Impact of recession

Choosing a baby name - Easier said than done

Maho Arnaha Saraswati Pra Chetayati Ketuna Dhiyo Vishwa Vi Rajati.
Asmantsu Tatra Chodyendra Raye Rabhsthavaha TuVidyumna Yashsthavaha

What do the above lines mean to you?
If you are a follower of/believer in the vedas, you would recognise the above as lines from rig veda and would start on trying the understand the meaning conveyed by the lines. If you are a quizzer, you would look at these lines as a probable source of esoteric questions which you as the quiz master would only ever know. But, if you are an expecting parent, then these lines would be a treasure trove of possible unpronounceable names which you would carefully note down in your "Big book of names for my baby"!
This is where Confuso-Kiddo-Name-o-graphy, the art of getting confused by writing down too many baby names, comes into the picture. Recently, my friends had a kid and when we visited them in the hospital, i saw a fat book lying beside the bed. On picking it up and looking inside (i didn't see the cover), i saw lot of strange words and their meanings. I was wondering as to why she was reading Rosenblum's word-list for GRE. Then, on seeing the cover , i realised that it was not the rosenblum book, but a book on Hindu baby names written by "I-shall-unlock-all-the-cages-in-zoos" Menaka Gandhi.
The book was in fact, more confusing that a GRE word list. I guess what Menaka would have done is to copy over the english transliterations of all the holy writings of Hinduism into Excel, then sorted them and then added a random meaning to each one of them. Well, a normal person wouldn't anyway know what a name such as "Caksusa" really meant. He would just go by what is written in the book. It must be the easiest book she must have ever written!
Sometimes, being born an Indian has many disadvantages - for the parents. They have the unfortunate task of naming the child according to zillions of naming conventions. Imagine if the child is Cypriot, they have just few names like Andreas, Christos, Nicos and the feminine forms of them. So, it is pretty easy to choose amongst them. Parents who are a bit religious and want to do things the traditional way would rely upon numerology, the baby's horoscope, vaastu (the location where the baby was delivered and the direction the mom was facing when delivering the baby) , vedic mathematics and few other dozen rules. After doing all the above calculations, if they end up with a restriction that the name should start with the letter "Q" or "X", they immediately turn modern and name the child Pinky, Rocky, Sweety etc.
Americans have it easier still. They can name their children bush, gate, forest or based on practically any word taken from a regular dictionary. Take the case of Tiger Woods. Earl and Kutilda, tiger woods' parents were going for a walk in the remote forests of Vietnam. Kutilda was heavily pregnant at that time. When they went around a corner, Earl suddenly saw what he thought was a tiger and yelled out "There is a tiger in the woods". Kutilda went into a shock and delivered a healthy baby. Considering it a good sign, they named the child "Tiger Woods".
Back to our case - We Indians have to consider a lot of things other than the above mentioned factors in naming a child.

• In today's global village, we have to even consider how americans would react to the name. What if the name was "Manish Bhatt". Americans would be talking about Manish's butt whenever they refer to him. We can't even name our kids with our favourites like Raghunathan Ramakrishnan or Somasundaram Pattabbiraman, as americans find it difficult to pronounce anything more than 2 syllables.
• We also have to think about the possible nicknames that could arise from the name when your kid goes to college. If there are many possible nicknames, rest assured that the one with the most vulgar meaning will be the one with which your child is christened in college.
  
• You also have to attend french classes, german classes and classes of few other popular languages to check if the name you have thought of doesn't have any unintended meanings in these languages.

After all this confusion, many parents give up and name their kid some shit, i mean Samchit!

Technorati Tags: baby names naming a child hindu names

Man-Mosquito war: A true story

Why does a mosquito always hover close to me ear and disturb my sleep? Is it because

• It is checking whether I am in a deep sleep or not, so that it can plan its strategy of attack?
• It is trying to draw blood from the sensitive part of my ear?
• It is trying to communicate to me that I am doomed for the night?

I don't know the reason for this, but the fact remains that my sleep was ruined. Any number of attempts at chasing away the blood-sucker didn't work. All i managed was to slap myself on my ear many times and also almost fall off the bed in a desperate attempt to outwit the devil. At one point, i decided to act like an ostrich and pretend that the mosquito did not exist. So, rather than chasing away the devil, i tried to ignore it.
Well, it was obviously difficult to sleep with my back on the bed and also cover both the ears with my hands (imagine such a posture and you will understand why it is difficult). So, i tried sleeping on my side with one of my ears firmed lodged on the pillow and the other one covered with my hand. Still, he was hovering close to my ear. So, i smartly pulled my blanket over my head. Still, i heard his noise. Then fear struck me! Had he penetrated the impervious domain of my blanket or did he have accomplices inside as well as outside? But, Vidhya was sleeping peacefully seemingly unaware of the crisis i was in. Why was the mosquito discriminatory in his actions?
All this while, I was praying that the mosquito was a male (referring to him as "he"), as i didn't want to get into trouble with the fairer sex of the mosquitoes, the dangerous female anopheles type!
Now, i wasn't sure whether he was alone or with friends. I also started scientific doubts whether the sound of the mosquito flapping his wings can penetrate the cover of the blanket. This was an issue, as it was not the prospect of getting bitten which was bothering me, but the prospect of spending a sleepless night listening to his flapping wings which was troubling me.
Suddenly, as fast as he had come, he vanished. There was no more sound. I even sat up to look for him. When you are half-asleep, you think you can do things which you normally can't. So, i sat up on the bed and looked all over and concluded that i had won the battle. I was even looking forward to finding his dead body by the side of the bed the following morning. So, i went back to the usual posture of sleeping with my back flat on the bed. It was calm, peaceful and wonderful.
But, little did i know that this was just the calm before the storm. A few minutes later, when i had drifted into 3/4th sleep from being half-sleep, i was rudely awaken by a sound, a sound so deafening that it couldn't belonged to the original mosquito which was a whimper by comparison. Then, i realised that the worst had happened. The original guy (and probably his accomplices) had called for reinforcements. These reinforcements were not more of their kind, but they were the big guns of the mosquito world, akin to the F16s and the falcons. They were big, they were loud and almost impossible to intercept in air. War had been declared!
The noise produced by these big guns were like the sound of the army helicopters and they reached the depths of the inner ear. Neither the hand nor the blanket could block this sound. I was doomed! It was then that i realized the extent of the invasion. The big guns were attacking my body all over. The t-shirt was a very thin line of defense which didn't stand any chance against their all-penetrating blood-sucking missiles. I gave up. I didn't even have time to raise the white flag.
Few minutes later, it was all over. The raid had finished and it was very successful, for them! I started to evaluate the damages. When i tried to sit up on the bed, I heard a cracking noise. Had the mosquitoes drained my body of blood that the bones were hitting against each other? I was paralyzed with fear. Too afraid that i fell back on the bed and went to sleep!

All you wanted to know about South Indian Weddings

or to be more precise, a tamil wedding ceremony. Head over to Krishashok who took time off from doing jalsa and showing jilpa (not to be confused with Shilpa) to write an excellent article on Tamil Weddings. A must read!

Flight of fancy or was i on it ?

Well, it turned out that i really flew and it was not a dream. But, the flight on the low-cost carrier Spice JetBut turned out to have all the ingredients of a "spicy" dream.

I had to go to Pune from Chennai and the first option that turned up on makemytrip.com was the SpiceJet flight which had, incidentally, been started only a week back. The price was too tempting to let go and after a few exchanges of mails with friends about low-cost carriers, i went ahead and booked tickets for me, vidhya and my mom from Chennai to Pune and back.

It has been more than 7 years since i went on a domestic flight and i don't remember anything from that experience. So, practically for the first time, i was walking into the domestic terminal at Chennai Airport. We went through a big lobby and within 1 minute, we were at the boarding gate. Or was it a boarding gate? It just looked like normal door out of the building. But, there was a Jet airways person next to it and there were people queueing up. So it must be a gate.

But, where was the SpiceJet gate? There was just one door and Jet Airways was next to it and our flight's boarding time was just 5 mins away. It was just then that i saw a remarkable manoeuvre from the staff of the Jet and Spice Jet airlines. There were lot of those wooden stands (from where people make speeches, i forgot the word for it) with the nameplates of the different airlines. As soon as the last Jet Airways passenger went through the gate/door, in one swift move, the Jet airways person moved her "stand" away from the door and the SpiceJet person rolled over his "stand" next to the door.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, SpiceJet is happy to announce the departure of its flight to Pune. Passengers are requested to proceed to the boarding gate."

So, this is how the same door becomes the boarding gate for the different airlines. Didn't know that! So, we are in the flight and comfortably settled in. Even after i explain the intricacies of low-cost carriers, my mom is not able to comprehend a flight without food. But, it was good that water was free and my mom was happy!

After some time into the flight, the flight attendants brought some food for sale. With it was also Litchi Juice costing around 30 bucks. Litchi juice of all juices! if they had brought Mango Juice, Orange Juice or even Lemon Juice, it would have been ok, but how may people actually drink Litchi Juice? I decide to skip the juice and dozed off for the rest of the flight to Pune.

Once we landed at Pune and people started disembarking, i looked out of the window and expected to see a bus/van to take us from the plane to the terminal. I had been expecting too much. It seems that you have to get down from the plane, walk across few parking lots (meant for other planes) and you enter the terminal, just like you would do in any railway station.

As we were standing inside the terminal getting used to the small building and contemplating on our next move, there was an announcement: "Ladies and gentlemen, this is the last and final call for spice jet flight xxx to coimbatore. Passengers are requested to ...". Interesting, we thought. There are people who fly to Coimbatore even from Pune. A few minutes later, another announcement: "Ladies and gentlemen, this is the last and final call for spice jet flight xxx to coimbatore. Passengers are requested to ..." !!! I never knew that there could be many instances of "last and final"!

The stay in Pune was very eventful and it requires a separate post. So, we finished whatever we had to do in Pune and the next day, we were on the return flight home. We were one of the first to board the flight at Pune. Looking out of the window, we saw a big group running very fast towards the plane and crowding at the base of the stairs up to the plane. Vidhya and I were discussing that this flight probably had a unreserved section and these people were the poor ones who were without seat numbers and it was a matter of "first come, first seated".

But, as one soul entered the plane in the front, we realised that this was not the case. In came a scantily clad middle-aged man accompanied by a twenty something. Ah, this has to be a sadhu. He fitted the profile perfectly. I was right. He sat in the first seat and everyone entering after him (this was the big group) managed to somehow find enough place in the cramped aisle to prostrate completely before him and get his blessings. There were many foreigners also in tyhis group. I thought Indians went abroad and took the jobs/money of foreigners, but now i realised that we invite them to our country and do the same, saving the cost of travelling abroad. I watched the faces of the people go by. They were on cloud nine, on seventh heaven whatever you want to call it. Even an autograph or a kiss from aishwarya rai would have paled in comparison.

There was a couple seated behind us and they were on the edge of their seats to get a glance of the sadhu. I asked them who this was and they said in unision "guruji, sarath babu guruji". Had Sarath Babu changed professions because of low returns from films ? No, it wasn't the actor as i remembered him from his films and guruji looked a lot different.

So, after a few dozen people had finished getting their blessings, the plane was ready to depart. Until then, the air hostesses had a tough time getting people to move towards the back to their seats. It was Deja Vu! When i was in school, our school bus conductor always kept shouting at the boys to move to the back, away from the girls' seats in the front. Anyway, after all was finally ok, the captain announced the departure.

Then, out of the blue, a guy starting running towards the front of the plane. Vidhya panicked "Was this a hijack attempt?". I didn't think so. The plane had not even moved and it was too early for a hijack. But, you never know, this guy could have been one of the low performers in the "School of Hijacking" and in his eagerness to pull off his first hijack, could have acted a bit too early. But, it was not so, thankfully. It seemed that he had suddenly developed some mysterious sickness and was feeling very uncomfortable and had to get off the plane. The air hostess tried to explain that it was too late now as they had already got the clearing for take-off. He started getting agitated and demanded that he disembark from the plane. The captain relented and asked him to get his baggage.

So, he got off the plane and the captain announced that there was some paperwork to be done before they left and it would take another ten minutes. Then there was an announcement "Ladies and gentleman, please check whether all your cabin baggages are still inside the plane". Everyone panicked! Though he had gone out in clear view of everyone carrying a dark blue bag, my mom insisted that we check all our baggage even though none of our bags would seem dark blue, even to the colour blind! Imagine a hundred people jumping out of their seats in unison, opening all the overhead lockers and jumping up and down to check whether all their bags were there. After a few minutes, all were satisfied that he had not taken any other's baggage with him.

Suddenly, an Eureka moment came for Vidhya: "Whats the point in checking whether he had taken anyone else's luggage? What if he had left a piece of baggage behind? a bomb?". A perfectly logical question from Vidhya (was the moon blue? I peeked out to search for it, i couldn't find it). So, for the rest of the journey, any ticking sound from a watch would get nervous glances from my mom.

We were in the air, finally. After the seat belt sign was switched off, people started to throng the front row preventing the air hostess from bringing the Litchi Juice. Then, one smart gentleman, seeing the opportunity, decided to stand next to the guruji and act as the coordinator and started issuing coupons for the visit to the first row (well, almost!). The air hostess begged, pleaded and tried every trick in the air-hostess' guidebook to get the passengers back to their seats, but nothing worked. Then, a knock on the cockpit and few words were exchanged and an announcement: "Ladies and Gentlemen, due to the prevailing turbulence, we request all of you to get back to your seats and fasten your seat-belts". I settled back in my seat and looking at the crystal-clear sky through the window, dozed off for the rest of the flight.

The unknown past of a celebrity

This video uncovers it all...

I originally had the flash playing in this post, but few complained that it was too obnoxious a sound to be playing continuously whenever this page is opened.

So, I am linking to the swf file. Right-Click and then Save-as on your PC and then view it in a browser window.

Click here to download the swf file.

Out of the Past

I was tagged by MiddleZoneMusings to post on a new meme called "Ten of my Favourite Posts" started by William Tully Sounds like "Oprah's Favourite Things for Summer"! Anyway, the idea of this meme is to pick ten posts from the past, which will give an idea , to new readers , of what this site is about.

The title of my blog is "Thoughts of a Rambler". So, you can understand the difficulty in choosing posts to give a sample to readers. I write about "anything and everything under the Mediterranean sun" and occasionally under the other celestial objects which show up over other parts of the world.

So, here are the ten posts which i think might give you an idea of what to expect at srajaram.com(oldest to the newest). Btw, most of them are from the "humor" category, as i actually don't write about anything useful on this site!

• Bird Flu mania gripped the world, especially Asia in early 2006 and that was probably the best time to make the movie "One flew over the bird's nest".
• If you ever visit Cyprus as a tourist, one of the main tourist attractions on your itinerary should be a visit to a Cypriot Doctor (No, i don't wish you to be unwell, just go there as a tourist). If you want to be prepared in advance on what to expect, read "Quack Quack, Is the Doctor in?".
• Rules in Cyprus are different for locals than for outsiders. You should know the tricks of the trade if you want things to happen your way in Cyprus. Some theories just don't work in Cyprus - Failure of queuing Theory in Cyprus.
• Everyone, for whatever reason they may have, likes to make fun of American Politicians. So, why should i be different? God Bless America! and If America wants more oil
• How soon or late do you adapt to the modern technology surrounding you? Sometimes, even basic things like operating an ATM can become a nightmare. Read about The mystery of ATMs to find out.
• If you are from India or from the UK or from the US and have happened to attend any Indian party, you might be able to associate with my observations about Punjabi songs titles "What is it with Punjabi Songs".
• If you have had a conversation with an Indian and there was no mention of cricket for more than 5 minutes, consider yourself to be very very lucky. Why are Indians so crazy about cricket. Cricket is after-all a stupid game, a waste of time!
• The history of the Mallu Nairs. Don't read this if you are not from India, you wouldn't understand a thing!
• What i have learned from my wife. This was part of a Group Writing Project at Middle Zone Musings. Well, after Vidhya (my wife) read this post, i learnt many more lessons.
• My first ever music concert and it rocked! Photos from the Bryan Adams Concert here in Cyprus.

Enjoy reading!

Technorati Tags: Group Writing project Blog Meme

What i learned from driving in India

Before i moved to Cyprus six years back, i had been driving motorbikes (or motorcycles or just bikes as they are called in India) and cars for more than 5 years then. This experience proved to be invaluable in being able to drive comfortably in Europe and the US. Driving in India is an enlightening experience, especially for any non-indian who is coming to India for the first time and lands up in any of the crowded metropolitan cities.

As part of the Group writing project currently on at Middle Zone Musings, i decided to pen down whatever i have learnt from my experience of driving in India.

• Indians are way ahead of the rest of the world in nano-technology. USA and Europe might be taking big steps in nanotechnology, but India is already light years ahead. Imagine, in the US, they have six-lane highways where you might find, if you are lucky, vehicles on four, or maybe if you are really lucky, five of the lanes. But, in India, we have single lane roads (ok, we actually don't have lanes, only roads) where, on a normal day, you will find a lorry, 2 buses, 3 cars, 4 vans,5 autorickshaws, 6 bicycles, 7 motorcycles and a few stray dogs within a range of a dozen square metres. Do you really need more inspiration for nanotechnology?
• Now i know why cars are damn cheap in India as compared to US or Europe. In fact, you can get a new car for under 4000 USD in India and in the last few weeks, many Automobile manufacturers have been announcing sub-2000 USD cars in India. Such a car would be an impossible dream in US, that even sci-fi movie and fantasy movie makers would not dare to project such cheap cars in movies lest the audience dump them for being over fantastical. So, why are cars cheap in India? To understand this, we need to look at cars being sold in the US. Cars are always released in many models, the basic one and the X-one which has many extra features like Bose Audio Systems, Rain Sensing Auto Wipers (or is this on the basic one?), anti-theft mechanism, and the like. So, you expect the X-one to be a lot costlier. In India, a similar X-model would have the following extra "fancy" features: Rear-View mirrors, Seat Belts, Rear Window Wipers, Child Lock and Air bags. The basic model is a car that runs, that's it. No wonder, they cost so less in India.
• Indians were the first in the world to introduce indicators on cars. The world was used to drivers pointing their hands in the direction they planned to take a turn. It was the same sign used in India too. But, the situation in India was different. Since the cars and other vehicles in India loved each other and travelled a few millimetres away from each other, showing a hand sign was an indication that you wanted your hand amputated. The growing number of hand amputations led the government to fund research and thus they came up with indicator lamps for the cars!

If you commute a lot to work daily and feel stressed out by this, take a vacation in India and drive around the cities. When you go back to your country (unless you are from Thailand!), you will feel as if you are driving in space with the whole highway built just for you. Enjoy!

If you are interested to participate in another group writing project, check out the Friday the 13th Group Writing Project.

Technorati Tags: India, driving in India, cars, traffic

Dogs, no sex please!

Sign posted outside a bakery in Limassol, Cyprus

The Cypriots love their cats. They are all over the place. The cats even have a monastery for themselves called the Cat Monastery. But, the poor dogs, they don't even have the basic rights! God save them!

What more ? New Coach ?

What more does the Indian Team want? The Indian team wants Whatmore. I am worried by the current trend of demands put forth by the Indian team. They want more perks, they want the restrictions on the number of ads they can appear removed, they want more salaries and now they want whatmore!

This is ridiculous. What more can a cricket board provide for its players?

Whatless, a 21 yr old woman from Trinidad and Tobago was shocked at the way the Indian cricket team played their game in the world cup and now, when she heard that they wanted whatmore, she burst out into profanities and even composed a song extempore.

Dude, this is a song by whatless,

for a cricket team which is toothless!

When ur bowlers bowl the ball,

it gets hit to the next-door mall.

when ur batsman face west-indies

they start peeing in their undies!

How dare you ask for what more?

In fact, you won't even get whatless!

Whatmore, on hearing this song, had words of praise for whatless and even proposed marriage to her and wanted to raise "more or less" a family.

Technorati Tags: cricket indian cricket team Dave whatmore new coach BCCI

What i have learned from my wife

or is it learnt ? I have always known the past tense of learn as learnt. So, when i saw this "writing project", asking bloggers to write a post on what they have learned from XXX, i was confused. I then checked many pages online to sort this out. It seems that Americans use learned more than learnt, while UK English stipulates that the past tense of learn as learnt. I found this surprising because Americans have the tendency to do away with anything that they feel is unnecessary like the u in colour.

Anyway, back to the writing project. I have been married for a little more than 5 years and this seemed to be an appropriate opportunity for me to write as to what i have learned from my wife.

• I had been a fashion disaster all my life before marriage. Even after 5 years of marriage, I am still arguing about this fact by quoting various instances of fan-following at various stages of my life. I fail to understand as to why she fails to understand that pieces of thread hanging from the bottom of my worn out jeans are a fashion statement and not something befitting a pauper! Because of this, i am used to getting a "dressing down" every morning.
• The living room couch/sofa should always be in showroom condition. Well, when i sit on the sofa, all parts of my body stretch out in different directions with the leg sometimes (ok, almost always) ending up on the hand rest. Cmon, this is my house, my sofa. I should be allowed to be comfortable on it, not sit like a junior employee in a board room meeting with just the edge on the butt placed on the seat! Another point i always raise is the fact that we are not going to get any visitors at midnight. If so, why should i take the effort to set right the sofa and the cushions on them when i go to bed at night after watching TV.
• I am supposed to follow the Six Sigma Methodology in my daily life i.e make only 3.4 mistakes in a million tasks. But she doesn't realise the mental stress that goes into planning so many tasks like folding up the clothes i am wearing before going to bathe or hanging the towel in a proper place after bath and not just leave it on the bed. Motorola employees do much simpler tasks, so it is easy for them to follow this methodology, not me!
• Wash my face every 15.3 minutes to always remain fresh. I know whether i am feeling fresh or not. How can she decide that I am not feeling fresh and force me to have a face-wash. I go to the extent of even doing some acrobatic exercises to prove to her that in spite of the fact that my face might look like i have just gotten out of bed, I am feeling fresh and fit!
• Finally, Vidhya was the one who suggested to write about "What i learned from my wife" for this writing project on Middle Zone Musings. So, she finally makes a decision which she is going to regret about :-)

Update: Here is the complete list of entries, each one finishing the phrase “What I Learned From…”

“… Teen Girl Squad”, by Markk at My Opinions Are Important
“… the Mt. Pinatubo Eruption”, by Ronald Huerca at Ronalfy.com
“… Drugs”, by Sam Brougher at Forest Azuaran
“… a Mesquite Tree”, by Mike DeWitt at Spooky Action
“… Drinking Starbucks Coffee”, by George Manty at Can I Make Big Money Online
“… My Wife!”, by Rajaram Sethuraman at Thoughts of a Rambler
“… Having a Daughter”, by Marco Richter at FitForFreedom
“… Norm”, by Joe Raasch at The Happy Burro
“… my mentors”, by Karin H. at The Kiss Business Too
“… Procrastinating”, by Yvonne Russell at Grow Your Writing Business
“… a Squirrel”, by G.L. Hoffman at What Would Dad Say
“… Blogging”, by Gayla McCord at Mom Gadget
“… a Weight Problem”, by Monique Attinger at Insurance Guide 101
“… Taking Out the Garbage”, by Michael Chantrel at Mortgage Guide 101 Blog
“… RUMMAGING!” by William Tully at LOGICal eMOTIONs
“… A Light Switch”, by Robert Hruzek at Middle Zone Musings

Enjoy!!

Technorati Tags: Middle Zone Musings Writing project Blog Wife

No more Idlis and Dosais on Indian Railways

If you are the kind who doesn't like Noodles, vegetable burgers or pakoras, then you may have to go hungry on Indian Railways. The Indian Railway Catering and Tourism Corporation Limited is planning to do away with South Indian way and bring an uniformity in their catering services on our rail networks. According to the NDTV report,

As per the plan only 21 approved food items will be served on trains - a move that south Indian rail passengers feel is in bad taste.The IRCTC has decided to remove the south Indian delicacies from the menu, initially on a pilot basis for three months. The order has left a sour taste in several mouths.

There are bloggers who have expressed their "distaste" over this issue. Let the Indian Railways go ahead with scrapping the South Indian items from their menu. Anyway, the food offered on the trains is nothing to crave about. We will always have the same items on the platforms and they taste better too.

I still remember my Pilani Days when we used to make the bi-annual trip on the Tamil Nadu Express from Chennai to Delhi. We used to served a meal which consists of miniature pooris, the sizes of which indicate that they were probably made from the leftover dough of proper sized pooris. These pooris were very fascinating for the Bitsians with the "scientific" bent of mind, for their extraordinary elastic properties (It required the effort of two people to tear a poori in two) and they have even gone to the extent of questioning the on-board cooks for the ingredients in them which gave them this magical ductility.

Back to the issue of Dosais. Many people, particularly the north indians, refer to the dosai as dosa. Ok, a little misspelling might not hurt, but this destroys the essence of this particular food item being named as dosai. Here is a way to make it easier for the northies to remember the name as dosai. When the dough is poured on the hot pan, you are supposed to hear a "saiiiii" sound made by the contact of the room-temperature dough with the hot tawa. If you had been to a bad South Indian restaurant (easy to find in Delhi), you would notice that the dosai is crispy on one side and "doughy" on the other. This is because the chef didn't turn the dosai around on the pan. If he had done this, there would be another "saiiii" sound made by the other side of the dosai. So, there should be two "saiiii" sounds for a good dosai. Two in hindi is "Do". Put them together and you get Dosai! Easy, isn't it ? As scientists say, never mug-up the end result, always remember the logic behind the result and you shall always be successful in getting the solution.

Lets hope that the IRCTC doesn't ban the South Indian food items from the platforms too, for no one is definitely going to touch the burgers or the pakodas when you have hot and fresh idlis and dosais available.

Technorati Tags: Idly Dosa Idli dosai Indian Railways

An Intriguing Puzzle : Infinite Loop

In the front of the building:


In the back of the building:

Since i was not smart enough to solve this puzzle, i couldn't find a way to enter my office and hence had to take the day off!!

India will win the ICC world cup

so says this email forward which got today. It also quotes various "mysterious" coincidences between India's world cup victory in 1983 and the current world cup. Btw, non-tamilians might not understand the dialogues in the pictures below.
I hope that i don't have to update this post after today's India-Sri Lanka match!

Update after the India-Sri Lanka match: Ok, The theories below have "almost" been proven wrong. "Almost" because, i still hope that today's Bangaldesh-Bermuda match has been fixed by the biggies at BCCI.

Trivia – 1
Year 1981
1. Prince Charles got married
2. Liverpool crowned Champions of Europe
3. Australia lost the Ashes
4. Pope Died
2 years later India won the Cricket world Cup!!!

Year 2005
1. Prince Charles got married
2. Liverpool crowned Champions of Europe
3. Australia lost the Ashes
4. Pope Died
2 years later Will India win the Cricket world Cup ?????

Trivia -2
1982 Football World Cup won by Italy
1983 Cricket World Cup won by India

2006 Football World Cup won by Italy
2007 Cricket World Cup will be won by India ??

Trivia -3
1983 Cricket World Cup India lost its first match by 5 wickets
2007 Cricket World Cup India lost its first match by 5 wickets



Haiyo!!! Haiyo!!!
Ippadiyae usuppethi usuppethi udamba ranakalama akkittanungappa!!!!
Innumada engala nambikkittirukinga?

Technorati Tags: cricket world cup cricket Rahul dravid Inzamam

Rajini and Karunanidhi, the Chief Minister

Caught at the wedding of Prabhu's son.

Technorati Tags: Rajini Chief Minister

The history of the Mallu Nairs

To understand the origin of the Mallu Nairs, we first have to understand the history of the Tamilians, the neighbours of the mallus.

Long Long Ago, only Brahmins lived in TamilNadu. They are nowadays popularly known as Tambrahms. When the English first landed on the shores of Tamil Nadu, much before they had explored other continents, they were surprised to see people who spoke a strange language , wore strange clothes , even had strange markings on their forehead and other parts of the body. So, when they enquired around (in English of course), there were few who ran away and there were few who answered "Naan Brahmin" and then ran away fearing that the English would spoil their orthodox holiness. "Naan Brahmin" in Tamil means "I am a brahmin". The English were not expected to understand this and classified this group of people as non-Brahmins. Thus, Non-Brahmins came into being and the English exploited this to create the caste system in India. In fact, all south Indians were only vegetarians at that time. A similar misunderstanding led to few people being understood as non-vegetarians and thus forced to eat meat.

Now, Brahmins consisted only of Iyers in the olden days. But, there were two "different" classes of iyers. One, who worked for daily wages and the other, who had their own businesses. The second category prospered over the years and eventually made enough money to buy and import cars from England. This group wanted to differentiate itself from the daily wage group. So, whenever they had to introduce themselves, they always said "Iyer with car".Over the next 132 years, this phrase "Iyer with car" slowly evolved to "Iyengar". Thus started the quest for dominance between the Iyers and the Iyengars.Since the Iyengars had cars, they slowly moved towards the eastern part of Tamil Nadu near the coast, where they made broad roads like the modern ECR, while the Iyers moved onto the hills close to the borders of Kerala.

Now back to Mallu nairs. When the British reached Kerala and started moving inwards towards the Tamil nadu Border, they were shocked to see two similar group of people at war with each other. Both were dark, spoke unintelligible language (they learnt later that both the languages were different) and yet, were fighting each other for control of the coconuts. So, the British started enquiring. Of course, the locals didn't know English, but were proud of their own culture and identity. Since the British (through Knowledge Transfer) from their counterparts who landed in Tamil nadu, already knew about Iyers, they assumed that all dark people in this people were Iyers. So, they started addressing even the Mallus as Iyers. This enraged the mallus a lot and they started adding "Not an Iyer" at the end of their names like Harish "Not an Iyer", Anil "Not an Iyer". Because of the accent of the Mallus and the evolving of language over time, the surname "Not an Iyer" stuck to the mallus and it eventually transformed to Nair. Thus, we have harish Nair and Anil Nair.

All you Nairs, be proud of your history and be proud of the fact that you are "not an Iyer".

Technorati Tags: Mallus Nair Tamil+Brahmins Kerala Iyer+Iyengar

If America wants more oil

It doesn't need to invade Iraq, Iran or other Gulf countries in the pretext of them having Nuclear weapons, Bazookas, water-guns or firecrackers, but all it needs to do is to invade the European country of Cyprus.

Cyprus, is it a country, never heard of it or seen it on the map. Well, don't feel bad if you are asking these questions. Many do. Because, Cyprus is small enough to be conveniently ignored on many maps. How do you put a country 400*200 Kms across on a world map ? Well, by a dot. Many of us would think that printing ink accidentally spilled in the middle of the Mediterranean sea and ignore it.

If you knew Cyprus, you must be wondering what America would gain, in terms of oil, if it invaded Cyprus.Welcome to the European Underworld, governed by the governing body of the EU. A Cyprus Pound is worth more than 2.2 USD, not because of the million-odd half-naked britishers who come to this island every year in search of the sun and the sea, but because of the flourishing underground oil business.

But, before i reveal the truth, i need to take you into confidence. Not many, including Cypriots, know about this and you must never talk about this to any person named Andreas, Christos or Giorgos. Cypriot men have either of the three mentioned names only and you can be safe by this way that you don't reveal this to Cypriots. What about Cypriot women, you might ask. Forget them, they never have time outside the beauty Parlours.

The secret to the oil business in Cyprus are ... paper napkins. Yes, the very ordinary paper napkins you find on all the tables at the restaurant. Cyprus is one of the world leaders in the manufacture of paper napkins. Cyprus has brilliantly used these to "throw sand in the eyes" of the British and American Oil scouts. Indian politicians were implicated in the "Food for Oil" scam with Saddam's Husseins government in Iraq. But, they were just the scapegoats. The actual culprits were the Cypriots.

It all starts with the simple humble Bread Pakoda. Since it is an Indian dish, no one in Cyprus really cares about the quantity of these made in the local restaurants here. Cyprus exports thousands of these bread pakodas to Iraq and Iran. They are shipped back to Cyprus. No, not because there are not tasty. They were not meant to be eaten in the first place. These bread pakodas are re-processed, filled with oil, in secret plants in Iraq and Iran and shipped back to Cyprus. Since there are hundreds of Indians working in my company and other offshore companies in Cyprus, no one really bothers about the tons of bread pakodas landing on the shores of Cyprus. They just comment "Ah! it must be for the Indians, they eat all such crazy spicy stuff!" and let it pass through.

Now comes the genius of the Cyprus underworld. They take these bread pakodas to remote factories within the troodos mountains and extract the oil within them using plain paper napkins. These paper napkins are then repacked and exported to African countries. What the world sees is that Cyprus is exporting paper napkins, but the reality is that Cyprus is actually exporting illegal Gulf Oil to African countries to fund the ganglords there.

Now, you might ask, how did i come to know of this? No, I am not involved with the Cyprus Mafia. No process is bug-free. Some of the bread pakodas which come from Iraq into Cyprus somehow fell into the wrong hands, that of the caterer supplying stuff to my company and he, seeing the weird name, promptly assumed it to be exotic Indian stuff and supplied it to our kitchenettes.

In the below series of pictures, you can see the way by which i unearthed this underworld secret. As i said before, don't ever share this information with any andreas, christos or giorgos!

Technorati Tags: America oil Bread Pakoda Cyprus Oil price rise

Racism against Shilpa Shetty in Big Brother

So says the media, so say the thousands of people who have written in to voice their opinions. I have only seen a few clips which were again and again shown on NDTV, Sky and Star News.But, i have my own opinions as to whether what happened could be called racism. Even if it were racist, it is after-all happening in a reality show, pretty much like a movie. Would someone complain if a movie had racist dialogues or had scenes of racism. It is a show which is supposed to have its melodrama to attract an audience.In fact, the producers of Big Brother would the ones most pleased with whats happening right now, because its drawing in audience, big time!Just because the people in the house don't speak rehearsed dialogues doesn't mean that they don't qualify for all the liberties awarded to movies. If there are sections offended by the show, let it be given a suitable rating.Ok, Shilpa Shetty was called "The Indian" and the "paki" by other housemates, but is it something new for Indians?Wherever we go, we are the target of racist attacks. Other way to look at is that whoever makes these racist comments are doing so, because he has an inferiority complex looking at the growth/success of a "browner" kind and hurling abuses are the only way to quench his anger.

Well, at the end of the day, Shilpa Shetty for one reason or the other is responsible for the massive increase in viewership of Big Brother and I am sure that they will try their best to keep her in and kick the rest out!

Technorati Tags: shilpa shetty big brother racism shilpa shetty big brother racism reality show uk

The facts behind Saddam's hanging

Slowly, but surely, many facts about what happened in the days prior to Saddam's hanging are being uncovered by the world media. Tapped phone calls reveal that Saddam and other accused undergoing the trial had many rounds of discussions with someone in an African country. There were also some speculations that Al-Qaeda was making these international phone calls to destinations faraway from USA in the hope that USA might send some of its troops to each of these places thus leaving only George Bush in the mainland USA to defend the country.

Sources say that there were extensive debates between the Iraqi Regime, George Bush, Tony Blair, Sasha Baron Cohen(Borat) and Al-Qaeda's spokesperson as to the way Saddam should be dealt with. Borat was always put in the conference call to act as a mediator as he had had extensive cultural learnings in the USA to make benefit other countries. Al-Qaeda expressed a keen interest in this, as they felt that Osama Bin Laden would also have to go through the same process when he is captured and put on trial just before the November 2008 American elections.

Weeks before the mid-term elections, the Iraqi regime had called on George Bush to find out what had to be done with Saddam Hussein, as his food bill was proving to be too expensive for the Iraqi government. Bush said, "Hang on for some more time, I am busy as it is just before the mid-term elections". Unfortunately, there was no translator available and the little English that the Iraqis knew, they understood it as "Hang him some time before the mid-term elections".

So, the Iraqis announced to the world that they were hanging Saddam. The media started collecting the reactions from around the world. One very famous news channel called NDTV started talking to people around India and the very first person they spoke to was the chairperson of the National Muslim league. This guy would have, under normal circumstances, blabbered something about the ruling Congress Party being responsible for the mess in Iraq etc. But, our smart NDTV reporter asked him, "As a devout Muslim, what is your opinion about this?". This triggered a response of the day being a festival day for Muslims and the like. Then, the reporter goes to the head of the Indian Christian Front and asks him "Do you think Saddam is a direct descendant of Adam and the US is trying to project him as a Muslim?". That guy replies,

The news is so bad,

that it makes me very sad.

A person called Saddam,

whose ancestor was Addam (rhyme it here please)

is being hung,

in a country far-flung!

Bush took extreme precautions to prevent a Fahrenheit 911 kind of video happening again with Saddam's hanging, but an amateur videomaker who wanted to make a movie like "The Blair witch project" started shooting the hanging of Saddam and released the video "The Hangman project".
Technorati Tags: saddam hussein hanging video iraq NDTV USA elections

Sehwag is the worst Indian opener

so says gooogle ...

Check out Gooogie for more such revealing facts.

Technorati Tags: indian cricket team virendar sehwag gooogie googie

Origin of some English words

Many English words have their origin in Indian languages. Probably because the English found themselves to be deficient in expressing many ideas and borrowed the words from the languages of the countries they went to.

Some of the common words of Hindi origin are bungalow, caravan, juggernaut (from Lord Jagannath in Puri, Orissa) , Raja and the most famous of them all (responsible for making hundreds of ordinary people millionaires in the US of A) yoga. There are even words, very famous ones at that, which have originated from Tamil like curry, Mulligatawny (Don't ever get fooled by the presence of Mulligatawny soup on the menu, it is just Plain Rasam!), Catamaran and Coolie.

Few days back, I was watching the movie Umrao Jaan, the new one starring Aishwarya Rai and Abhishek Bachchan. Contrary to the reviews of the various movie channels, the movie was pretty ok and watchable. The plot happens in and around Lucknow. Though i can understand Hindi pretty well, i had to rewind and switch on the sub-titles at many places to understand the dialect spoken which, i assume, had lot of Urdu in it.

When the English reached these parts of India, they must have been amused by the local language and would definitely have been inspired to borrow words and phrases. One such interesting word, which featured in the movie a lot was "Ammi". This word was used by Ameeran to refer to her mother. The English fell in love with this word and wanted it to take it back to Britain with them.

But, they had a problem. A minor variation of it, Amy, was a common name in Britain. So, they couldn't take back the word as such. So, they had to innovate. One smart English officer called Lt. Ayma Moron suggested that they use this word in Britain for the same meaning i.e mother, but they add a letter in the front and change the word a bit. So, a group of them got together and started trying out the various combinations. After breaking their heads a lot, they decided on using the letter M and to "anglicize" the word "ammi" as "mummy".

There you go, all you lucknow people, feel proud that the word mummy has its origins in your very own ammi!

Technorati Tags: aishwarya Rai ash Abhishek bachchan Umrao Jaan Lucknow Ameeran origin of word

Saddam Hussein hanged in Iraq

No, he was not hung. Only objects are hung, people are hanged. Whether he was hanged or hung, the fact is that Saddam Hussein was executed in Iraq. I was sure that this would have dangerous repercussions and i was right. This execution should not have happened.

DNA analysis could have proved Michael Jackson to be actually black, but i wouldn't have believed it. The paparazzi could have taken the photo of the century with Paris Hilton arriving at a party fully dressed, but that is a matter to be covered up and wouldn't interest me. Madonna could have adopted a white baby, so that she could create her own "United colors of benetton" ads, but this would have led the world to believe that her husband guy is a gay, so such a news could not be true. Even if the BJP in India went on a hunger strike because the congress government didn't do enough to protect the state from a BJP MLA who kidnapped and killed innocent people, i wouldn't have bothered about it. If salman khan makes another trip to the court with his trademark "I am innocent and god fearing" cap on his head, i would have dismissed it as yet another stunt. But Saddam should not have been executed.

Even if saddam was executed, "they" should have done it in secrecy and not released the photos and videos of the execution. Even if they had released the videos, NDTV should not have shown it on TV. I knew that such an act would result in calamity, to an unimaginable extent. But, NDTV did the unthinkable and showed the videos. Even if NDTV had decided to show the "news", they should have done it sometime in the afternoon or evening. But, they telecast it in the morning and that too, just as i woke up that day. This was wrong!

So, NDTV showed photos and videos of his execution early in the morning just after i had kept the milk for boiling for my morning cup of coffee. This was wrong. And, the ardent news follower that i am, i was busy watching NDTV while the temperature on the stove increased to such an extent that the milk boiled and flowed all over the electric stove. At the end of it, on a beautiful morning, i had to listen to lessons from Vidhya on the art of boiling milk!

Saddam should not have been executed !

Technorati Tags: saddam hussein hanging video iraq NDTV

Sreesanth breaks into a break dance

after hitting Andre Nell for a six. Shanthakumaran Sreesanth should have been in the movies with his jhatkas and matkas! Sreesanth, well known for his self-motivating actions he performs on the way back to his run-up, created a name for himself in cricket history to become the first cricket player to perform a fully choreographed dance sequence on the pitch. No wonder, he was given the Man of the Match award for India's first ever test victory on South-African soil.

Watch the uncanny similarity in the footwork between Prabhu Deva and Sreesanth.

Watch the youtube video of the Sreesanth Dance.

Technorati Tags: Shanthakumaran Sreesanth India cricket South Africa Andre Nell Man of the match test victory

Cricket is a stupid game, a waste of time

I had never showed interest in watching football or soccer matches before. I only used to play football i.e. I used to employ the tactic of kicking the ball hard in the direction of my goal, wherever i was on the field. This made me a good footballer in school, because in school, all the 20 players (other than the goal keepers) were approximately 2.7 metres away from the place the ball was on the field. So, my tactic worked in freeing the ball from dangerous tackles. So, when i used to watch matches on TV, I was amazed at the incompetence shown by the players. I was shocked at their play and commented at their lack of "power" in kicking the ball a long way. So, i stopped watching football on TV.
Well, all this was until the recent world cup. Amdocs decided to show the matches on big screen. No, this was not what attracted me to watch the matches. All the matches were preceded by quiz and bingo events with good prizes. It is a different fact that i didn't win any. But, i ended up watching the matches though.
Then, I started comparing football with my passion, cricket. I began to realise how inferior cricket was, in comparison to this great game. If there were to be a definition of cricket, it would be something like this...

"You have two sides, one out on the field and one in . Each man that's in the side that's in, goes out and when he's out, he comes in and the next man goes in until he's out. When they are all out, the side that's out comes in and the side that's been in goes out and tries to get those coming in out. Sometimes you get men still in and not out. When both sides have been in and out including the not outs, that's the end of the game!"

Well, the game of cricket is as confusing as is its definition. The rules are worse. Try describing a googly or a leg break to someone new to cricket. They would definitely be worried about breaking their leg. Compared to this, understanding the offside rule in football is a walk in the park! Why should anyone playing a game want to bowl a maiden over, or score a duck?

The inventor of the game would have definitely been booked under the eve-teasing act for creating "positions" like square legs, short legs and long legs. Try to explain as to why you need a third man when there are already eleven out in the field?
George Bernard Shaw once said,

"Cricket is a game played by 22 fools and watched by 22,000 fools"

For once, i totally agree with him. Cricket is a game which is totally against the concept of sport. Sport should above all, give exercise to the players. How does cricket justify this in terms of the time spent? Cricket is a game in which only two players out of eleven play, while the others can choose to play cards or even sleep, and two players of the other team (the bowler and the wicket-keeper) sweat it out while the others keep trying their luck in the field. How are we to account for this colossal waste of time, not to mention the huge sums of money spent on it, in the name of playing a game?
Talking abt skill levels, imagine the wonderful game of baseball , where so much skill is required to hit the ball within a particular sector, whereas in cricket , u can hit it anywhere in the 360 degree radius, C'mon u don't need skill to hit it anywhere u want.
The even stranger thing about this game is the longer version, test cricket. I am sure that Test cricket must have been invented by a man, whose wife would have commented , "The longer the better" and he immediately created test cricket. But , the poor man , in his hurry , forgot to listen completely to his wife who had said " The longer the better and of course with a proper climax" imagine watching a long and boring test match and at the end of 5 days , the two captains shake hands and walk off! No victor, no loser, C'mon where is the thrill, ecstasy?Nothing ! Test cricket is the perfect example describing the word anti-climax !
Cricket is definitely not a brave mans game. You have a thigh guard, an arm guard and so many other guards, virtually to cover every inch of your body, whereas in baseball, when batting, they have to stand on a home plate, without the luxury of a facemask, pads on their ribs, padded gloves, or pads on their legs, all protections available to a cricketer. Now that is a mans game, definitely not cricket.
Do you know why Adolf Hitler banned cricket in Germany?. Once He was watching a match that went on and on. He kept asking when it would be over, and someone told him it would continue the next day for the entire day and well into the evening. He said, 'By the time this stupid game is over, I could have conquered three countries.' "
In the so-called gentleman's game of cricket, the players throw the ball in the air after a catch, shout and scream after a run out or for an lbw decision, and deliberately intimidate and sledge the opposition players. This is definitely not the characteristics of a gentleman's game. Nowadays cricket is more a war of words rather than skill. Even players from countries who cannot speak few sentences in English, are perfect in pronouncing all the 4 letter words in English. Look at what the English have taught the world !
cricketers are stupid people This quote by india's former captain Saurav Ganguly would show that

"Nobody is a born captain. Most of the time I have gone on instinct".

Not only the cricketers are stupid , but there are even stupid followers of the game who attempt suicide when their teams loses a game
So, dear ladies and gentleman, never ever try to follow this game. Stay away from it, make good use of your time rather than wasting your time following or playing cricket. I wonder why I wasted so much time writing about this stupid game. I could have rather spent time swatting flies instead.
The views expressed above are from the thoughts of a ghost which took over my body while i was engrossed in refreshing the scores of a closely fought division 4 match happening in England.

Technorati Tags: cricket sport sourav ganguly football soccer George Bernard Shaw

How i wish i were working in google

Then, i would be able to amuse myself by looking at what people search for, on google. For example, there is someone out there who is searching for "underarms of Vidya Balan" and then lands on my site through google's algorithm which managed to link the posts containing underarms and Vidya Balan on one page. More importantly, my site appeared first in the search, so it had to merit a visit. This is really the strangest fetish I have ever heard of!
Visits to my site from people searching for free porn are pretty frequent because of this post on free porn on Orkut. But, it is the strange combinations such as "Chennai call girls", "Punjabi Girl prostitutes", "How old is raja ram" (wow, i wonder whose age this person is really interested in), "old indian heroines" and "indian foreplay" which amuse me the most.
If I am writing about Google searches bringing visitors to my site, i would be doing injustice if i don't thank Surya and Jyotika for getting married. Surya and Jyotika's marriage was the most significant moment in my website's life. They were single-handedly (or is it double-handedly) responsible for increasing the traffic to my site manifold.

Of course, another reason i wish i were working in google is that i would then have a rajaram.sethuraman@google.com email id rather than a gmail.com id :-)

Technorati Tags: Google Search Surya Jyotika Vidya Balan working in google

Ice Skating is easier than Roller Skating

I almost learnt it the hard way. I had tried Ice Skating in Dubai. Never tried any form of skating before that. Vidhya was very apprehensive about me going on the ice, as she had heard enough stories about fractures and ligament tears resulting from novices trying stunts on the ice. It was actually not so tough as i thought it would be. I was able to stand on both my feet the very first time i got onto the ice. It was quite not so the case with skiing, where the total time i have spent standing/skiing is insignificant compared to the time i have spent on the ground. But, I didn't try to be too adventurous in the skating rink and rarely ventured more than a metre off the side railing. It was also very heartening to see the traffic close to the side ring :-)

So, back in Cyprus, i decided to try the other form of skating, that with the rollers, assuming that it would be as easy. One of my colleagues, Julia, was an expert at this and she volunteered to teach me the basics. Ironically, the very first lesson was "How to fall down properly"! Well, i wasn't very interested in taking a lesson on falling down, but was forced to. I realised the importance of this one lesson very soon into my trials! We decided to try in our parking lot. I had to recruit two more guys to just help me get on my feet and they continued to pull/push me around and in the end, i proclaimed that i had done roller skating! The photo you see above had to be taken very fast as the guys just moved out of the frame and came back just in time to prevent me from implementing my lesson on falling down.

Technorati Tags: dubai roller skating ice skating cyprus

Is Rajinikanth a Tamilian?

Seems to be so, at least going by the presence of his name in the CNN-IBN Poll for the most popular Tamilian. No, I am not a Tamil fanatic who goes around erasing Hindi or other non-tamil names from boards around the city, we have many politicians to do that. Neither do i hate rajinikanth as an actor. I like his movies, his comedy and of course, his antics. I like watching his movies along with my friends who fall under the category of his "hardcore" fans and watch them watch his every move with utter devotion!

I guess, having a poll in the movie industry including actors and actresses who are purely from that region only would not have many entries at all. Bollywood has had a heavy influence from South Indian Heroines and likewise, the tamil movie industry depends on the import of slimmer fairer North Indian heroines, though the trend currently seems to be shifting towards Mallu heroines. This list would be seemingly endless with Jyothika, Nayantara (real name: Diana Kurien) , Laila and the other who's who of Kollywood.

The above poll could have been rephrased as a poll for the one having the most influence on tamilians. Rajini would have had a cake-walk then. Pitting him against MS Subbulakshmi, Periyar, Abdul Kalam, Vishwanathan Anand and Ilayaraja would make it very confusing for the person taking the poll :-) or was it a wise decision on part of the poll-makers to split the votes for the poll evenly?

Technorati Tags: Rajinikanth Rajini Jyothika Bollywood Kollywood Popular Tamilian Mallu Nayantara Ilayaraja

Don't speak in Tamil at American airports

A man was questioned because he was found to be suspicious by another passenger who heard him speaking Tamil on the phone.

So, from now on, don't ever speak in Tamil at American airports or else be ready to face consequences like our Mr.Jagannathan Ramamoorthy did !

JR(on a phone with his friend Y) : hi ..jack pesaran da! evening plan enna macchi ?

Y: Enna paruppa ..eppolendhu jagannathan jackachu ?

Paranoid American 1 (PA1) : Oh my god! He is planning to hijack the plane.

X: jagan sonnalum intha naatu karanga purunjikka mattengaranga ..jogan , jaagan ..ishtakku kolapanranga!

PA2: Holy Shit ..this guy has 3 guns with him !

Y: Naanum somasundaratha samnu change pannikalamnu irukken ...

X: btw, enna matter ? kelvi patten unnoda assistant "sue" va side la connect pannindrikkenu ?

PA1: In the name of Jesus! He is planning to commit suicide after hijacking the plane!

Y: atha onnu illa machi ..sue vandhu bombay poga pora vacationukku, so konjam tips ketundha ..

X: bombaya? unnakku enna bombay pathi enna theriyum ?

PA2: he also has a bomb with him !

Y: hey ..ennaku bombayum theriyum hindiyum theriyum !

X: seri ..evening varil time eppidiyathu time kill panren ...ok ..apparam pappom bye ..

PA1 & PA2: He is planning to kill everyone with a time bomb ! Lets alert the cops !

Later, the American cops got the transcript of the conversation by contacting the FBI, who in turn contacted Orange (The telephone company) , who in turn contacted NASA to get the login to log on to the satellite through which the communication had gone through, who in turn contacted their help desk from where the call was routed to Sriperumbudur in Chennai, where Srinivasan Kumaraswamy logged on to the server and recorded the actual conversation.

Jagannathan had to give a word-by-word translation of his conversation and he found it hard to convince the American cops that somasundaram was not actually his brother-in-law when he had referred to him as machi !

Moral of the story: When in America, do as the Americans do. Always go around with a xtra-large Milk Shake in one hand and a triple burger in another and keep talking about democrats and Republicans!

Technorati Tags: tamil Indian NRI

What is it with Punjabi Songs

that people, on listening to one, immediately raise both their hands and one leg in the air. See the two photos below taken from the Diwali Party at Amdocs. Notice the obvious difference? If not, better consult an optician.

The second one was when a Punjabi song was being played. Even the non-Indians did the same act! So, over the last few weeks, I researched lot of materials on the web and also spoke to Punjabis and non-punjabis about this strange phenomenon. I was surprised at the amount of information that turned up. So, here are the various theories and urban/rural legends that I came across from this investigation.

• Punjabis were the first Indians to use deodorants. The rest of India was still backward, as in, using natural substitutes like saffron, Thulasi etc. So, this meant that their underarm always had a bad odour.So, they couldn't raise their arms to dance. Whereas, the Punjabis, after using the deodorants, had nothing to fear and felt safe to raise both their arms.
• It is a known fact now that peeing, while your bladder is about to burst, is one of the best sensations one can experience. But this was documented only in the early 19th century.The Punjabis, even as early as 3rd century AD, had domesticated the dog and were the first to do so. They had noticed that their pets, while peeing, used to raise one of its legs. The Punjabis had seen the satisfaction on the faces of their pets after they had pee'd. But, they didn't know then , that this was because of the post-peeing satisfaction. They assumed that this pleasure was because of the fact that one leg was raised. So, they incorporated this into their traditional dances and hence it is, as we see now.
• The Punjabis as such are known to have a big bottom and are prone to falling backwards when they dance. So, they raise their hands to balance themselves and also lock their one leg with the other person's leg in the front to avoid falling backwards when they dance.
  

I am just done with my initial investigations and am still getting feedback from Punjabis around the world.Will post more logical reasons for this act as and when i get them.

Tags: Punjabi diwali amdocs Bhangra

Filed under: India

Baby, one more time says Britney Spears

Britney Spears gave birth to a son on Tuesday, this being the second one for Spears and her husband Kevin Federline. Her first son, Sean Preston's first birthday falls today (Thursday, September 14th). Looks like they didn't waste much time. Hope that Kevin Federline doesn't feel that its time to move on beyond Britney, as he felt so , after having a daughter and a son with actress Shar Jackson.

Their story makes an interesting read.

Britney has one previous marriage to Jason Allen Alexander, her childhood friend which happened in Las Vegas in 2004 and ended up in annulment 2 days later! Technically or legally, this is not regarded as a marriage because it didn't end in a divorce, but in an annulment. Crazy laws! I guess, annulment means "I was drunk at that time and hence didn't know what i was doing". Something similar to "Insanity Plea" used in criminal cases for high-profile defendants to justify breaking the law.

This is "technically" Kevin's first marriage as he was only engaged to Shar Jackson and the two children he had during his engagement don't count!

I love America!

Filed under: Movies

Sania Mirza loses

Sania loses here. Sania loses there. Sania loses everywhere. Suddenly, I saw a news item mentioning that Sania had won rather than saying that Sania had yet another loss. Then, when i read the close print, I saw that sania had won an exhibition tennis match against her 9-yr old neighbour 7-6, 0-6,7-6. Sania's promoters felt that this match was needed to rekindle the passion about Sania in her neighbourhood, at least. In the past few months, the world has come to know only about Sania's losses and her promoters felt that this win might put her back on the front pages.
Well, this almost didn't happen. Her promoters had scoured the neighbourhood to find a girl who knows a lot about Sania, but doesn't know a lot about tennis. After weeks of screening, they chose Diya Mirza (whose father had incidentally named her so because of his crush on the actress by the same name). Playing against Diya Mirza would also get lot of publicity for the match, as many tongue-wagging teenagers would assume that it was the actress Diya Mirza who was playing and would turn up for the match. When Diya came to know that she was chosen for playing against Sania, she informed all her schoolmates, who promptly turned up for the match. What the promoters didn't know was that Diya had ordered the Rapidex Tennis Learning Course and increased her tennis skills manifold. Luckily for Sania, Diya contracted Conjunctivitis (also known as Madras Eye) and had to keep her one eye bandaged. This was what made the "easy" win for Sania possible.
Update: Sania Mirza's fans were found on the streets of Hyderabad celebrating her victory by burning posters of the actress Diya Mirza.

Free porn at Orkut

If you are interested in links to porn magazines like playboy or penthouse, videos of the latest MMS scandals or even the illustrated version of the kamasutra, head over to Orkut and check any one of the popular cummunites like e-books, photography or even the hindu religion! At least, that is what it seems to be. Open any community page, look for the topic on the forum with the most number of replies (actually, anything more than 9), it is most probably someone posting the following:

"All Playboy Issues Till date...
Do u guys wnt this...
Just post your email Id's "

and there are a few hundred and in some cases, more than a thousand morons who just shoot their emails ids in the forum with a "grin" added at the end!

Some of the reply posts ..

"Waiting for it..please email it at ..."

"please please please send it asap"

"pleeeezzzzzzzz... make it fast... thanks"

Well, some are wary enough to have separate logins or use anonymous entries for such libidinous requests, while others, without caring about the rest of the world, publish their standard mail ids.

There are companies in the US of A who shell out thousands of dollars to get hold of email ids for their advertising campaigns and here we have a situation, where a simple mention of playboy or penthouse brings forth thousands of ids!

God bless these morons!

The mystery of ATMs

Nowadays, ATMs are part and parcel of our daily lives. In spite of that, we do get occasional surprises from simple activities such as withdrawing money out of an ATM. Today morning, i went to the nearest ATM to withdraw some money. There was a cypriot couple at the ATM and i could see that they were looking very worried and frantically discussing about something. This went on for few minutes as i saw the guy pressing all the buttons on the ATM, like what i do when i see any toy with buttons while shopping at the supermarket. Of course, the reactions were quite different from mine at the supermarket.

So, i offered to help, very well knowing that a Cypriot would not approach an Indian or any other non-cypriot for help and that i didn't have the entire day to wait for them to solve their problem. Neither this guy nor his companion knew english. The only english word they know was "card". This, along with his frantic hand waving, was enough for me to conclude that their card was stuck inside the ATM. I tried, in vain, in trying to know the cause for the problem, explaining to them about three attempts of wrong pin numbers, expiry of the card etc. Finally, i advised them to go to the bank (just behind the ATM) to get their problem solved.

Then, this guy asks his companion to do the same and so she leaves for the bank. But, this guy doesn't move from his place. I asked him to step aside so that i could withdraw money from the ATM. But, he gave me a worried look and said something which included the words "my", "card", "ATM" and he literally pushed me aside. I understood that he was worried that i was going to withdraw money out of "his" card and explained to him (showing the flashing green light), that the next person could use the ATM. But, whatever i spoke was greek and latin to him !

Then , his companion came out of the bank and called him inside. I took this chance and put my card inside and typed in the details. In the ATMs here, the card is completely drawn inside rather than the "swipe" ATMs i have seen back in India. Once my transaction was completed, the card started to come out of the ATM.

Let me go in slow motion. I put out my hand to take the card which was coming out the ATM. I almost grabbed the card, when suddenly, the whole section of the ATM where the card is taken in, started moving backwards inside the ATM. Well, my card was in that unit. So, i instinctively followed the piece back into the hole-in-the-ATM. I then realised this and pulled my hand back and bent down and peered into the hole. My eyes were met by another pair of eyes looking outside through the hole.

For a second, my days at BITS and my experiences at our computer center flashed before me. When i was in BITS, they were in the process of setting up a new computer center and in the early days of the center, there used to be many jokes going around that there really is a person sitting in the control room doing all the calculations, as the speed of the PCs were horrible. Then i thought, maybe there really is a person sitting inside all the ATMs counting and handing out the money!

Well, it was not to be so. The guy whose eyes i met, explained that he was the bank manager and that there was a problem with the ATM. All these explanations, through the hole in the ATM. I hope that no one on the road saw me talking to the ATM !

God Bless America!

Sometime in the last fortnight, Kofi Annan makes an emergency call to President Bush, as the situation in Lebanon was getting too much out of hand. This was the coversation which happened, as caught by the secret microphones placed in the UN office by foreign spies.

It is 2 AM in the morning when Kofi Annan makes the call.

Kofi: President Bush, Sorry for disturbing you at this unearthly hour. I hope you were not with your interns.

Bush: Its ok Kofi. I was in fact with my interns. I was spending time with them in turns. So, what makes you call at this hour ?

Kofi: I am sure you would have been informed of the volatile situation in the middle east now. I wanted to discuss with you about the Middle East Peace Process.

Bush: Ah, good that you brought this up. So, now you want me to get involved ?

Kofi: Yeah.

Bush: Great, I have always wanted to be involved in this Middle East Piece Process. I shall ensure that the Middle East is broken up into Pieces and America gets all their oil and nuclear warheads.

Kofi: No, No Bush. You misunderstood. I am talking about the Middle East Peace Process, not the Piece Process.

Bush: Don't worry Kofi. Go and have some coffee. I shall take care of everything. Today morning, I am planning to meet Rice to have some rice for breakfast. I shall explain everything to her and we shall start with the Middle East Piece process.

Kofi: Bush, wait ! That is not what i meant. I ...

Bush:

Bush: ok, whose the next in turn?

-----------------------

Everyone knows that FOX news has infiltrated the White house like no other agency has and that no word spoken within the white house is out of their reach. Like all other conversations, this one too was overheard by one of FOX news' contacts within the white house, who promptly relayed the same to his superiors at the studio.

So, the top of the hour news, the next morning was ..."War on terror" (What else does FOX news show). Analysts on the show were discussing how Iran and Syria were using peas to create weapons of mass destruction and that Bush, along with Rice, was travelling to that region to oversee the Middle East Peas process! The show even had its journalists visiting the town of Peasville in Northern Dakota to meet experts on the peas process.

-----------------------

At the end of the day, Kofi was seen discussing his peace plan, while the americans were busy bombings the middle east into pieces and Jay Leno appeared on the late night show, cracking jokes about how Bush likes to have Rice for breakfast!

Ah ! Americans. God Bless America.

Dhoni is frankly speaking

Frankly speaking, if you had watched Dhoni's interview on NDTV "Dhoni on the beach", you would not even have an iota of doubt that Dhoni was lying because every sentence he spoke was prefixed by "frankly speaking", thus emphasizing that he is speaking the truth and nothing but the truth. Frankly speaking, the mass following that Dhoni has nowadays, people don't need this prefix to believe in whatever he says.
You know, maybe Dhoni is really not intending to add this element of truth, but actually he is just one of the millions of us, who cannot speak without such a phrase at the start of every sentence. Basically, these are the people who use words like actually, basically or phrases like "you know", "frankly speaking" as punctuation.
You know, i used to do like this back in college where i started any communication with the word "basically". There actually exists a term for such phrases. Just that i can't recollect the term. Frankly speaking, i have short term memory losses nowadays, you know!

The long and the short of the short cut

When Mahendra Singh Dhoni, of the Indian Cricket team, square cuts a ball for a boundary, a few million people in India admire his cricketing skills in executing the square cut. But,there are also few million others who forget about where the ball has gone, because they are just admiring his "long cut" or rather the lack of a hair cut. Dhoni has not only become a sensation in the cricketing world, but also in the hairdressing world, with more and more people opting for the "dhoni" look.

But, is that look, with long locks of hair any good ? I don't think so. Maybe, it makes sense to him as a cricketer to have long hair. Imagine a situation where a bouncer is bowled at him and the ball hits him on his helmet. By having long hair, he not only has the helmet to protect his skull, but also the many layers of hair and the hundreds of lice which would have taken residence within.

Things started changing from the first week of June with the start of the FIFA world cup. "Short cut" became the in thing. In fact, crazy hair cuts were the fashion. Hairdressers started using modified versions of "not-in-good-condition" lawn mowers to satisfy the ever-changing requirements of their customers. The trend was not to bend it like beckham, but to cut it like beckham.

I have always favoured the short cut, primarily because it allows the easy flow of Vitamin-D from sunlight into my brain, without being obstructed by lots of hair. Another reason is that i get to spend less time at the saloon and make his job easy too, since all it requires for my haircut is 3 or 4 smooth moves of the "machine" with the blade at position 4 and that's it, my haircut's done. My haircut (when done in India) costs around 40 bucks for the few hundred grams of hair which gets cut, whereas when Vidhya goes to the hairdresser to cut few microns from the ends of her hair, she gets charged 600 bucks. Its a pity that women are still exploited in this modern world!

But, off late, I have begun to hate the short cut, mainly because of hot flashes! No, this is not the "hot flashes" associated with women , but this is because of "hot" and "flash". It gets really hot in summer nowadays and with the rapid depletion of the ozone layer, harmful UV radiation also easily enters my brain along with Vitamin-D. This could prove to be really bad for me in the long run.

Another issue is the growing popularity of mini/micro/maxi digital cameras amongst today's generation.

Anyone who is someone has one and considers himself an expert at taking photos. Now all these cameras have good flashes and i didn't realise that i could become the target of a bad photo. Look at the photo alongside, the flash has bounced off my "short cut" and it looks as though I am bald at some places, whereas I am not. This photo also appeared in the official album of my cousin's wedding and my image took a serious dent with some people commenting "Raja, unnakku vayasu ayidithu, sotta vara aramchirutthu" (Raja, you have grown old, you have started becoming bald!)

So, don't be surprised if you see an entry on my blog few weeks later, with a photo of just my head. This is to prove to the world, that I am not growing bald!

How to identify a NRI in Chennai

The points below might help you in identifying NRIs in Chennai, for whatever reason you may want to do so.Almost all the points refer to identifying NRIs while they are in the act of driving a car, for this is where their differences with the rest of the locals show through clearly.

A NRI is driving the car if

• the driver is wearing a seat-belt. The only belts the locals know of are the ones you get for 30 rupees in Pondy bazaar. Few years back, when the Tamil Nadu government planned to make wearing seat belts compulsory, the brahmin community revolted against the idea by saying "We already wear cross-belts, why do we need yet another belt?" and so, seat-belts went off fashion. The NRI wouldn't know that wearing a seat-belt in the searing heat of chennai would "brand" his shirt in sweat.
• Both its side mirrors are in the proper position. Why would a local unnecessarily invest in an useless accessory? A NRI wouldn't know that it the responsibility of the person coming from behind to adjust according to the position of the person in front, who without any care whatsoever in the world, can swerve from one side to another.
• an indicator is used to move from an imaginary slow lane to an imaginary fast lane or vice versa. A NRI wouldn't know that indicators are used to act as a first layer of defense for the car's body against other vehicles which come in a "little" close and are not meant serve any other purpose. Using an indicator is a sure-shot giveaway that the person at the wheel is a NRI. You could even go unnoticed by having a L-board, but not when using an indicator.
• the car is still at the traffic signal when the countdown timer has reached the threshold of 9. Maybe, the NRI doesn't know that a single digit on the counter, and not a 0 or a 1, means that you have the green signal to go. The only other people still at the signal would be the unfortunate ones who are directly behind the NRI and it is logical that they can't turn to go around him, because they would have stopped their vehicles 1.2 cm behind the NRI's car.
• you as a pedestrian walking on the side of the road, without warning, without any hand signals, jump to the middle of the road to continue your walk and happen to be in the way of a car, you hear the driver saying (and not shouting) "What the ...", "Are you crazy?" , "Are you out of your mind", then you can be sure that the driver is a NRI. If the same NRI happens to retain some of his roots, you might hear him saying "Paathu ponga sir" or "Enganga poringa". If it were a local, you would wish you were deaf for you might hear "Eh Saavugraki, Vootle solltiya?" or "kasumalam, Nee Saavarthukku En Vandidhan Kadchidha". A NRI wouldn't know that pedestrians, cows, buffaloes, goats and not vehicles have the right of way on our roads.

But, chennai is constantly changing and so, the breed of NRIs would also have to constantly evolve to be ahead of the masses. No idea as to what this breed might do next.

The benefits of going digital

I have become so used to living in the digital age using digital watches, digital cameras, listening to digital soundtracks, even using a digital thermometer for checking the temperature, that I have forgotten how analog worked and how much better our lives are, now.
Sometimes, the past comes back, to haunt you, to show you that it was the one who you had admired and now disown. It did, for me too, in the form of an analog clock. Last week was busy for me, as I had to attend a wedding, which meant that I had to get up pretty early (as early as 3.30 AM).
Not many know the reason why Indian weddings are held early in the morning. Centuries ago, in India, there never existed a custom of arranged marriage. All the marriages which happened were the kind where the couple eloped from their homes and married each other. This was accepted in society, with the only restriction that the marriage should not happen in the presence of anyone else and the society should not be aware of the marriage, prior to it happening. That is why, the couples getting married, always got married in the wee hours of the morning, while the rest of the neighbourhood was asleep. Unfortunately, in modern India, even arranged marriages now follow the same routine.
So, I had to get up at 3.30 AM. I am not an insomniac, but snore enough to make vidhya one. After 4 years of marriage, vidhya has developed immunity for my snoring and manages quite a deep sleep. I needed an external help for waking up at 3.30 and where else do I look at, rather than my mobile phone with a digital alarm accurate to the second. Alas, my phone’s top two buttons were not working, thus making it only useful for Reliance’s “Lifetime incoming free” plan.
So, I borrowed an analog clock from my mom. It looked liked it had been gifted for my mom’s wedding! I kept the alarm for 3.15 AM. Had some difficulty in doing it, because I had to recollect my geometry skills to determine the position to place the alarm hand, so that it would be 3.15 AM. My mom told me that the “alarm” was actually a piece of classical music/sloga. I wondered as to how classical music could wake me up. I am used to falling asleep whenever I happen to listen to one.
Off I went to my world of dreams. Sometime later, in the middle of the action sequence I was participating in, the villain suddenly started singing a sloga! I was wondering, in my dream, whether I was in a dream listening to this sloga! Recursion, I have always been good at it! Later, it “dawned” on me that it was time for me to get up.
This is where all the trouble started. I woke up, half asleep, took the alarm clock in my hand and tried to search for the “snooze” button for that extra ten minutes of precious sleep. Alas, there wasn’t any. I had only one option, that of turning off the alarm. But, I needed that extra ten minutes, without which my entire day would be spoilt. So, I tried to move the alarm hand a further ten minutes away. Neither did I have the eyes of an owl nor did I have such a fine-tuned sense of trigonometry. So I had to get up, in the dark, find my way to the switch board(falling over at least 2 suitcases on the way), switch on the lights and then re-adjust the time on the alarm clock. By this time, the need for that extra time had gone!
Imagine the trouble I had to go through, just because the digital technology was unavailable to me. God bless the person who found the 0s and 1s.

Home Sweat Home

No, its not a typo. I am in Chennai right now for my annual vacation. It is not only home sweet home, but also "home sweat home". The difference in humidity between here and cyprus is huge and it really shows on the t-shirt! But, it feels good.
Vacationing in india is the only time i get to play badminton, because there are no badminton courts in Cyprus, at least not in Limassol. I played for couple of hours today morning and came back home with my tshirt dripping in sweat. Was forced by my mom to remove my tshirt and deposit it in a separate bin, as though as an outcast!
Being in chennai means a lot more, trying hard to keep up the cycle of sleeping and eating and listening (not accepting) to the incessant requests of Vidhya to go out shopping.
But, it is difficult to totally ignore work. Somehow, have the urge to logon to my office mails every time I have some free time. Staying totally away from work and issues would make it very difficult to settle down back to the routine, when i get back to cyprus.
Okay, gotta eat mini-dosas now ...

Google Searches

It is funny sometimes to see the words/phrases people search for, on google, and land up on my site. Of late, most of them have been related to Dubai because many of my recent posts have been on Dubai and its malls, attractions etc.

Some of the interesting searches

• "Tomato or Brinjal" leading to http://www.srajaram.com/2006/02/one-flu-over-birds-nest.html
• "aamir falling down song" leading to http://www.srajaram.com/2006/02/rang-de-basanti-review.html
• "rajaram sethuraman" . But, why would someone search for "rajaram sethuraman"..strange!
• "ponnusamy dubai" leading to http://www.srajaram.com/2006/04/deja-vu-in-dubai.html
• "new year party 2006" in google images leading to the photo of the Belly Dancer in the amdocs new year party -> http://www.srajaram.com/2006/01/new-year-party-2006_25.html
• "ceaser box" leading to the hunt at http://www.srajaram.com/thehunt/hunt.php. Ironically, the spelling of ceaser should have been caeser box, but i didn't change it because i was getting some hits because of this wrong spelling!
• "tamil" on www.youtube.com leads to the video "Titanic In Tamil" on one of my pages
• "Mallu Dubai" leading to http://www.srajaram.com/2006/04/deja-vu-in-dubai.html

Perhaps, the best search to land up on my site was for "saloon in Dubai" !!

Sheikh Rajaram bin Sethuraman al Nil

I recently acquired an oil well while on my trip to Dubai. I also got this spice shop free along with the oil well. So, I thought it would be good have a photo taken in my shop. Part of the contract of the acquisition required me to change my name and also my attire. Henceforth, while in Dubai, I shall be known as Sheikh Rajaram bin Sethuraman al Nil.

• Sheikh => I have converted
• Rajaram => That's my name
• bin => Son of
• Sethuraman => My Dad's Name
• al => Strictly meaning "The", here used to represent the family I belong to
• Nil => Alas, I don't have a family name!

More photos and tales of my Dubai conquests will be available soon.

Well, some theory works in Cyprus

After the Queuing Theory came crashing down in Cyprus, I didn't expect any other scientific or mathematical model to work in Cyprus. Yet again, the Cypriots proved me wrong. Chaos Theory rules in Cyprus. Yesterday, I started from Cyprus for Dubai. I reached the airport at around 4 pm for a 5.30 pm flight.

Ya, this is normal in Cyprus. You don't need to be a day earlier in the airport like in India! There were around 6 flights scheduled for departure in that slot of 2-3 hours. So, it was pretty much logical to have 6 counters and hence 6 queues. But, I had forgotten that Queuing Theory doesn't work in Cyprus. It was Chaos Theory which dominated the scene. Some smart Cyprus Airways official decided that things would speed up if all the 6 counters available catered to all flights rather than one each for a flight. So, it was any queue for any flight or rather any queue for all flights! So, Vidhya and I did our probability and statistical calculation and chose the slowest moving queue.

Half an hour later, after we had moved 1.2 metres forward, another smart cyprus airways official decided that the plan implemented by the other smart Cyprus airways official was getting nowhere and decided to change our queue to one particular flight. It so happened that out of the few dozen people in the queue only 2.5 (2 adults and a kid) belonged to this flight.

So, what happens to the rest of the people?

Chaos theory comes to the rescue. The people in our queue were of the opinion that we should be offered similar positions in other queues whereas people in the other queues, very politely pointed us the way to the end of their queues. Chaos rules !I managed to check-in at 5.25 pm and my flight was supposed to take-off at 5.30 pm. Finally, the situation became like the bus stands back home with the officials yelling out for each flight and people pushing their way through the queues with their trolleys. Even after all this, we managed to take-off at 6.30 pm, a mere one hour late. Hail Europe!

Failure of queuing Theory in Cyprus

If you have done a graduation in any discipline, you should have encountered the basics of OR (Operations Research) which would have definitely included a lesson on queuing Theory. The most basic Queue which one can encounter is the Single Line - Single Servicing Entity Queue. For the layman, this means that there is a single queue which is serviced by a single servicing entity and the people in the queue go to the servicing entity one by one. This can also be called the FIFO Queue (First in First out). This is the practice in most places like post offices, banks etc. Of course, you have the slightly different variant, wherein you have a single queue, but multiple servicing entities, where the efficiency of each servicing entity comes into the equation.

Now, back to my experience. Today morning, I went to the Income Tax office to meet our assigned Tax Officer to file the returns. I went at 9 AM. If i had gone in at 9AM, my conversation should have been like:

Me: Hi, I came two days back. You asked me to come today to collect my documents.

She: What is your name?

Me: rajaram.

She:Here it is.

Me: Thank you. Bye

She: Bye.

Probably, it would have taken 43 seconds and I would have been in office on time.

But at 9AM, there was another person inside the office and hence, I had to wait outside.

After a few minutes, a Britisher came and joined me in the queue. This was, or rather supposed to be, a straight-forward FIFO Queue.

It was 9.15 AM now and I was already getting impatient.

Out of nowhere came an elderly Cypriot Gentleman and peeped inside the office. Then we heard a shrieking voice "Manamoooo" (Pronouned like Cho Chweeeeet). And this Cypriot guy went inside the office. The Britisher and I exchanged strange looks.

I consoled myself by saying that he was let in because he was old.

15 minutes passed by.

Then came a sparsely dressed Cypriot Girl, who also peeped into the office. Then we heard the same voice again "Manamoooooo". She also went it. She had a big folder in her hands (looked like an agent).

The britisher was visibly upset. He asked me "Shall i also peep inside and shout Manamooo". I told him that the lady inside would probably discover him to be a fake, with his accent. The girl inside took out a piece of cake and both started eating it and discussing all the worldly affairs. Another 15 mins passed by. Then, she took out a huge bundle of tax forms from her folder. The Britisher almost fainted.

Finally, at 10 Am, it was my turn to go inside.

The Britisher, with a very concerned face, asked me "Are you also going to do this manamooo thing? "

Chaotic or organised ?

Posting this for PhotoFriday for the category "Organised" ! It may look chaotic for our eyes, but I am sure that these pigeons must be commuicating to each other, charting out the flight plan :-)
Photo taken at the Kyrenia Harbour, North Cyprus.

Bappi Lahiri - The Sexiest Indian Alive

In a recent worldwide poll conducted in India by www.poll420.com, Bappi Lahiri has come triumphant in the following categories

• Sexiest Indian Alive
• Best Indian in Bed

The poll was conducted online with the main audience being girls aged between 18-25. Bappi was voted "The Best Indian in Bed" by almost 62.2% of the voters with Adnan Sami coming a distant second with 21 % of the votes (Adnan got a good score, because many of the voters misunderstood the title "Best Indian in Bed" as "Best Indian who can be used instead of a bed").

So, why was Bappi the best? What is is that he has, that makes him the best? We contacted many of the voters to find out. The investigations revealed that we were scratching just the tip of a much deeper problem. Most Indian men, many presumed, were the "Wham, Bham, Thank you ma'am" type. If so, shouldn't Bappi also be the same? It seems not.

Bappi was said to have the longest ever foreplay for an Indian ever! Now, that's quite an achievement. We had to sweet-talk many of the voters to reveal more details. It seems that the secret behind Bappi's foreplay was his style of dressing. As he wears an enormous amount of jewelry on him, the time taken for him to undress (including the time it takes to remove so much jewelry) is so much, that the girls include this in foreplay and find it very arousing!!

No wonder that, after this poll, Indian Men are turning to Bappi as their fashion Icon.

Quack Quack, Is the Doctor in?

Visits to the doctor are always quite an experience back in India. There was the typical 10-rupee-per-visit doctor(heard that he had upgraded to the 20-rupee-per-visit price plan) who was kind of our family doctor and for the few thousand families in that locality. Yes, he had a monopoly for an astonishing number of 6 streets, which is very rare, considering the ratio of clinics-people in Chennai.

By the time it was the turn of my "token", I felt that the heavily coughing guy next to me could very well go back without visiting the doctor, because he would have coughed so much that his "disease" would have spread to so many people around him, that he would be left with none !
The first ten minutes of my visit would be spent on social discussions like my studies, my family, the runs i scored in that evening's cricket match(he lives in the same colony) etc. So, by the time he starts the actual medical investigation, the symptoms would all have magically vanished that i would be left looking like a fool with all my complaints.

So, are my experiences with Cyprus doctors any better? Well, they are definitely more interesting. Cyprus doesn't have a medical college and for the matter of fact, there aren't many for other disciplines too. A good quality professional education is definitely not a thing of high priority for Cypriots, as most of the country directly or indirectly relies on tourism. Everyone who studies in a Cyprus college would be studying in a college which is in the top ten list of Cyprus!

Ok, back to doctors..Doctors in Cyprus are mostly educated in the UK or Greece and have laminated certificates hung in their clinics as proof and believe me, without this proof, it would be very difficult to trust them!

There is a general physician pretty "famous" with Amdocs employees because he is one of the few who accept our insurance claim forms directly without a need for paying a fee. Vidhya was having a headache with fever, cold etc. So, we go to this doctor. He asks hundreds of very related questions like "Do you have dogs at your workplace?", "Did you have a similar headache at exactly the same time last year?" and so on. Then she was taken to the "examining" room where there were examinations of the nose, eyes and mouth for around 10 mins. Finally, he gave the conclusion (almost with drums in the background) "Vidhya, you have common cold" !! When we get ready to leave his clinic, he comes all the way to the front door, says "goodbye", "keep in touch" .Of all the people, you are the last one i want to keep in touch!

Few weeks back, we had been to an "allergy specialist" because Vidhya had been reacting very badly (started sneezing) whenever i went within a few feet of her! This guy looked a thorough professional, took out a piece of paper and started writing Vidhya's biography (same set of very related questions). Then, he said that he needed few minutes time to analyse what he had written to arrive at a conclusion.
Few minutes later he said "You have three main problems: sneezing, swollen nose, dry eyes. Of the three which would you like to be cured ?" !!! I hope this guy hadn't done his education from Tamil Nadu State board where you have a choice to write either your name or your friend's name on the answer sheet.

But, the best part about a visit to a doctor in Cyprus is something else. Imagine the frustration you would go through while waiting for your turn back in India. Here, the clinics have loads of celebrity magazines stacked for you to spend time reading. Well, most of these magazines, back in India, would have been banned! So, while Vidhya is sneezing away next to me, I am like "Poor Angelina Jolie, she doesn't even have money to buy a full set of clothes!"

One Flu over the bird's nest

Not the right time for a remake of the famous film "One Flew over the cuckoo's nest", i guess. In the typical grammatically incorrect way our politicians answer questions, the question on everyone's minds or rather, the answer on everyone's lips is whether the bird flew or not?

As someone proverbially said "Every dark cloud has a silver lining". The silver lining or the juciy filling in this case is that the price of Broiler Chicken, Boiled Chicken, Oiled Chicken and all the other avatars has gone down so steeply, that few smart individuals have moved from being non-vegetarians to being chickenarians.

Their staple diet has changed as follows:

Breakfast : Chicken Wings (a light breakfast) with Chicken soup

Lunch : Tandoori Chicken, Chicken Sag and Butter Chicken with Chick Peas (In the haste of things, some don't realise the truth abt chick peas)

Evening Snacks : Chi'c'kkies (In the haste of ....)

Dinner: Chicken Tikka Masala (India's best contribution to the world), Chicken Korma and Chicken Biryani

Being a vegetarian, I have always wondered abt why people make such a big deal about chicks !!

There are also people who have opted to go in the other direction. People are abstaining from anything non-vegetarian from the belief that if the bird flu, the there is a better probability of it landing on top of a cow or a sheep or a lamb rather than the next-door tomato or brinjal plant. Moreover, their logic is even more strengthened by the fact that a bird can't "flu" into the ground there-by making all the "root vegetables" safe for consumption.

Anyway, here's something for the chickens ...

Thank you Marcos!

When : Five and a half years back.
Where: A restaurant in Bangalore.
Scene: I am with 3 of my friends, sort of a farewell for me, after submitting my resignation at my previous company.
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Friend 1: So Rajaram, where are you joining?
Me: I am going to Cyprus.
Friend 2: Ah, that's a good company, Cypress Semiconductors, Its in Chennai , right?
Me: No no, Cyprus is not the name of a company, I am "going" to Cyprus
Friend 2: Sorry, I didn't know that Cyprus is a city in USA.
Me: Cyprus is the name of a country ...
Friend 1,2,3 : What ?? Where is this country ?
Me: Its in Europe..
Friend 1: In Europe, never seen it in any of the maps ..Is it a big country ?
Me: No, its a very small country , too small to mathematically scale it to normal maps..
Friend 2: ugh ..then why are u going there ..
....
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Such was the general knowledge about the existence of Cyprus few years back. One of the main reasons I chose to come here was the "exoticness" imprinted in my mind about an island in the Mediterranean sea. I remember, back in school, during the geography exams, invariably there used to be a "map" question asking us to point out the Mediterranean sea and i used to search the globe trying my luck with all landlocked water bodies !!

But, this was all pre-marcos era. Marcos Baghdatis, from the city of Limassol in Cyprus (the city where i stay) has put Cyprus and all its tray sure on the world map. He was the runner-up in the recently concluded Australian Open, an impressive feat for a person ranked 54 and from a country of around 700,000 people. I am sure any shopping mall during Diwali time in India would have more people in it!

I am thankful to Marcos, as he has saved me the trouble of explaining the history, geography, economics and what not to all the middle-aged relatives back in India.
All these relatives, after following the Australian open, would have researched enough to teach me a few things about Cyprus. Now, its listening time rather than talking time ...

Donations to a Gym

I started going to a gym 3 days back. This is actually my second attempt at going to a gym. The first attempt was four years back, when i had just come to Cyprus. It was the "in-thing" then to go to a gym. But, what everyone didn't tell was that lasting beyond the initial few days was definitely not the norm !

I took a 3-month subscription and went to the gym for exactly 3 weeks. I was a hero. I had gone longer than most of the guys who had joined with me. There are guys here working with me, for whom the only visit to the gym has been on the first day to pay the subscription ! Nowadays, it is widely agreed that your stay in Cyprus is incomplete, if you haven't donated to a gym. It is because of people like us that the gyms here are able to afford expensive modern equipment for the benefit of the locals. No wonder, we get a royal welcome whenever we approach a gym asking for subscription details.

I think, I have cracked the reason for this. The trainers at the gyms here chalk out a routine for you on the first day and when they introduce you to the various exercising stuff, they say "We usually start off with the minimum weight, but looking at you, i guess you can manage more". What this does is boost your confidence to unmanageable levels. So, at the end of the first day, you go back home and check yourself out in the mirror and say "looks like my abs have started developing already..". This is enough to keep you in bed the next morning!!

I have become wiser now and taken only a 1 month subscription. Its been three days and looks like my abs have already started developing ....