applicable. It’s become much more complex than the Google's page rank algorithm. I cannot explain it in a blog. Not because I'm going to submit a PhD paper on the subject to MIT or CMU, but because of the simple reason that I don't understand it.

I thought I'd write down the conversation between me and her during her saree purchase. But then real is just real and doesn't taste without any unreal added to it. So naduvula angangae maane, theane, ponmaane ellam pottu, I've spiced up the real conversation. It’s up to you to guess which part of the below is real and which is not. Since it’s a mixure of real and unreal, I'm borrowing Ferrari's He-She characters here. (Hope he won't mind!)

In a saree shop:
She: innaiku vanthu fulla unnoda choice than. seria?
He : kattayama. ennoda alagikku supera oru pudavai select pannaren par.
She: (konjam poi kovathoda) athu yaruda alagi? nee enaku than pudavai eduka vanthu irukennu nenachen?
He : hee, hee. nee than enaku alagi. unna thavira vera yaru?
She: athana parthen.
He : unaku blue, green ellam nalla irukathu, red illa orange colorla saree edukalam. ok va? (to the salesman) konjam red, orange color saree ellam eduthu kudunga.
She: aiyee. nee yum unnoda tastum. enaku red color pidikave pidikathu. (to the salesman) neenga purple bluela greeen kalanthamathiri shadela sarees eduthu podungalen.
[Note: Males are color blind. Of course with a little effort they can distinguish between dark blue and grey, but can't differentiate between greenish blue shaded purple and bluish green shaded purple. In fact they don't even know the names of more than 10 colors]
He : intha first pudavai nalla iruku illa?
She: ei. enna nee. first eduthu kaatura dressa yaravathu udane select pannuvangala? innum neraya pudavai parthutu than select pannave aarambikanum
He : hmmm. munna pinna pudavai eduthu iruntha ithu ellam theriyum
She: (to the salesman) kasa kasa innu design illama simple designa irukanum, kattuna nalla granda theriyanum. antha mathiri sarees eduthu podungalen.
He : (in a nakkal tone) simple and grand - rendum opposite illa?
She: aiyooo. looseada nee? design simplea irukanum. aana atha wear pannana, namma granda theriyanum.
He : ohh. appadiya. ippo puriyuthu.
[Note: Males are the most simplistic poor creatures you can ever meet. They are programmed to respond only to boolean values and this kind of fuzzy logic is really too much for them. If they immediately say that they understand, it means they would never get it. If they argue for a while and then say 'oooh! appadi solla variya? ippo than intha visayam en mara mandala eruthu', it means they realize that either they can't understand the logic or they can make you understand the reality]
(the search continues for more than an hour, and meanwhile someone else is looking at the saree, which is first saree He and She saw)
She: antha saree onnu mothalla eduthu vachen illa, atha edunga.
He : athu nalla illannu sonniye, reject pannineyema
She: illapa. appave naan select panniten. vera nalla design ethachum iruntha atha eduthukalamnu nenachen. but vera ethuvume nalla illapa. so athaye namma select pannikam. ok va?
He : enaku ennamo antha color pudikave illa theriyuma? antha pakkam light orange shadela oru ...
She: konjam summa iru. unaku saree parkave theriyathu. unna ellam naan saree vaanga kootitu vanthen paaru. neenga itha sareeya pack pannuga sir.
Salesman:intha blowse material cut panni eduthudilama madam?
She: illainga. vendam. naan tailor kitta kuduthu eduthukuren.
[Note: If He is lucky and has done some good things in his mundina piravi, the saree comes with an attached blowse. Else finding a perfect match for the saree is really hard. Sometimes the saree, which She would select after an through search of more than hour, will get rejected simply because there is no "perfect" matching blowse]

Coming out of the shop...
He : parava illa. oru valiya two hourslaye shopping mudinchuthu. oru nalla hotel ikku poi supera oru chicken briyani onnu vettitu, padathuku ethachum polama?
She: ennathu shopping mudinchutha? enna vilayaduriya? innum sareeiku matcha in-skirt vaanganum. apuram valayal, kammal, hair band, nail polish ellam vanganum. athu poga intha saree design ikku etha mathiri enkitta chappala illada. athuvum onnu vaanganum. enna nee ippave saapida polamnu sollara?
He : huh? ithana iruka? (thinking for a while and finds there is no other go) seri. ithula enna iruku. vaa. nee solli naan vaangi tharama poyiduvena. poi purchase pannalam. movie innoru naal parthu kitta poochu.

After all the purchases are over & back home, He is exhausted and sitting in the sofa.
She: intha saree color paren. enaku nalla iruka enna?
He : supera iruku pa. naan kuda unaku blue shade ellam suit aagathunnu nenachen.
She: illa da. ithu suit aaguthu, but enaku ennamo nee sonna mathri red illa orange innum nalla suite aaguminnu nenaikaren
He : aama. athula nee innum romba alaga iruapa theriyuma?
She: enaku ennamo nee sonna antha light orange shadela iruntha sareeya vaangi irukalamo innu thonuthuda. thappu panniteno?
He : (in a consoling voice) illa di. parava illa vidu. antha kadaila iruntha lighting unna confuse panniduchu. ippo vaangiyachu. enna panna mudiyum?
She: aama da. nee sollarathu than correct. antha kadai lighting than confuse pannidichu. naalaiku namma poi intha sareeya kuduthutu atha edukukalam. nee sonna correcta than irukum
He : (little confused and giving a pathetic look) illama, kadaila appadi ellam thirupi vaangika maatan
She: aiyooo, loosu. naan unna mathiri illa. vivarama, blowse cut pannave illaye. sareela blowse cut pannita than avan return eduthuka maatan. naan than atha cut pannamaye vaangitu vanthutene. so naalaiku return kuduthitu vera vaangikalam
[Note: Guys, if you are smart enough, now you know what to do when you buy a saree...]
He : (in a low voice) seri antha chappal, nail polish, kammal etc ellam enna panna? athellam return eduthuka maatane
She: unaku ethuvume theriya maatenguthuda. athellam yarachum return pannuvangala? athu ellam irukatum da. naan eppovavathu use pannikuven. naalaiku eduka pora saree ikku matcha ellam innoru set vaangikitta poochu.
He : (wanted to shout, but, in a feeble voice) seri di. nee sonna ok than. naalaiku poi sareeya mathikalam
She: innaiku than naan select panniten. naalaiku vanthu fulla unnoda choice than. seria?
[Note: now read the very first line of this conversation]
He : (with no other words to say) hmmmmmm.


thodarum ...

Last night I was sitting and thinking about the houses I've stayed in. Partly because it’s a new house I moved in and partly because of a mail from Kicha to the TechnoHut members with the thoughts of the good old days in Technohut.

My first house I don't even remember. It was in Kottur, a small town near the famous Aliyar Dam. My parents moved to a village (officially called as Cyber Palayam in my friends circle) between Pollachi and Udumalpet when I was 8 months old. We stayed in a rented house for almost 10 years before my dad bought a house. The rented house is in a big compound. It had very good neighbors - Subramani mama, Lakshmi akka, Panju mama and others. The rent was Rs. 40/- (Yes, you read it right. It’s Rupees Forty only) our house was so big. The hall alone would be the size of a decent two bed room house in Chennai. We had a separate "room" for kitchen, which is situated away from the house, and then we had one store room and two bed rooms. My dad was using one of the bedrooms as a dark room. As a small boy, I'll love to peep into the room. All lights would be turned off and a small red lamp will be on. Push the negative holder into the projector; keep the photo paper; focus the image and switch on the project; wait for a minute and then take the photo paper and keep into the solution. I would be waiting for this moment. Once the paper is in the solution, the image will slowly appear in the photo paper. 2 more minutes the image will completely appear in the paper. My dad will take it and hang it to dry. My dad has trained me with the rest of the work. Once it’s half-dried, I would take it out and put them on a shiny metal and use a roller to dry the rest. I'll keep it in the sun light. The shiny metal would give it a glossy finish. Once it’s dried completely, I will correct the borders using a cutter and stack them in order. My dad would then take them and stick it in an album. My dad has promised me that once I grow up he will teach me how to use the camera and how to prepare the solutions in the dark room. Technology grew faster than me. Something called colour photographs were getting more popular and a laboratory was opened in Chennai for processing colour photographs. My dad bought a camera for taking colour photos. He would parcel the negatives and the DD to Chennai. After a week or 10 days they will parcel back the negatives and photographs. This pretty much affected me. People preferred colour photographs over black and white for occasions and black and white was restricted only for passport photos to stick in some forms. My dad's promise of teaching me about the darkroom stuff and camera has gone in the wind. May be I'd have learnt photography quicker and better if he had taught me.

When I moved to 5th or 6th in school, my dad purchased a house. It was not so big as the rented one, although it was priced around Rs. 35k. It had only one bedroom, kitchen and a bathroom. The rest of the 10 cents was used for gardening. The darkroom was no more. When the time we moved into this house, a lab was opened in Asoka plaza, Coimbatore and they had one of their collection centers in Pollachi. If we give it today, they will take it to coimbatore in the evening, process it overnight and give it the next day. My dad has to push the photos in the album (no more sticking!) and the album will be delivered in one working day after the occasion. Now my interests turned into gardening. I tried creating a small farm in my house. From corn to bidder guard, I was planting and growing vegetables. No need to mention about flowers - I had from jasmine to table rose. I would use any small thing to grow plants. Even fused bulbs and egg shells were used to grow Table rose. This was till my +1. After that for +2 I moved to Udumalpet. Thats a small house - which compares to the size of the kitchen in my home. Was living there for a year. Then after +2, I was in my grandma's house at Satyamangalam for an year. Nothing great to mention about these.

Then for 6 years, I lived in PSG hostels. Though they claim to be a 'Home away from Home' - I never felt that way. But it was really enjoying and learning lot of things both in academic and life. Before entering Bharathi Hostel in PSG CAS, I can't speak English. Till then I was in a Tamil medium school and never had a need to speak. Now things were different. Classes were in English; neighbors in hostel speak in English; all of my friends speak English. I had no choice other than to start talking and writing in English. When I came out of PSG CAS, I changed, I learnt English more in these 3 years than the rest of the 12 years of my school life. Then PSG Tech. Though both colleges come under the same PSG umbrella, they were in different extreme. At CAS, you have the freedom to do anything you want. Walk out of the class if you don't like it, you can kick a prof; slap the security guy, jump over the walls & peep into one of the gal’s hostel room at midnight to say 'Happy Birthday', and what not! Things were different in PSG Tech. Forget about kicking the prof; you can't even raise your voice against the security. There are rules and they are meant to be followed. For at least first one month, it was so hard to get adjusted with the classrooms, where the lectures will there for one full hour. Eventually got used to it and found ways to overcome the rules by proxy attendance, chit passing in the class and copying the assignments & lab programs. Yeah! We broke the rule.

After PSG Tech, I moved to Bangalore. Hughes turned down their offer letter and few including me were left jobless. Few others still had valid offer letters but the joining date was kept on postponed. We decided to rent a house, stay there and find a job. Thanks to Sakthi, we didn't have to search a house. As he was staying in Bangalore for his project, he searched and found a house for us. It was named as the "House of PSG". (No nothing related to the college, its because the people who were paying the rent were me, Sakthi and Ganesh). I would try out my skills in cooking there. Morning breakfast would be simple - a bun and a cup (or two cups) of tea. For lunch, we would prefer buying at Mayuri Hotel. For Rs. 50/-, the parcel meal would serve for 3-4 guys. I also cook occasionally. Dinner is where I would take in charge completely. Will try out some kind of variety rice. Dosa and chappathi are also not so uncommon. Although it was the darkest days in our lifes, fun was always guarenteed. Its where we learnt how to face a real world problem with confidence and with a little bit of sense of humors. Whenever I had some free time (which means 24 hrs a day) and right mood, I would start writing some inspirational quote and draw a related picture in a chart paper and stick it in the wall. I bought a Guitar and started to go to guitar classes. Well before the walls were filled with posters and well before I started learning the basics of guitar, I got a job in Chennai. Infact most of us got jobs in Chennai. So a big full stop to the posters and guitar learning.

Chennai. Now TCS guys and Jaiku took onus and did the searching. I joined them a week after they moved into the house (This time it was tough to find a name for the house with the initials of its 6 members. So we named it as 'TechnoHut'). As all of us have joined a week back, we had a little work, if not no work. So we would go early by 9 AM and come by 5 PM. After that we would play cards. On weekends we will be trying out different items for cooking. Santy would call his mom and get the recipe over the phone, while is he cooking. Viv would buy fruits everyday and cook chappathies. Although now Technohut is equipped with a 600 Watts Onkyo home theatre, in the original days all we had was a walkman with a pair of PC speakers. Las Ketchup, Kadhal Virus and another cassette with a collection of Golti songs were the only proud possessions. Whenever we hear "aserej" or "hey hey enna aachu unaku", we would be reminded of those days. Now we all are geographically distributed across the globe. I'm in Bangalore, Kicha in UK, Santy & Jaiku in US, Ravi & Sree in Chennai, Golti in Japan, Harikiran in Hyderabad and Viv in Canada! Kicha heard the Las Ketchup song and sent the aforementioned mail with the sweet memories of those days.

Two years later, when the house owner raised the rent and 3 of the 6 members has gone onsite, we have to search for a new house. When Jaiku was surfing in his intranet, he found a "To Let" one. It in an apartment, very near to Velachery bus stand. The apartment had facilities like kids play area, wonderful gardening, 24 hrs water, good security, gym, etc, Jaiku was very interested in moving to the apartment. It was surprise that the description is about our own apartment, where we staying for the past 2 years. Poor Jaiku. He is so occupied with work that he has never thought about the facilities available in our apartment. So we shifted 'TechnoHut' two floors down in the same apartment. From here Jaiku, Kicha, Ravi and Viv (for the second time) went to onsite. I think this is the place where I'd consumed lots and lots of whisky and vodka. After all veggies left the house, here is where I learnt non-veg cooking. Poor Vens and Lekshmi. They were my fist victims. I was told that Lekshmi stopped eating non-veg after that. May be because she cudn't find such a tasty chicken briyani anywhere else!

Then came the all-of-the-sudden-marriage. I need to search for a house to stay with her. Then TechnoHut had only three members - me, Ravi and Sree. Good to me, that Ravi's bro shifted his house from Salem to Chennai that time and so Ravi would move there and Sree rented a new house as he is also getting married soon. So now also, I dont have to search for a house! The one where I was already staying is mine. A month later, its been decided to join a company in Bangalore. Leaving her in Chennai, I stayed in Sakthi's house for 2 weeks and started searching for a house. The very first house I saw was a perfect fit for me. Its an independent house and the house owner stays in the ground floor. The house owner had lots of interest in gardening and the result is a small orchid around the house (maa, vazlai, nellikkai, sappotta, theaku, koyya etc). No need to say it had lot of flowers too (You can even find pepper too!) I've lot of interest in gardening so I liked the house very much. Above all, there is lot of space so my gal can bring her dog or get one here. All thru her life, she has been living in her farm house and she didn't like the apartment life. This house would give her the same ambience. But Sakthi was not so interested in this house, as the last one km road is so bad. Commuting will be a problem. We tried to see other 2 houses scheduled that evening in the same area. But we cudn't find one and the other one was locked. I didn't continue my search. Two days later, I fixed the house and gave the token advance. (hmmmm, yet to name it. Someone suggest me a good name). After my description about the reachability of the house, she was little afraid. But she started liking it once she saw the house - I knew she would!. As Sakthi said "ivan intha veedu parthathu rendu reason ikku. onnu veetula oru naai valathalam, innonu velia irunthu entha naayum varathu" :-)

Each one of the places where I've stayed taught me their own things. Now whats this new house is going to teach me? Lets see...

konja naalave smsla intha "indraya thathuvam" alumbu thaanga mudiyala. itha forward pannaravanga vida, itha yosichu create pannaravangala uthaikanum. (hee hee hee, vera onnum illa, intha thathuvangala naanum konjam forward pannuven…) enaku ninaivil irukum sila thathuvangal:

     (*) kaluthaiku naalu kaal irunthalum athala kal mela kal pottu ukkara mudiyuma?
     (*) train evalavu vegama ponalum, kadasi petti kadaseela than pogum
     (*) thalagaanila thalaya vecha thookam varum, thandavaalathula thalaya vecha thooka aal varum
     (*) naai evalo nandri ullatha irunthalum, athala “thank u” solla mudiyuma?
     (*) bus pona bus stand angaye irukum, aana cycle pona cycle stand kudave varum
     (*) pongalukku govt leave viduthu, aana idli, dosai, uppama ikku ellam gove leave vidutha?
     (*) passportla passport size photo irukum, aana stampla stamp size photo irukuma?
     (*) south indiala naarthangai kidaikum, aana north indiala southanga kidaikuma?
     (*) engineering collegela padicha engineer agalam, presidency collegela padicha president aaga mudiyuma?
     (*) yaanai mela namma ukkantha athu safari. athu namma mela ukkantha athu oppari

Last but not the least, dedicated to the great kudimakkal of India:

     (*) bus stop kitta wait pannina bus varum, full stop kitta wait pannina FULL varuma?