Boxing day

Nope, I'm not talking about the day after Christmas. Although the 26th December holds significance for other reasons. I'll come to that later.

It was an evening of punching on the face and neck. Both my husband and I boxed! Of sweaty foreheads and aching arms. We think its one way to exercise those lazy muscles while still in the comfort of our home. He bet me in tennis and earned applause (and saw some 16-something year old cheer girls do their thing) while I kicked his ass in bowling. I must mention, I've never gone bowling before. He says I'm a natural :D. Oh and we both kicked the crap out of our fellow boxer too. I've never boxed before in my life; not even wrestled with my sister. Phew! Some evening!

Anyhow, I now have a sore shoulder and an extremely happy husband at home. Not the kind that likes to laze on the couch. He's up and active and can't keep his hands off his new Nintendo Wii!

Nadal and Moya

WOW!!!

I just got back from a 4.5 hour semi-final match between Rafael Nadal and Carlos Moya at the Chennai Open tonight. I have no words to describe it, but this evening Chennai had an opportunity to witness one of the BEST MATCHES EVER! And I'm glad I made it. Getting to watch seed #2 Rafael Nadal and seed #7 Carlos Moya at the same court is a real boon. Both sportsmen gave their best. All 3 sets went into tie breakers and the audience were constantly on their feet! And so was I! :D They’d go berserk every time one of them went into an Advantage and the other broke it into a DEUCE! The semi-final was as good as the finals itself. I’m sure none of the Chennaites would like tomorrow’s match if they had seen today’s.

It was a 6-7, 7-6, 7-6 victory for Nadal. After he took it, Nadal threw tennis balls into the auditorium using a cricket bat. It was the funniest sight to see him struggle with it. :P

And what’s more. Some 6000 fans. A binocular in my hand! A heated match! Two Spaniards! 21-year old Nadal. 31-year old Moya (as hot as Nadal). Ooooh la la! ;) What more could I have asked for?

A HUGE thanks to my BIL who got the tickets for us and to my sis who screamed along with me for each point that Nadal took and sighed along with me each time he lost one. :P I had the best evening in a long long time!

It is that time of the year again…

When the sheer passion for the sport would wake me up as early as 5:30 in the morning (or sometimes 5 AM) for three months in a row and I wouldn't complain once.

When every morning I would curse my ma under my breath for making me drink a tall glass of porridge (used to taste yuck) at 5:45 before I left for the club. Eventually, I was grateful she made me drink it!

When PR was as important as knowing the right rowing skills if you want the boats when you needed them

When the daily morning run would stop and the circuits would begin! How we hated doing it.

When my coach would give me a “tch tch” if my endurance wasn't good enough compared to the other guys on the land-work

When our calf muscles would beg for us to stop working out and rest them for a while

When the post-lunch nap at work cannot be avoided

When we dreaded the ergo-meter race more than any other race

When our head-coach’s call to flip the toss would make us weak at the knees clearly reminding us of the impending win-or-die race

When all around us, we would hear one seemingly important mantra … “Die on the boat”

When what appeared to be the most troublesome crew of all, sat quietly bundled up in one corner of the club wondering how much ahead of the other crews we are, or how far behind

When all the bars of chocolates, energy drinks, and red bulls would be our only life-savers between races

When I would eagerly await the knock-out races rather than do the circuits at the end of each race :-/

When we’d feverishly wait under the bridge, my heart pounding against my chest, waiting endlessly for what seemed to be never-ending passage of time, before we got the final call for the race-starts.

When eventually the success of the entire crew would be too sweet for any of the less trivial coxie problems to matter

The year of 2003 was by far the most fantastic rowing season for me! Yet again, it is that time of the year, except this Fall I’m not rowing! But the prestigious M&B corporate regatta is on and is at the Madras Boat Club, Adyar, on the last Saturday of this month. If you are in Chennai, be sure to attend it after 3:30 PM! You don’t have to row, but at least you can be there to witness and confirm that all of the above statements are accurate.

Reflections

Disclaimer: This post was originally written two weeks ago but is getting published only now… sooo some of them might not make sense and most of them may not be presently applicable.


A couple of observations that are specific to the country everyone is oh-so-interested to move to (or visit at some point at least). Some of them I totally concur with and some others I don’t! But remember, no pun intended.

• The days being longer than the nights, life here runs with a rhythm of its own. It would be Monday today and before you know it’s the weekend. I have never felt the days/weeks pass at this pace before!


• Coke, Diet Coke, Pepsi, Diet Pepsi, iced tea, flavoured water, and other unmentionable soft drinks all now become “sodas”.


• Lunch being a battle every single day, now I can clearly comprehend the exact meaning of that lil prayer I used to say every morning in school for 14 years straight… “Give us today our daily bread”. Phew! Vegetarians sure do have a tough time :-/


• Wake up calls, voice messages, and Din Dins. Dinners were soo much fun ‘cos this is the only meal of the day that I get to cook for myself; especially my favourite food, south Indian! :) Sometimes, all six of us used to get into the kitchen and make elaborate dinners, which would all turn out to be absolutely yummo!


• I met a few very interesting people here and have come to make a memorable friendship as well, so much so that my angst to get back home sooner, lessened in time. I also came to realize that when you’re that far away from home, you tend to count a LOT on your friends. Damn good reason to stay together I must admit!


• New York. Undoubtedly, ever-enticing! :)


• I had a chance to meet a very interesting Blogger friend as well. It was very pleasant to meet you Oracle. :)


• The locals almost always smile and say a hello to everyone they see. The customary “Hi, how are you?” the “I’m good, how are u?”, and finally the “I’m great, thanks” has a way of getting onto my nerves! No seriously, when you really don’t expect the person to tell you the truth about how he/she really is, or when you don’t care a tinker’s damn yourself, why ask? Honestly, I think that’s very artificial. Maybe I’m wrong, but that’s only in my humble opinion. But just so you know, inadvertently, I’m practicing that too during my stint here. :|


• Flavoured yogurt! Especially the ones with peach… yummooo! Perhaps the single most awaited food every afternoon.


• Seaside heights, NJ. The sparkling blue-green water, the sun high and sharp, tiny boats tossing lightly farther away in the ocean, the golden speckless sand, women dressed to liberally serve the needs of the men. One amazing trip that will live in my memory longer than me.

More to come. :)

Addendum:
1. I got back on the last Sunday of August to attend my sister’s wedding.
2. The wedding went on very well and I’ve gotten back to the grind again! Thanks for all your prayers. Will try and post something on it soon, while I rub my feet to wear off the tiredness of the 3-day wedding business.
3. Dharma, thank you so much for tagging me. I feel honoured. I'm on it already, but I can't promise you on when it will finally get published. :)

A come back

I have got to apologize for being so quiet for such a long time; I’m sorry I’ve been away. And from those ultra sweet messages I kept receiving on email and on the comments box, I can see that you guys have missed me as much as I missed you. I’ve been kinda jobless and busy all at the same time for a coupla weeks. You ask me how that’s possible? Yup it is, especially in the IT trend where projects are highly unpredictable! My earlier project got completed about four weeks ago and I got shipped from my client location back to my head office (where I did nothing but wait for some other projects that were in the offing) with very little (or sometimes absolutely no) internet access. That was some terrible time!!!

That said, it wasn’t as if I was totally jobless either, because the “project in the offing” all of a sudden made its way right to my desk, and landed piping hot! As part of the kick-off for the new project, I, along with five others from my team, are now in New Jersey! It all happened soo fast, in a blink of the eye, that I didn’t even have the time to call my closest friends about my absence either. Picture this; getting stuff ready for my visa application, appearing for the visa interview in short notice, and two days later travel to the NJ without having time to plan a single damn thing, all this in just one week! :-/

Well, anyway, up until now, things are fine here. I’m loving the place I’m living in; a nice, neat, calm country side of NJ called Bridgewater. Work has been fine, and I’ve been doing well too (this is for those that emailed me and asked me if I was keeping well). I visited New York today (the first Saturday after I landed here) and a small temple quite close to the office on Friday evening.

I will be here for the next six weeks and will be back just in time for my sister’s wedding in the end of August. There’s lotsa pictures of the B-E-A-U-tiful NJ country, and a few pictures from NY too, but yaaawwn … that’s all for now … right now I’m going to sign-off!

I’m homesick already and wanna go home and be a part of the big wedding preps :(. Sigh!!!

You guys take good care and big hugs for a great weekend while I try to catch up on all those new posts from you. Adios!

Missed ya all! :)

Podworks.in

I'm attending Podworks, are you?



This is the first 'unconference' that I will be attending. Will keep you posted on any updates through and over the weekend. Meanwhile, if you're in Chennai this weekend, you could try and make it to the unconference that is held at Tidel Park, Taramani. Feel free to go to podworks.in and get a hang of what it is all about.

I'm surely looking forward to the experience!

Colour me saffron, or whatever else

While some people are still trying to figure this out, and while some others are praying hard that Peter Parker of the all-time Spidey fame doesn’t get killed in Spiderman – 3 (Oh grow up will 'ya. How else will they make millions of more dollars if they don't make SM-4 and SM-5?), here are the waves of water-colours that have been happening with me…

- Three Mondays back, on a hot sultry afternoon, after seven and a half hours of standing in many different queues and open grounds, waiting diligently for my turn on the test drive, I got my driver’s license at 4:30 in the evening. So, Yaay!!!

- Started reading and then discontinued a book called “The Seven Minutes” by Irving Wallace. I didn’t think it was even worth retaining that book and paying that extra money to the library! :-/ No really, I was waiting and waiting and waiting endlessly for it to catch on some speed, in vain! I rather liked “The Seventh Secret” by the same author. A fantastic read I should say; read it about 4 or 5 years back and wouldn’t mind reading it again, but my library doesn’t seem to have it (*sniff*) maybe because of the controversial nature of the plot; but they’ve stacked loads of hard-bound and paperback versions of The Da Vinci Code all the same!

- I’m also reading “Shock” by Robin Cook and it isn’t any different from an earlier read “Brain”. I’m hoping this would have a credible storyline.

- Recovered from a migraine that lasted 40 hours, one sleepless night, and a whole day of internal audit meetings and all things relating to the assessment. Get what I’m saying? It was a miracle I didn’t throw things at the auditors. :D. But clearly, I'd been rude to someone, 'cos he oh-so-sweetly sent me this!

- Watched Rang De Basanti again!!! :) One of the very very few Hindi movies that I watched not only in the theatre but also watched it again at home! :)

And oh, the song I picked for this week may not be as chirpy as schnappi, but will guarantee to bring a smile to your lips. Thank God for friends! :)

No one could ever know me, no one could ever see me.
Seems like you're the only one who knows what it's like to be me.
Someone to face the day with, make it through all the rest with,
Someone I'll always laugh with, even at my worst, I'm best with you.

It's like you're always stuck in second gear,
Well, it hasn't been your day, your week, your month, or even your year.
But I'll be there for you

PS: But really, how can a superhero (a cute one at that) die? :-/ Please tell me he’s not gonna die! :-P


Picture Courtesy: Google

Holy war?!?

I happened to stumble upon this, between this and the weekend. Apparently, this guy (a follower of Islam) from Germany wanted to name his son “Jihad” (or “Holy Struggle to please God” as wiki puts it), and the Berlin authorities rejected his application quoting it as an inappropriate name for a child. Eventually, this man fought for it, and the Berlin court countermanded the ruling, and let him name his son Jihad.

Notwithstanding how holy it may be why would anyone want to name their child “holy struggle”? Beats me :-/ But who am I to ask, if it’s a commonly used name in the religion.

All that side, it’s funny how some “people” (as Big B would like to call them :-P), conveniently re-interpret its meaning to “Holy War” and end up doing certain unpleasant activities under that name!?! I wonder if God really approves of it! Would they rather ask their God before they indulge in it or justify it?

Wanna read some of the rules of Jihad and its ethical limits? Go here, but ask me no questions, ‘cos I haven’t read it myself and obviously don’t want to entertain cultural differences.

Casanova? Or Cannibal?

When I was between the age of 12 and 15, I first started hearing about a train accident (read incident), a plane crash (planned incident), terrorism et al… basically, the evil in the world! Although at first, such news came as a shock to me, as I grew older, I started taking it in with a much slacker reaction.

So there’s a crash; that happens every WEEK of the year
So there’s a murder and no one knows who did it or why; that happens EVERYDAY of the week
So there are serial killings, and there’s no probe for more than a decade now; that happens TWICE everyday of the week
Yeah so?

*** I’m assuming that in the subsequent generation, children will grow up seeing and listening to disaster and sorrowful stories around them all the time…***

But the recent abduction, and further sexual harassment of 30 something children (mostly girls) below the age of 12 in Noida, India, shook all of us, didn’t it? Can we even begin to comprehend what would be crossing the minds of the parents of these children when they found the remains of their kids?!?

When the case was not even filed…

The TV tells me that on further investigation, the parents of the misfortunate children had in fact approached the Noida police department about the children when they went missing, but the police conveniently didn’t bother to even file the case! The people behind the redtape? The Congress party! And now, the same Congress party demands probe into the issue. Not that I am against any political party, but that’s how much this incident tells us about the people that are ruling us, doesn’t it?

How many more angles does it have anyway?

• Casanova?
For starters, these children could have been abducted/tortured, and then sexually abused.


• Business?
  There could have been organ trade involved. Postmortem report of the skeletal remains indicated that they could NOT rule out the fact that organs could have been removed; and eventually sold!
  
  
• Cannibals?
Could they actually be feeding on human flesh? (Euuww, this is like my worst nightmare)

For all this, a handful have been taken into custody, including the police that was in charge during the kidnapping. Yeah haan!! Now, that did a lot of good!

The Fall Out?

• Two policemen will get suspended (NOT relieved from services, simply suspended, so they can walk around comfortably when the heat is down)
  

• The accused will conveniently become “mentally-ill” and the court cannot do anything about it than send him to a mental institution, but naturally!
  

• The parents? Will keep burning the candle of hope that their missing children may actually be alive and living somewhere, far from all the evil that happened to the others in the village, and one day return home safe and sound.

All this aside, do you know what the hottest subject is? Each political party accusing the other that it’s a shame that law and order wasn’t maintained during their reign! Woah! Now that is something that the parents of all the missing children of the village in Noida really need right now, even as they hope their worst nightmares would not come true!

PS: My mother doesn’t approve of my opinion. She strongly believes that the world will start to become a better place to live in (pssst, simply because she doesn’t want her grandchildren growing up amidst all this mess!)

Workshop on PMP Certification

For all those aspiring to appear for the widely accepted PMI's Project Management Professional (PMP) Certification, there is a four-day workshop on PMP Certification held by The Computer Society of India, Chennai Chapter, in association with Digital Illusion India on December 2, 3, 9, and 10.

The highlights of the programme are how to apply for PMP, how to prepare, and how to emerge successfully. The programme is designed for professionals with a minimum of five years of experience including middle and senior managers. You need to register in advance though!

For registration and further details on venue, email csimds[at]gmail[dot]com.

Monsoon Woes!!

Five days after the monsoon depression moved away from the coast of Tamil Nadu, most part of the city of Chennai is recovering from rainwater clogging,

T-Nagar

Ambattur Industrial Estate

Relief measures in the Pallikaranai marshlands

(Images Courtesy, The Hindu)

Air and water can turn into a deadly combination

The recent heavy rains in Chennai and the coastal areas of Tamil Nadu last week hit normal life and saw a lot of chaos, destruction, and death. Not to mention the scores of diseases that the slums have picked up due to rainwater stagnation, there were also reported and unreported incidents of drowning, deaths due to ineffective sanitation facilities, accidents due to traffic holdup et al. Oh! and the freak accident of three young men dying in their sleep while simply sitting inside their parked car with the engine and air-conditioning running.

That is exactly what the three software engineers did on the night of October 28^th on a busy GN Chetty road in T-Nagar. The stormy night had the rains lashing against every vehicle on the roads and had forced numerous car owners to crawl along the jammed roads to get home. The trio was found dead inside their car the next morning. With the postmortem report indicating that the cause of death was suffocation, most believe that it may have been due to the fatal Carbon Mono-oxide gas creeping into their system.

They had apparently parked their car alongside the road to wait for the remainder of the traffic to edge by. Their air-conditioning set in re-circulate mode (which is set by most car owners to ensure the polluted air does not sneak in), the engine running, the windows up; the occupants inside the car were oblivious to the fact that they were being silently killed. Since the exhaust pipe was submerged inside the waters, there was no outlet for the exhaust fumes, invariably, leaving the deadly CO gas to get into the car through the air-conditioning vent. CO has the property of entering into the blood stream at a tremendous rate causing little or no symptoms of suffocation at all. In fact, the only symptoms that a physician says are nausea, giddiness, and fatigue that we would brush off as a result of the stressful work day.

How would you justify someone drifting off to a peaceful sleep and never waking up at all? The incident sent shock-waves among many vehicle owners in the city.

However, Chennai City Traffic Police (CCTP) has given a report on how to stay out of CO trouble in your car.

• Keep your windows down
• Keep your car’s air-con system in ‘ventilate’ mode
• Turn the engine off if the situation looks difficult to handle
• Ensure your power-windows and central-locking are kept open. It’s rare, but your car’s electric system can short out with rising floodwaters and may jam the system.
• Carry a hammer with a pointed end or an ice pick in the car — if you have to break a window open
• Finally, if you find symptoms of CO poisoning, take it seriously, get out of your car and get as much fresh air as possible.

(The above report is from CCTP: courtesy The Hindu)

More on the repercussions of the monsoons in my next post.