Digsby - Worth a try

Digsby - A nice little application that I stumbled upon last week (though its been around for around 2 years). This is a one stop application where you get updates from the multiple E-mail accounts that you have, chat in multiple IMs and also social networking sites. Looking back, when we were introduced to internet and emails, we created (at least people I knew) as many Email accounts as we could in MSN, Yahoo, USA.Net, Rediff etc.... and the list was endless. All we did with this was brag about how many accounts we had to one another. Now we would hardly have 2 accounts we use every day (including IM) apart from social networking accounts. Now won’t that be good not to have multiple windows/tabs open to check for updates from these sites and have them popped out for all the accounts that you manage. It has been few days since I started using it but I recommend this to be tried once at least. Check it out here.

My plans are Kaput from the word GO

It was a long weekend ahead with Tuesday being a holiday, I had plans of my own to fall sick on Monday and convert it to a 4 day a-la mini vacation. The mood was not ideal to work on Friday as I had returned from my sojourn in Mumbai to Bangalore. I left early to catch a bus by 1500 and reached Chennai by 2100. I was so happy to be in the midst of Tamils after a brief stint amongst the Manoos. My mom prepared a dinner with aroma tickling my nostrils I geared up to devour some gorgeous food. I retired early to bed after that and I knew a busy day awaited me the next day. It had been some time since I visited Chennai so I had a lot of friends to catch up with.

The next day, being my birthday, dutifully visited a temple for holy blessings and started a whirlwind tour of the city, meeting half a dozen people. How else do I spend a day here? The plan for the evening was to host a dinner for my cousins at ”GRT Grand”. We spent a good time there and headed back home around 2300 before retiring for the day.

Sunday was no different except that I had to visit a friend of mine near Tiruvallur who underwent a surgery and was recuperating. Lending a moral support to him, headed to my cousin’s place in T Nagar for lunch, having never visited there before asked my cousin to pick me from a place where I can reach by train. Soon that followed with watching a movie “Clerks II” in PC and what a horrible mess it was. My cousin kept on rambling about how IMDB ratings are not to be taken seriously after seeing a good rating for the movie. I asked him if there was any worthy movie with him and he started playing “Inglourious Basterds”.

It was half way through the movie that I received a call from my senior manager and ordering to show up myself in Bangalore the next day to apply for a UK visa. I was supposed to travel in another week’s time. I tried convincing him about how impossible it was for me to travel within a short time’s notice but to no avail. Having failed miserably to continue my planned vacation booked a ticket for a bus travel the very night. Promptly after reaching the office, I did apply for the visa. When my reporting manager was informed about this, of course by me, he duly smooth talked his way to the senior manager and made me travel back to Mumbai. It was a rehash of what I had been thinking would inevitably happen and left me bereft for my broken vacation. Now I am sitting in the dingy government office, our beloved customers and my onsite workspace. Not a person to be deterred by these events, I have started planning for a trip with my cousins. Hope there are no conferences planned during that time to be held at some goddamned country whose valid visa I don’t posses.

The above incident is true except that I put myself in my cousin’s shoes to narrate and I am the cousin mentioned to be staying in T Nagar.

Can TN board exams ever be difficult?

Last Wednesday, the daily Hindu carried news with a headline “Mathematics paper difficult, say students” and I guessed they were referring to the ongoing state board examinations. Indeed it was, and I, very surprised to read this since there is nothing you can associate as difficult when it comes to the exams conducted by the Tamil Nadu state board. Guess what they had to say about the question paper. It carried unexpected questions. Since when did question papers were made available prior to the exams for the students to prepare only those set of questions and ignore the syllabi.

The School teachers and the correspondents aren’t left behind in this chaos. One particular guy gave vent to his feelings. He had been conducting many revision tests for his students and this year’s paper has been a blinder. Poor fellow could not differentiate between imposition and revision. An office bearer in one of the prestigious schools was interviewed for his views and he has criticized the board for making the exams tough. I have never known state board exams to be tough which I can assuredly say for the last 15 years. There was at least an entrance examination for professional courses which pushed students to rely on the grey cells, has been discarded in the recent years thanks to political farce played by those in power.

If students can’t be tested on the knowledge they have gained and expect a rote learning, there is no point in having an education system. I have been doing my Masters with BITS through an offline work integrated program which requires me to write only exams and no classes are conducted. I liked their Examinations not because I cleared all the papers, but for the way it was modelled. I didn’t receive any outstanding marks, quite the contrary, average marks but all the questions were application of the concepts given in the syllabus. This kind of education, though I am not drawing any advantage from it, is what would be the best course to be followed across the country and specifically in Tamil Nadu where an obsession of scoring 499/500 or 1195/1200 is ever increasing.

Note: I was not a studious person in schools or college but an average student. But that doesn’t stop me from carrying notions as said above. This note is to pre-empt any question about my academic achievements if any.

SOS - I am balding!

One thing that haunts me day in day out is the rate at which hairs from my scalp taking a dive to the ground. It all started when I stepped in Chennai, till when I was confined to my native, a temple town. It has been 8 years since and what used to be so untidy, wildly unkempt hair is left with nothing but few last ones ready to take their turn. I am still 26 but for sure don’t look like one. In the last 1 month I noticed a lot of patches and this adds to my already boring and dull life. I have been frequenting this Hair Spa at Green Trends Salon believing a turn around and so it looked like for few days but alas, the attempt has failed too.

For the last 2 weeks, I have been growing a beard and I decidedly like it very much. But truth be told, this at the least deflects the attention of people talking to me from few feet away from noticing the shine from the top of my head. What people keep telling me is that it doesn’t suit me, but who bothers. It’s all a matter of pride and that gets shattered when most of the people take me for a person in his early thirties. I have had more than few embarrassing moments with kids addressing me uncle..... arrggg....

My cousin who was facing a similar situation but not in the danger zone as I am in, started showing some sign of improvement. This he attributed to the medication he had been taking and he recommended me to consult the dermatologist he had visited. I am now looking up to him as my hope and have decided to pay a visit in the coming week. Pray, he finds a solution for the troubles on my plate or rather on my head.

Rossoneri disappoint, Red Devils dominate......

I was excited for being back from office by 19:30 yesterday and the last time I was able to sneak out by that time was few weeks back... in 2009. The last 2 weeks in particular, there was nothing going right my way and left me frustrated. Even the team I support played miserably last week as Milan crashed out 0-2 to their city rivals Inter which looked like a bunch of pensioners rolled into a team. So when I was in time to catch them play Livorno yesterday I was expecting them to maraud the minnows but they were determined not to play like the giants "MILAN" is supposed to play. Livorno played well within their limitations to travel back happy gaining a point, keeping them out of the relegation zone. This was not a result that would have blocked my spirits spiralling down further and I concluded cheering myself up was probably in a distant future.

This was followed by the clash of titans, Arsenal vs. Manchester Utd. at the Emirates stadium, mother of all pitch rivalries in BPL. The build up to the match was pretty huge considering the stake and it was an unusual silence from the northern rivals. A statement from Arsene Wenger ridiculing Rooney’s talents and boasting of his youthful side, Denilson’s comments on how they weren’t boys anymore but men and need to prove Patrice Evra wrong. It was a perfect recipe for a blockbuster movie and it did live up to the billing. What a match it was-> Speed and Youth pitted against Experience and Guile. 90 minutes of pure, fast paced, fire cracker contest that kept the crowd on their feet till the last whistle when experience proved speed and young legs weren’t self sufficient for a league glory.

Nani, who had been left out of the starting line up for the first half of the season started 4^th match in a row. The winger on the Sunday that mattered most, silenced his critics with a best ever performance and rightfully picking a man of the match award. The maturity he showed on the pitch covering from 1 flag to another, piercing the defence and breaking into the danger zone lead the way for Man Utd. The first goal, a lob from Nani, deflected into the net by Almunia was a gem as he mocked at the Arsenal’s defence near the right corner before squeezing through 2 defenders and lobbing. The second was a visual treat, 4 minutes from the first goal with Rooney giving a cross to Nani from the central midfield before sprinting across like a Tiger with its prey in sight towards the net and getting a cross back from Nani to fire past the goalie. That was his 100^th goal in BPL and 22^nd of the season (20 in BPL).

With 0-2 during halftime, all MU had to do was defend but given their and Fergusson’s reputation they went in for a kill and the Korean kid Park tapped one within 15 minutes on the other side of half time. The only consolation for the gunners was a goal from Vermaelen, deflected by Evans into the net. A usually exuberant Fabregas was subdued for a very long time and Arshavin could not overcome his selfish aim of scoring when he could have passed to the attacking midfielders who could have created opportunities. Wenger was seen scratching his head and looking up to heaven for divine intervention which was not forthcoming while Fergusson was leaping in air for every goal, a rare sight given the Scot’s lack of emotion except while reprimanding his boys. This was also their first win in the new emirates stadium. I so badly wanted Arsenal to lose and Man Utd to win that when it happened, I felt relaxed a bit, having forgotten the taxing work in office for close to 2 hours. Now I so hope that Arsenal’s city rivals thrash them the next week in their super Sunday clash which would inch forward as a 2 horse race to the championship.

Film fest - weekend dhamaka

With unseen movies piling up in my hard disk, I could not ignore the fact any further and started watching them yesterday. What had kept me so long from watching those movies was my schedule, a product release to a new client. But the story doesn’t end there. What little time that was extracted from my sleeping hours was dedicated to playing FIFA 2010. So I started off with “Double Indemnity”. It was one heck of a movie and for the movie being released during the war, around 1944; it still stands the test of time. Casting was spot on and the screenplay was spellbinding, not to forget the dialogues. If I were to rate the movie, every department in that movie would score a minimum of 9/10. It is worth a watching more than once and for the writer’s sheer brilliance that radiates in his dialogues.

Since I could not stay away from FIFA 10, the idea of watching back to back movies was shelved and was continued today with “Wakeup Sid”. This cannot be compared with the earlier movie as both belong to different genres and I ended up liking the movie. It was filled with restrained performances from the artists and a stirring music from Shankar-Ehsaan-Loy. Nothing new has been churned out in this movie but the director had to be lauded for his efforts for not offering a tearjerker the production company is known to serve the audience.

Time to sign off now and resume my duties: Folder “Kaminey” is screaming for attention that I am yet to pay my respects toward it. It’s a long weekend ahead and movies galore.

Savouring till the last morsel at..... Giorgio

I was so engrossed with my office work that I couldn’t keep in touch with my friends for over 2 months. I don’t remember a similar instance prior to this since joining the IT workforce. So this led to a meeting of sorts and catching up with updates during dinner. We had to decide a restaurant and we wanted to try out someplace we haven’t been. I gave a call to my colleague (fondly called “Macha”¹ by his peers) who can rant about n number of restaurants in any place you ask for. People look toward him for suggestions on apparels/footwear/movies/Tours/anything under the sun. To cut a long story short, we use him as our yellow pages. I gave my location and my expectation and pat came the reply.... “Giorgio”.

Few meters from the Beseant Nagar church is this small restaurant where I feel the management never had to turn away any diner as it was empty bare 2 tables and it was a SATURDAY. We settled ourselves in a corner and started glancing at the menu. It was a multi cuisine restaurant that boasts with serving food varieties from more than 10 countries’. A usual routine of Soups with starters’ formality was completed with a Mexican (Nachos) and Indian (Baby corn & Mushroom) starters. It was decidedly yummy and I knew we were in for a feast. Soon, the main course followed with pastas (Al Forno and Cantolleni) and sizzlers. Both were rich in cheese, no doubt about that except that the sizzler had an Indian/Italian mix of vegetables while the pastas had more of mushroom. The starters had tickled the taste buds and when this irresistible food was placed on that table I started devouring them as if it was my last meal. If you find too much of mushroom in the food we ordered you have myself to blame for, I am mad about mushrooms or shall we say obsessed? I try to squeeze in as much mushroom as possible when I have my food outside and even enjoy mushroom “Masala Dosai”² in Ratna Cafe apart from those “Idly Sambars”³.

After this heady mix, we thought we could still attempt at having a Pizza and an order was placed for the same. No surprises there, a mushroom pizza of course. This was not of the type you get a Pizza huts and corners or the ones you get at authentic Italian restaurants – Little Italy/Bella Ciao. It was a sumptuous meal and none of the items were found lacking in taste. Though the pricing is on the higher side, I would still recommend people to try out here. One of the best I have had in the last few months and being a food freak, it was gratifying.

All said and done, my favourite food will always be “Vatha Kuzhambu, Thachi mammu and vadumangai”⁴.

PS:

1: Refers to being lucky and not to be confused with “Machan”.

2, 3, 4: South Indian food items.