2012 - Audience kaadhula poo

Albeit a visual extravaganza, you have to tolerate the pain of 2.5 disaster-prone-hours, silly dialogues and myriad death escapes by the hero and his family. Of course there are some nail-biting scenes of international monuments blowing up. Be it the fall of Christ the Redeemer or the holy St.Peter’s Basilica, the CG team has done 100% justice. Rest of the devastations of buildings, widening fissures, city getting drowned into the sea, volcano eruptions were plagiarizing other end-of-the-world type of movies. It's definitely not worth for 9 euros.

Want to survive 2012 ??? Well, here’s a secret!!

Just grit your teeth and sit until the next wave of destruction hit the big screen :)

Facebook Addiction!!

Years back, when I was at the verge of completing my schooling, was I introduced to the fun world of WWW. I, along with my friends created a little yahoo id with a sad underscore to it, not wanting to get into the chat rooms, because you never know the person who is chatting with you. Those days, with the dial up connection, I go to the internet centre along with my friend (ofcourse to share the cost!!), writing mails to all whom you know, creating mail ids on all possible providers... very funny it was.

Days and years passed by, accessing internet became even easier while at work. You keep accepting all and every social networking invitations that came your way - Orkut, Facebook, Twitter, Myspace, Xing, Linkedin and what not. Too many things we do every day with internet...using google search, watching movies and tv programs online, downloading favourite music, connecting with friends through blogs, facebook, orkut, twitter, myspace...its endless...

I don’t even remember when I created my facebook account. It remained a dormant networking site for me, orkut being my favourite one. I still remember playing those funny IPL and Crazy taxi games on orkut. Facebook got real smart and they started introducing addictive games. Today, facebook has gotten me logging into my account, multiple times a day. Something I never did before. At least not with facebook. And the reason I login so often to facebook is F-a-r-m-v-i-l-l-e.

Lots of people tried it, sent me invitation that says "Howdy!become my neighbour?", and I kept seeing messages like "moving up”, “fertilize your friend's crops”, “found a sad, lonely cow”, “strawberries got withered", “clear the weeds”, “raccoons ransacking” et cetera. Being tempted, I became a farmer to play Farmville. I found the game very interesting. You can own a farm, grow it, cultivate it, fertilize, crop, sell the fruits, vegetables and milk, you can own animals, trees, barn houses, daily farm etc.

My parents used to say in early days, "Nee mattum ozhunga padikalana, unakku aadu, maadu vangi dhan tharuven. Nee perusaanadhukku apparam, adhe dhan meikkanum" (IF u don’t study well, I will buy you cows and sheeps, which you have to rear). It’s a habitual statement in everyone's life. “If you do not study well, you will end up doing this kind of job”. And today, my mom’s words have come true :) (oye...it doesn’t mean that I did not study well!!)

Yippee...My 50th Post...

Needless to say as the title goes, it’s my 50th post. Do I have to celebrate its success or feel pathetic!  Owning this blog for little more than 2 years now, I have not been a good contributor, should I say. Here are some facts and figures about my blogging ishtyle...I login to my blog only once in a week. I wanted to publish at least one posting a week - which never happened until now. Atleast 4 times I’ve been on long hibernation, the longest being 6 months. Number of posts per month was 4 on an average. 6 was the highest :) And to add, total postings per year were 15, 16 and 19 respectively for 2007, 08, and 09.

Anyways, Cheers to me and my blog!!

Update: Giving my blog a new look.  Changed its template.

Holland ...here I came!!

With the Swiss affair getting over, a new episode begins named “Holland”. Yes. We moved recently to Holland. A new country, new city, lotsa new faces, new language and new culture. Past few weeks have been tedious with settling down period - lots of moving, shifting, purchasing and et cetera. I am the least to get fascinated to live in Amsterdam. Having seen the city earlier, and after the nightmarish experiences we faced (our friends lost their passport here, spent 1000 Euros to get them back plus zero sightseeing experience), I never expected to come back here for a living!!

I don’t have any hard feelings towards Amsterdam. It’s a beautiful city and has a vibrant culture. This terrible experience makes me feel unsafe here. Nevertheless, Alles für gut (all for good). We are happy to start a new phase of life here and even happier not stay in A’dam, but in Amstelveen, a nice residential sub-urb of Amsterdam. It’s clean, neat, and beautiful, with lots of Indian crowd.

We are staying in a pent house right now, and I couldn’t take my eyes off from the balcony. The view is just amazing.

With the 24 hours bad weather, I have found a full time job: non-stop internet browsing:)

A small success to celebrate

Thank god. I did not flunk in my MS Psychology exams. With just 10 days to prepare for them, and all-sudden-trip to India, I reqeusted the PRO of the Univerisity to allow me to take up exams. Finally, I passed my 2nd year theory papers successfully.

Isn't it a good reason to celebrate??

A little thing called “A”

Does your name start with A?? Then there are 1000 wrong things about it!! What do you say?

Many times...no.....Mostly...in my school and college times, I got annoyed for having a name that starts with A. Be it for allotting a roll number in school/college, assignments et al, my name will be in the top - at least among the top 3. During class lecturers when some questions are triggered towards students for which no one responds, or there are no volunteers, the usual phenomenon is to start from the alphabetical order. When there is anything new tried out, it is started from Alphabetical order..It’s easy for people to say “ok lets start in the Alphabetical order”..huh...Why so??

In my college, one of our lecturers wanted each one to prepare a concept in management and present it to the class on daily basis. As usual, it started with the name order, and I was the first. I did not take the assignment seriously as most of my other classmates did. Went on and presented some effortless junk, just for the namesake. The lecturer started shouting at me and then addressed the whole class for being irresponsible like THIS. Trust me! Her shout awakened every single soul in my class to prepare the assignment dutifully from next day onwards(Now stop questioning more about that embarrassing thing to me!!!)

When there are any presentations to be made, we are the victim again. They do not choose people on random. Same alphabetical order follows and when 10 students finish their presentation, time is gone...and the rest of the presentations are either postponed to some unknown date, or the lecturers take a universal view that 10 presentations are enough to know the performance of the whole class!! And the culprits (I mean the lecturers here) can easily remember the first few names than the latter names. Gosh!!

And in school times, when your friends are still preparing for the practical exams strenuously, you are the one to finish them first. I remember many such practicals which I finish in the first batch, and my friends in the second batch keep asking me for the questions, about the teacher invigilating, and all silly questions that come to their mind.

Nevertheless, I do see some advantages of having names starting with A....like...you get to experience everything first and most importantly finish them first, people come and ask you for tips and advices, you can feel relaxed while your friends are having tough time studying,
It’s easy to look for your name in a list of 1000 names (it’s almost in the first few 10 especially while seeing your results in notice board). Lastly, names starting with A always add a lot of grace and charm to the name itself...for instance - my name ;) lol
well..ahem....excuse me...

Unpredictable Life...

Sometimes I feel life is so volatile, and it leaves me thousands of questions unanswered.  So much of unpredicted things happen around you that you struggle to accept them. Moments of unsympathetic and crude realities flow through your life.  You say yourself , “Why me! Why only I get into all troubles and pains?? Why there is no luck in my life? It is not so easy to console oneself and move on with life with constant grief, unless you prepare your mind to do so. But life will still move on.  And I wonder how time changes and how we change with time and accustom to life. The thing which looks utterly important looks totally stupid a few years later. Strange laws of nature are they….

I believe in the Law of Equilibrium. So, there should be a proper balance that strikes between happiness and sorrow. People have their own pains, grief, regrets, and challenges at any given point of time. There can never be a single person on earth who might not have any pain during his lifetime.

Regularly Irregular

Its void. Know I've been so irregular to the blogs in the last few months...No...its not bcoz of a writer's block....neither did I lose any interest. Its just I was busy with other things....with few minor and major changes in my life for the past few months.....Now getting back to the mode, I am all set to write...

Italy Delight

So....I am back with an exhausting trip!! But I don’t need another week to recover from this one…just need sometime to laze around, and take some rest.
Finally Italy happens for me!! With S and his friends around me, we had a delightful 5-day holiday in Italy.
Highlights of the Trip
o The unpleasant train ride from Zurich to Rome with no seat reservations, 6+ hours sitting in the steps near to the door, and with 100+ people often passing us every 5 minutes
o The weather was not as I had expected, it was pretty much chill.
o Our stay at Camping Roma, a remarkable campus with a widespread area, lush green meadows up hill, beautifully decorated footpaths, and lotsa small camps up the hill.
o The Roman architecture and its history behind each of them was too good with a guide around you. o Visits to Spanish steps, Trevi Fountain, Piazza Navona, The Pantheon, Colloseum tour, Palentile Hill, Roman Forum, Vatican City etc.
o Visit to Pisa Tower Complex was truly an awesome experience. It did not glow with dazzling lights during the night time like the Eiffel tower. It was yet beautiful.
o Stay at Florence
o We ran to catch our train from Florence to Venice. A bus driver stopped by and gave us a lift in Public transport upto the Railway station!! Sounds weird right?
o The beauty of venice, its charming water passages, gondola ride with Italian song, lido beach, visit to Murano and Burano islands.
o The divine ambience, tasty Indian food with a friendly Indian owner at Venice’s Ganeshji Indian Restaurant was a good dining experience.

A few words that I learnt in Italian...Prossima fermata, Ciao, Gratis, aperto sinistra, destra, uscita etc...
Viva la Italy...I shall return here again..sometime...

Coincidence Galore!!

We went to Jungfrau (top of Europe), to celebrate our first wedding anniversary. Oh No..this is not another travelogue. It's all 'bout simple but amazing coincidences we encouter in our lives. Everyday in our life, we meet lotsa new faces - some known, mostly unknown; But I am the most happy person if I see someone from India, even if I dont know them. Its a typical pattikadu effect. Being a normal Indian woman, I often feel overwhelmed with joy when I see people from my country in a foreign land. And if they speak Tamizh, I fly!!!

One such memorable acquaintance happened when we travelled from Interlaken to Jungfrau. We met a relatively young couple (obviously Indian). But mind you...we too are Indians. We mind our own business. We rarely step up, smile, or say hello to another Indian (as far as my experience). So did we!! We never smiled, nor did we said hi.

We reached top of the mountain, and were happily taking pictures with our new tripod stand, when we saw that Indian Couple struggling to take a happy-family-pic!! The moment I turned towards the couple to help them, did the man (or the guy!) turned up to me, and requested me to take them a photo.

I smiled and took a few pictures for them. We just had a brief conversation, when we came to know that they know tamil. Hurray!! I was so happy to know that. As usual, we shook hands and went away in our own directions. After our entire visit, we again met them in Sphinx observatory. That was another moment to start the conversation. We again chit-chatted for few minutes and said bye. After spending more than 3-4 hours at Jungfrau, we decided to leave Jungfrau to catch our 2.30 Pm train. While we were waiting, we came to know that the train is delayed by 30 odd minutes.

We took our seat at the waiting area when we saw the same couple heading towards us. We exchanged smiles, and asked how the day was. All of us comfortably sat, and started talking more. Here is the conversation....for convenience sake, I am using C1 (us) and C2 (the unknown indian couple).

C1: So how was your day here?
C2: Ya, very good. we are enjoying.
C1: Where are you guys coming from?
C2: We live in Stuttgart, in Germany.
C1: Oh ok. M.Benz museum is there right?
C2: Ya..it is too goood to see. And where are you guys from?
C1: We live here in switzerland. How long are you people touring in swiss?
C2: We just came sterday, and we will leave in 2 days.
C1: oh..just for a short period.
C2: ya..actually, we've already been to zurich. We came here to spend our wedding anniversary!!
C1 (kling!!): Oh is it!! when is your wedding anniversary??
C2: It is today (march 16)...
C1: Oh great...ours too!! Which year??
C2: last year we got married!
C1: so nice...same here...where was the marriage?
C2: In chennai... (now thats gettin too much)
C1: Ours was too in chennai, in anna nagar.
C2: Oh ok..ours was in T.Nagar.

Now that both the couples rejoiced the coincidence, they probed more details to each other....

C2: My family lives in Coimbatore, but my wife's family are basicially from Rajasthan settled in Hyderabad.
C1: Oh ok...where in CBE were you living?
C2: Near Marudhamalai, in a place called "Vadavalli"
C1: Oh wow!! cant beleive...my aunt's house is in Vadavalli, near to that Subiksha hospital.
C2: Oh ok...its near to my house tooo!!
C1: So, where in Hyderabad were you living? My another aunt lives in Taranaka, near to St.Ann's school.
C2: OMG!! I studied in the same school too!!!

And so the conversation continued...
Too much of coincidence in life. It just happens. It happened to me in many occasions.

I sometimes wonder how beautifully such acquaintances are born. But it is up with us to stop it, or to nurture it. Many times such passing clouds remain as it is, and the relationship is dead. I wish this one is not a passing cloud.