appologies..

hello blogosphere.. apologies for being out of space for some time. My mind is not working fine these days. Lot of things happening on professional life and everything is not good. i might be off for few more days. i would definitely be back and comment on all your posts. Pardon my absence for the time being.

lv, Sawan.

Awards...Awards...Awards...

Its the last quarter of the year. People who has a job would know how busy and special this quarter is. Self Evaluations, Ono-on-one meetings, Presentations, Feed backs - all with two thoughts => hike & promotion! So this is the time of the year when evaluation of work happens. This is the time when we decide how much has another person contributed towards a common goal!

Hence I choose this time to evaluate how much you have influenced me! I checked your contributions in my life in this very own blog-o-sphere and here are your rewards :-)

There are 5 awards in total and I've given the list of winners with a preview of each award here.

So check if you are in the list and if you are - CONGRATZ.

I spent the whole night designing the awards and now its 8.10 AM IST. I am planning to sleep :-)

So do comment, your commends would be a token of appreciation for my sleepless night :-)

u take care.

lifeline of The machine

my computer has really gone crazy! or is it trying to make me resalize that it has grown old!

I feel so good when I see the task manager at less than 50% CPU Utilization. But Bill Gates rarely allow me to be happy these days! Windows is filled with all those crazy scripts which simply takes my CPU for a ride.

Last day I was trying to remotely login to my office network. As soon as I opened two citrix sessions , boom, my system got restarted! Can you believe it? It couldn even take the load of two simultaneous citrix sessions! Yeah, I know its old.. but 2.4GHz and 768MB RAM is good deal for home use! or so I believe.. But these days my system is challenging my thoughts. It better be aware that if it continues to be mischievous it would end up in a dust bin. I live in a world of options!

hatred or ignorance?

.

I was born a Hindu - not by choice,

A Muslim built my house!

A Christian cooked me food!

look around

they helped me survive!

is that their crime?

should i hate them for that?

for those who took the sword -

kill Religion, not Humans!

.

a drama called life

This is gona be the lengthiest post in here. Sorry for that. The story is based on true incidents. In life i played the role of Neil.

Sam loved cricket. He did three things - he played cricket, prayed to Jesus and studied. Ask him about Aamir Khan and his response would be "Aamir who?"! He was in twelth and he got many friends - all of them were boys. For reasons unknown he hardly talked to girls. Maybe he was scared that his friends would make fun of him. Maybe he was too shy and the last thing he wanted was to hear his name tagged with a girl. He was happy with his life.

Keerthi was a chatterbox. She was one among the very few extroverts in college. She would talk to one and all. She made friends easily. Small things made her happy. You could never miss a smile on her face. Everyone in the college was her friend and hence the question of a boy friend never arose! The last thing she wanted was to shut up and close the doors which connected her to the world! She was happy with her life.

Sam finishes his twelth, joins engineering and take his fav subject for a career. Keerthi does the same - only that the subject and the college were different.

Four years passed by. Sam goes abroad to build up his career. Someone said Keerthi was not very interested in finding a job. She stayed at home! Everyone was so busy in search of a job, busy to build a career, busy with their own life. Did people miss to see the silence in Keerthi or did they just chose not to bother?

A year later old friends catch up for gossips and old memories. No one has heard from Keerthi lately. Strange!

Two years later Neil felt somethings wrong about his friends - Sam and Keerthi. Both behaved weird. Sam, who was the ideal husband for the most traditional girls, started finding pleasure in alcohol. Keerthy, who was fun to be with, suddenly became too silent. Neal decides to talk and he gets two version of stories:

Version 1 : Sam : 12th Class : Keerthi and Sam went to the same tuition class. Keerthi used to talk to SAM from there. Sam was excited but made sure no one got a hint that they were talking. He considered it a sin to talk to a girl! Later this chit chat became lengthier conversations. During engineering they started liking each other. He would go to her house asking for notes. She drew diagrams on his record books. By the end of engineering they were in love. He went abroad to make quick money. She waited at home for him to come back. He made ISD calls and wasted half of his hard earned income. Now she seems to move away. She is no more interested in him. She says she wants a career and she cant marry him. He came all the way to India just to see her, to talk to her, to convince her. He had to borrow money from his friends for the flight tickets. She refused to talk to him. Refused to see him. He was lost. She ditched him. he would never be able to love another girl. She drained out his love and left him all alone. So he started finding happiness in alcohol. He started it to forget the pain, to sleep, to live. He was not happy with his life.

Version 2 : Keerthi : 12th Class : She talked to Sam the way she talked to everyone. The more she knew him she took care that the conversation went private. She din want to hurt him. She thought he was cute and kiddish. She liked him. He talked to her in a way that no one has ever talked to her. She felt as if he is dependent on her. Slowly she began to open up. During engineering she fell in love with him. Her world began to shrink. He became her world. His words were final and she began to oblige. He went abroad to make money for them He promised he would come back and take her with him. She waited at home. Loneliness killed her. Her friends were gone - busy with their work. She din bother. He was too possessive and hated the idea of her talking to a guy, even if the guy was a common friend. She din complain. Slowly he began to take her for granted. He wanted her to come online whenever he wished. Even if she was sick or feeling low he would ask her to login. Her ideas, her interests, her emotions were not taken care of! She felt as if she was a puppet. She could take it no more. She couldn't fake a smile any more. She wanted her life back. She could only look back and cry at the amount of time she has wasted for him. She got a job. Slowly she began to recover. She got her friends back. She began to smile but the pain was still there. She was not happy with her life.

<-After 3 long year-> <-today->

Keerthy has moved on.She has a job. She is happy. Her decision is strong. She is getting married to a person of her choice - a guy who would treat her as a person, who would respect her for what she is and who would love her with all his will. Her parents are happy. Her friends are happy.

Sam is still in UAE. He refuse to come back. He is not the same Sam his friends knew. He works, drinks and sleep. He tries to be sarcastic in his words but end up being stupid. He doesn't like Neil. He thinks Neil din help him much in getting Keerthy back. She left him - it hurted his ego more than his heart!

Neil talks to both of them. He is happy for Keerthy and sad for Sam. He tried to convince Sam but in vein. Neil chose to back Keerthy for the following reasons:

* Neil believes that if a guy loves a girl he should be ready to accept her the way she is.

* Preventing the girl from talking to a guy out of insecurity feel is due to the lack of trust in their relationship. If there is no trust, there is no relationship.

* Everybody has got their own private space. At times its better to respect the space and keep your distance. Your wife or your love is also an individual. Acknowledge the fact.

If you have read till now and is still alive [:-)] i have a question for you. If you were Neil, how would you react? Also, what is your piece of advice for Keerthy and Sam?

TV ho tho BIG TV ho!

After a long gap of 4 months my tv showed signs of life yesterday! I never took the pain to transfer the dish of my TataSky to this new house. Why would I? I hardly watch tv. And shelling a 1000 bucks for transfer and then agian 330 bucks per month was a waste of money for me! So my TV was on a state of hibernation :-) Last week someone explained me the launch offers of BIG TV and suddenly I was interested. They took 2000 bucks inclusive of the set top box, installation and 1 year of subscription! Sounds good right? And yes, they gives me 8 mallu channels :-) SO I bought the box on saturday. Since the next day was sunday I was told that the technician would visit my place on Monday. But then, he surprised me with a call on Sunday morning and said he was working! Wola, the tv was so happy to come back to life :-)

For an instant review, the picture quality is simply amazing! So people out there who are planing to buy a DTH, I recommend BIGTV! 

did ya like the new template?

i was never good on HTML or any web designing languages or scripts. But I always wanted to have my own template :-) So, today I gave my blog its own skin.. unique! it took almost 12 hours of trial and error method to design this... thanks for my patience :-) hope it looks gud.. or was the older one better? 

wo.. what an interpretation!!

following is a piece of news taken from The Hindu today.

Leader of the Opposition and senior Trinamool Congress leader, Partha Chatterjee, reportedly called up Commissioner of Police Gautam Mohan Chakravarty on Saturday night and allegedly threatened to “set all of Bengal on fire” unless some of those arrested in connection with the violence near a city market were released, according to the police.
“You are intimidating me … saying you will set all of Bengal on fire. I am recording this. Kindly do not intimidate me,” Mr. Chakravarty told Mr. Chatterjee from his mobile in the course of the conversation.
The call was made after the Commissioner went to the Charu Market area from where the police arrested some persons in connection with setting ablaze of some police jeeps and attacking the local thana following a bus accident there. The prime accused is stated to be a local Trinamool leader.
Mr. Chakravarty told Mr. Chatterjee that arrests would be made irrespective of party affiliation.
Mr. Chatterjee took exception to the Commissioner “making public his response to a private conversation with the Leader of the Opposition.”
“It is an infringement on my right to privacy and I have written to the West Bengal Governor and the Union Home Minister in this regard. This brings out in the open moves by the police to keep a close surveillance on conversations of Opposition leaders, including Ms. Mamata Banerjee,” Mr. Chatterjee told The Hindu.

You call the commissionar of police and threaten him that you are gona set the state on fire. If he records the call for security purposes, you say its an infringement on your right to privacy! Now thats called democracy!

movie review : DHRONA

KK Menon is superb. The music is quite good. The story is disastrous! If you like seeing Ramayana or Mahabharatha in TV, you may find better graphics in the movie. Give your brains some rest - its a pure non-logical movie! If you really wanna watch the movie, watch it on screen, if you get a cd - chances are high that you wouldn watch the movie till end!

Rating:
Story: Pathetic.
Star cast: Good.
Individual Performance : KK Menon - Superb, Rest - Average.
Music : Good.
Animation : Average.

Overall: Not worth seeing.

hail V-GUARD

My UPS was acting weird for a long time now.. It simply was reluctant to get charged up. The moment power goes off my system get switched off! I was rich enough to use a UPS as an extension box! Some one told me that the battery might have got screwed! Now they make sense 'cos i am using this UPS for the past 5 years :-)  So were do I get the battery replaced..?? I started searching web for a service centre of V-GUARD in Hyderabad. As my instincts told me, I din get any hits.. So checked out the V-GUARD website for a phone number. Called the Andhra Pradesh Service heldesk number and got the contact details for their Hyderabad desk. 

Yesterday I took my UPS and drove all the way to their service station.. The traffic was horrible. Going out on a Saturday is a torture these days! The shop closes at 5.30 and wola, i reached there at 5! thanks for the traffic, it was a 2 hours drive..

More bad news awaited me at the service station. The guy says they dont have a stock of batteries and it might take 15 days for them to order one. I dont know how my face reacted cos he then said there is an exide showroom nearby and he would fix it if i buy him the required battery. Hurrey.. Good news afterall.. I rushed to the Exide showroom and got the battery.

He fixed my UPS in 15 minutes and good news is that he din charge me. Of course my UPS din carry any 5 years guarantee tag with it, but still the guy was pleasing enough when he said " its free service sir".. man hail V-Guard..

Is Mamata really the only spoilsport?

credits: Business & Econimics -> original report <-

following are not my words, but i felt like sharing it with my readers...

“If I believe that we were doing something wrong, then I will be the first one to pull out… You put a gun to my head and pull the trigger or take the gun away, I won’t move my head.”That was Ratan Tata in 2006, daring the ‘motivated’ opponents of the Nano project to do their worst, and worse. Now you can blame Mamata Banerjee of many things; but even her most trenchant critic won’t accuse her of riding a horse towards Bombay House (the headquarters of the Tata Group) and pointing a Smith & Wesson at Ratan Tata. Then why is the Tata Group behaving so petulantly (unfortunately, blindly supported by most of the media) and threatening to pull out? If Tata Motors has not done “something wrong” ('Wrong' could be legal, ethical or moral), why has the company filed a petition in the Calcutta High Court requesting for a restraint on the State Information Commission from releasing details about the Nano car project? That’s because the more you learn about the deal between Tata Motors and the WB government, the more you wonder if J.R.D Tata would have ever pushed for such a deal.Lest you bracket us as ‘professional protestors’, let me tell you that this magazine declared the Nano as the genuine Bharat Ratna. We still think the Nano is a paradigm changing at ‘low cost mobility’. Our problem is with how the ‘low cost’ is being achieved. The devil, as always, lies in the details.

The cash starved WB government has given a Rs.200 crore loan to Tata Motors at – yes – at 1% interest. The first instalment will be repaid in the 21st year of the project. Does a group that paid Rs 35,000 crore or so to acquire the British steel company Corus need a Rs.200 crore loan at 1% interest? Forget that. By the time the first instalment is due, Tata Motors would have earned close to Rs.2,000 crore in interest income by investing that money in a fixed deposit. Tata Motors will pay a lease of Rs.1 crore per year on 647 odd acres of land for the first 30 years of the 90 year old lease. That is less than Rs.1,300 per acre in commercial land, less than 50 kilometres from Kolkata. Even poor middle class souls like you and me pay a lease of Rs.1,80,000 per year for a 1,000 square feet house far from the heart of the city.The Nano project will get power at Rs.3 per KwH; the current rate in Bengal is Rs.4.15. If rates go up by more than 25 paise per Kwh in five years, the government will refund Tata Motors. You and me are already paying close to Rs.6 per unit for electricity. For every Nano sold in Bengal, the state will de facto refund the VAT and sales tax collected on each sale of Nano.There is far, far more and we don’t even know the details of what Tata Motors has prevented us from knowing by going to the courts. I can’t but help wonder about two things. How much of the ‘low cost’ is because of media hyped innovations and how much because of the deal? Then again, who is putting a gun to whose head?