My Thoughts !

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 :-)

Nothing much interesting to blog this week except for some nice links:

(*) First is about the Archive tool, that I discovered. It provides almost all the features of winzip. One good thing I like is the tree view of the files, which I've been longing for in winzip. More importantly its a free tool !. Click here to know more.
(*) Next is a different kind of search engine. All I have to say is its nice idea and try it yourself to see what it is.
(*) Found a good site.

Yesterday is the last Valentine's Day that I enjoy as a bachelor - hopefully !

Morning, as usual went to office. Surfed the net and then chat with my friends. Then I went to CHES. I was very much impressed by the work of Dr. Manorama. Immediately, I decided to help. But donno in what way should I help. I've posted a request to Imaigal, hope to get positive replies from other members. I've posted mail to many of my friends too. Here is some info abt CHES:

(*) There are around 100 children in that org, who are HIV +
(*) They keep the children in the hospital and also they have a ashramam (which I didn't visit) in a separate building
(*) The owner of the building doesn't know that its going to be used for this, and he is strongly against this. He has gone to the court and won the case. Now they have appealed in high court and the case is going. So they are immediately in need of a new place and they can give a rent of 10k - 15 k per month
(*) They do get funds from govt/international orgs, but they are very limited. Rs. 20 for food/child/day which is not enough for obvious reasons
(*) They are having lot of other expenses too - they have started sending few children to school (Only the principal knows the fact that these children are HIV+ and no one else knows about this) They need money for this
(*) Recently they have started finding out foster parents to adopt the children. The foster parents are poor and they too have children. CHES has given them money for this child as well as for their own children
(*) They have more plans, but money is a primary need

If you are interested in helping them in some way or the other, you can mail me.

(1) The CHES in Chennai. Read it here.
(2) An add for the M$ Frontpage:


Looks fine? But "the brilliance of M$ @ Line No: 28" was exposed by the bloggers :-)


(3) How to move data from Access to Excel. Check this.
(4) Quote: "The late Walt Disney built his empire with a mouse. The same can be said about Steve Jobs." Check this.
(5) I Know you are going to hate this.

Few hours back Sakthi asked me what is a blog? Well, I've been reading other's blogs and blogging here for the past two months and this question made me think. I tried to get the meaning from the online dictionary and this is what I got and I tried the Thesaurus and got this. :-( I told him that "its something like a online diary, only difference between a diary and blog is that a diary is generally not read by others and this blogs are written for others to read". I guess I've given a satisfactory explanation :-)

Actually he asked me this question because in one of my spam mails I sent a link on the blogs of Opportunity and Spirit. Somehow I got interest in this space mission and was surfing the website for this. There are a few interesting facts to note.
* The launch was postponed few times due to weather (Florida is the lightning capital of the US), techincal problems (well, after all software is an integral part of it) and a fisherman (check the videos 4 more details) !
* The navigators must hit the target of 5 kms wide from millions of mile away !
* The EDL part is the most crucial part. It has to slow down the craft from 12,000 miles/hour to zero - in just 6 minutes ! Infact this is known as the 'six minutes of terror'. Don't miss this video.

Later I came across another site where there rovers were blogging! That is really a creative idea. It was as if Spirit and Opportunity were blogging about their journey. I liked the site. Should follow it regularly. There are few other blogs I read, almost all are techie blogs, so not going to mention here. But three interesting things I came across while sufring. First is an article in the daily 'The Hindu'. Here is it. The next is an small game written in JavaScript. Try this when you are bored and the last is an image. Here is it:

I bought this book almost 3 months back and have not read it till now. Somehow the size of the book made me to keep it away and reduced its priority. Here and there read few malargal (that is how the items are named as) but didn't have a attai-to-attai read. Finally while going for Arasu's marriage in Coimbatore, I took it. (This time the luggage is less). Read most of it when I was @ home and thought I would complete the rest in the train journey and our man, Varda, took the book and couldn't read it. Then yesterday I was off to office and so made this opportunity to completed it.

The book may not be worth of 500 bucks, but is quite good. He has taken a 100 sutras out of 1610 and explained them. Mostly every malar contains a small story with which the sutra is explained. The illustrations by Maniam Selvam perfects every malar. Each malar is given with a suitable introduction and a clean interpretation. May be if every Tamil teacher in schools were like Karunanithi no one could say 'mella tamil ini saagum'.

Many a time, negative criticism will give a big boost to a movie's publicity. This movie also enjoys such a publicity for the controversial (initial) name itself. This movie was supposed to created communal violence - as Krishnasamy said and opposed the name 'Sandiar'. After strong opposition from him and good 'aasi' from our 'amma' this movie is named as Virumandi.

The initial Jallikattu scenes are picturized in a wonderful way. Kamal should be certainly praised for it. The story line is pretty neat, but the screenplay should have been shaped in a better way. At times, the story is not moving and I felt boring. In Anbe Sivam the message delivered was very clear. But this movie tries to defend against law for sentences against death. In the climax Kamal speaks a dialog 'jail is meant to be a place where criminals can realize their mistake and change themselves. But in practical it is not so' - and tries to back-up the message. mmmhum. Its not so strong. Virumandi is shown as an innocent man, who is sentenced to death, for the crimes he has not committed. But I wonder whether law permits sentence of death to a person, who is accused of creating communal violence and, kidnapping and raping a woman. May be some more background work should have been done.

Everybody fits into their characters well. Especially, the villian. Pasupathy has lived as that character. Another one to be mentioned is Nepolian. The heroine is , hey its Abirami ! Without any makeup and talking in the typical Tirunelveli tamil, she has don a good job as Annalaxmi. Rohini has a re-entry in this film. Rajesh appears in a scene. It seems that after the story line is discussed and the screenplay is created, Kamal realized that Naasar is not in the movie. 'What is a movie without him?' Kamal should have thought and added a character for him. Music is our Mottai. 'Kombula poova soothi' is a typical Raja song. I read that most of the shooting took place in sets in Chennai, due to Krishnasamy's troubles. But I could not any difference between the sets and the real village. Good art direction.


Kamal should learn how to show violence in movies from Sankar. In the movie Indian, the Indian thatha kills many people; there is a mass suicide, but still the entire movie can be viewed with children. Even in Hollywood, they try to make a movie as an entertainer for all ages - take 'The Mummy' for instance. But this movie has an over-dose of unnecessary violence. Esp, in the climax, the villian-vatham is reaaaaly cruel. Next to Anbe Sivam, this movie would have become another classic one, but for the over-dose violence and for not-so-strong-message, this stands to be a very normal movie.