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Friday, June 27, 2008

What on earth is Blogging?

"Shabbu went to U.S and started blogging, guess he is bored there",

"He has no work, he just sits and blogs ",

"Never knew you write, blogging gets me to know you better".

"Oye kis ladki ko impress kar raha he saale, blogging-vlogging??"

These are the few funny statements i got from my friends in last few days. Yes, i blog these days a lot infact a part of my daily curriculum. So why do i blog? Just for the heck of it...hmm probably not. I just love blogging, i have no definite answers. Its like smoking for a few people, no idea why they do it even after knowing they are virtually in a morgue everyday. On the hindsight this one has no after effects apart from less sleep. (By the way now the time is 4:53 AM an early sunday morning of 29th June...just wanted to say it..)Its like i always fancied writing but am not good at it. Blogging gives peanut-brained fellas like me a chance to show off by just scribbling some crap, i do think it may be true. I write loads and loads of blog, most of the times i delete them all. It might have a good start but nothing to expand upon. Some have big promises but do not withstand the final moment. But i make sure i scribble something. In my office laptop i have a file blog.txt. You never know when great ideas might strike you. Its always important to let people know about your thoughts and ideas. Earlier days we used a mode called friends, unless you are famous enough to write an article in some leading newspaper. Blogging is an all & sundry affair, everybody is welcome. Its like a democratic news channel working for you.



If you have not explored the power of blogging, you are not late yet. Its just takes matter of time to start an account and take a dip inside. As far as i have noticed there are many facets of blogging. Stories, Poems, Pictures, Videos you can collect anything to everything in it. Some might be your travel blog, photography, life experiences etc. Me? I dont have a particular style, and i dont want to. More than killing time, it lets a few of my reader to know me more as a person. Some intricate inconsistencies in me or flaws which am personally afraid to discuss in public. Blog is such a medium for me. It simple, there are things you wanna let every one know but you dont wanna say it. Catch 22 huh? Yeah may be that, but blog gives you that tender freedom you urged for.



So is blogging a life time activity? I would want it to be even if google starts to charge me, just kidding. From my mom to my colleague(friends included) everyone reads my blog these days. Infact i read there blogs too. We are all part of this big blog-mafia which we wanna expand. It feels good when some one encourages you, even though you are not good as you want to be but still the encouragement matters. Today my friend Neaz told "I read your blog machi, It was good". One line, he just said one line that felt like heaven. I had no words to reply back. Another friend of mine Rohit, once in a while pops up as 'Anonymous' commenter. Then there are my college friends, especially gireesh & raghu who own my blog as i do. There is a general outlook most of my blogs have a darkish tint in it, and now its changing to a pleasant ones. So radically it depicts my emotions as well, its what i feel at those times. Especially our college/school day pranks & memories which i miss so much these days after being chewed up a corporate entity from morning 9 to evening 6. So blog takes you through the path of reminiscence?? Absoletely Yes Sir!! No doubt about it.



Keep your fingers crossed, this means more blogs from me to come. I am not gonna let anybody out soon, because shabbu-wishes-to-heard not loudly but in a timid manner....

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Home Automation System

Hello everyone, Do not worry at all.
I have no intentions to bore you all with my project topic. Infact if you find it interesting i have no idea what to say about it. But the story here i am gonna tell is about my project group. Every thought about it makes me laugh and think of the mischiefs we masterminded. OK, It all started from the brains of Shajean Jaleel also known as "Mocha",infact only known as Mocha. I knew his real name only when i saw his driving license while raiding his empty wallet. Everybody in the world calls him mocha (am sure his to-be-wife fiji too) for that matter my sis calls him"Mocha-Ettan". One fine morning this fine gentleman come to me and says, "Where are you doing your final year project??"As usual i gave him an irritating answer "Final year project is done in final year, we are in 3rd year now. We have solid one more year to go." Then mocha started explaining, "Eda, in final year we all will have lots of back-papers. So thats the time to study. Now anyway we have back papers, and we cant do anything about it.So without wasting time, we should do our project now." Never in my wildest dreams i thought this monkey had brains inside his 'head shaped thing'. But i liked his plan, i said "I am in,what do we do?". So the team of 2 started planning, though nothing happened. Then we saw other groups were also getting formed parallely. I was telling him "dont you think we need more people in our team??" With a grin he used to say "Any body with a sane mind wont join with us..dont worry". He did not get me, my idea was to bring 2-3 girls in the project. Coz as i saw one of our friend from'A' batch had teamed up with his girlfriend and 2 other girls for a project in Cochin Refineries.(Please donotask me the names, i MIGHT tell you.)

So our search for a project topic,company (far,far away from palakkad) and few more members went on. Mocha took about the former point, and me being a better HR guy opted for the latter point (to find girls). Anyways mocha planned for a project in C-DAC Trivandrum, through mocha's brothers contacts. We were thrilled and even carried some textbooks. As we discussed with the 'brains' aka Project Director there we understood this was going way above our head. It was something about a Solar Panel connected to some chip to generate power and in the end to run some motor. Ahhh some times engineering can be very boring..Yawn!!All the time the project manager who was discussing about solar energy as a renewable source of energy and every house is gonna utilise this system. My mind was meandering through the thoughts that "what will we do in rainy seasons?? or a SOlar Eclipse??".But still we wanted to give it a shot..coz both of us felt this will help us in understanding our core subjects& atleast learn something out of it. In the end the PM said, "all in all you will learn a lot, this is absolutely interesting,register today itself. You have to pay Rs.8000/-in the accounts section down the lane right hand side." We both looked at each other, as including all expenses with stay and etc etc ...our budget never crossed Rs.5000/-. I promptly answered, "Sir,this is a great project and we both are eager to do it. But right now we do not have that much cash with us. Why dont we come back in a few days with the cash and then register."After this believe me,i have not even seen that green building again.

Trivandrum, that was the first time i have ever been there. I was kind of exploring the city. Thats when we found one more group is in TVM searching projects. I cannot tell them as a team,coz 3 were entirely different and never cohesive. You put them in a room, chances are one might not come alive..not in a hatred way.But in mallu terms "Choriyal" an act of teasing loaded with sarcasm and vendetta. The best specimen was Rakesh Unnikrishnan also known in another 100 names, but the most popular one being 'unnikuttan' . He is 'THE' funniest guy you will ever meet. By the way he is not at all trying to be comical. His every actions and speech's are in-born funny. His stories, his voice and a cranky NRI tone....can fool any girl for the first 5 minutes. Then every one realises a bit later that they are speaking to a 'joker in disguise'. Next person is the heart throb of electrical department. Raghunath aka ShanthaRam, the story behind the name (shantharam) is a long one may be i'll ask him to put a blog for it. Anyways this friend of mine speaks a lot about cool attitude,charisma, life-is-to-enjoy, chill-out etc. Never misses a chance to portray his talents whether in dance, fashion shows, singing, cricket, football. He always was a disaster. Also to add all this woes he was our Class Representative, technically though he has been to the class once in a bluemoon(so do we).With all these clumsiness in hisattributes, he still was a heart throb (his love=life 'kochu' can shed some light on that).And the third 'ONE' is Vivek aka kanjan. When he was born doctors injected a virus in him, a virus that made him never to smile. Yes. he smiles at himself and also when nobody else smiles. Basically he gives the look of a psychic killer at hunt, cant be more descriptive am sure.If there was ever a movie dedicated to him it would be "Silence of the Lambs", he was psychic and he was silent. Recently he was engaged to 'Sinu aka englishkaari', in the engagement ceremony pictures he smiled just once. Need i explain more about him??So it was dinner at vivek's house, when the treaty was made 'unity is strength'and we decided to join hands and become a 5 member group. Viveks father works in the VSSC(Vikram Sarabhai Space centre), but to do a project there we need to book it earlier enough.So then it was finalised project has to be done in Keltron(Kerala Electronics) a Kerala government subsidiary. We paid for the project and talked to the engineers and scientists out there. And knew right away, our frquencies match - not intellectually. But, Rhetorically it means project will come to you, u dont have to run behind it.The approach in Keltron is like a laid back approach, no tension at all. "Jeeyo or Jeene Do" attitude.

Project itself is an ordeal, so we decided to weigh up our options on the surroundings.And aha!! we found things we wanted, Me and Raghu liked that canteen provided lunch for 6 Rs(unlimited rice +curries) + 1 Re Omlette.Vivek and mocha liked the availability of cigarettes near by, just outside the building. And unni, he was behind those girls from REC right from the beginning. He even told them his name was 'Rakesh Kumar'.The best part of the project is we had complete freedom,tea breaks at any time. We need to go there by 9 am but can come back around 4 pm. And basically everything were only discussions. There was a discussion which raghu still claims was a 'brainstorming sesssion' which no one understood.The project manager was a geek by all means, the terminologies he used were highly technical and pretty much difficult for us to understand.Raghu as most of us know was always interested in technical discussions, though he had no idea about the topic he would still contradict and brag about it. Vivek had other things in his mind running, why VHP and BJP were seperate entities? What is the news on Pravin Togadia?Swami vivekanda, buddhism..and helluva stuff burning in his cauldron. Mocha as always was restless and fiddling with those capacitors lying around or teasing me and unnikuttan. Though my favourite time pass was to mock raghu or tease vivek, i could not help noticing unnikuttan. What was he doing?? well, the answer is nothing. He was just sitting and nodding for everything.He was not at all aware of the project, he would just answer 'yes' for everything. He was the least interested in this amongst us. And the funny part is he is an Electrical Design Engineer in Dubai right now doing stuffs way too complex than our project.

As i am unaware i am not getting into detail of the project. But would like to surmise one thing. When this project started,3 people used to torture me and unnikuttan explaining the "inexistence of true love in life".Basically we used tospend more time discussing about love-life and girls, than our "home automation system". The 3, vivek/raghu/mocha were so adamantly blind that they used to rag mine and unnikuttans romantic souls. Height of irony is that, these 3 gentlemen are clean bowled by lady love. Me and unnikuttan are still 'not-out' continuing our bachelor innings(god knows how long??).And we both are eagerly waiting for that moment, where we will be explaining the respective 'lady loves' what these 'love-haters'were publishing.Unnikutta lets kick some love-sick-malayalee arse!!!

Saturday, June 7, 2008

Love burns Your Heart, but Alcohol extinguishes it

From the days of devdas its been a general understanding that the best way to forget your broken memoirs of love is a little help from a small quantity of alcohol. Now its spring in here, after a dead cold winter people rejoice this part of year. The rains, wind and a bask in sun are the bright spots of this otherwise sleepy life. So most weekends there are bound to be lot of parties either for birthdays, farewells, gettogethers you name it. And in all parties some are permanent invitees - Mr.JackDaniels, Mr.BudWeiser and one Ms.Bacardi. (bacardi being a miss coz of her sexy shape). Leaving the jokes and endless stories one common thing i noticed is everybody has a love story to tell. Are we indians such a big group of lovesick people?, no wonder our population statistics are astronomical. As always am doubly interested in listening to love stories, and when the orator is drunk he turns into a thespian. Wow!! i adore those moments, in real life he will be a project lead with tons of responsibilities. But this moment his heart is torn and open to everybody. A certain friend of mine here ( again no names) explains the idiosyncracies of love as if he has seen it all. He cries, he whimpers he does it all that would make even Dr.Sivaji Ganesan proud.

And this all reminds me of college day, where drunk romeos go to ladies hostel and start calling names in malayalam otherwise known as theripattu. There have been many such incidents, but the funniest of them was when a miser friend(no names please) of mine sponsored whisky to everybody just to call names on a particular lady. Love sick or not no body knows, ehem!! after 4 years they both are now engaged...certain things in life can never be predicted i say!!! Then there are friends of mine who get drunk and start helping others love lifes, explaining them the brave heartedness to express or to distress.... they know it all(again no names).

Whats with C2H5OH that gives us born losers at love a big threshold god only knows... Sometimes in a group i see one guy gets tipsy and starts his love story (true or untrue) there are 1000 ears to his story..its funnier than cartoon network at that moment. Then its like as contagious as yawning, every one starts their bits and pieces of love stories...i may sound sarcastic but i really enjoyed most of it.



Back to columbus, these days every one is in look out for weekend activities, some kinda gettogether, battle of wits, lots of jokes, cricket discussions, women discussions, movie talks....whatever it may be our dear friend alcohol nests in the core of all these discussions. Now dont get wrong that we are drunkards, we drink but we drink sensibly.

Sunday, June 1, 2008

A warm and different politician..

My grandfather is a very respectable person in our locality. Though he is no more, our family is still known to many through his names. His involvement with Indian National Congress too is a big factor in his fame. I remmber during summer vacations we come to meet him in his room i could see pictures of Mahatma Gandhi, Indira Gandhi and Chacha Nehru's black and white photographs framed and hanging in the walls. He used to tell me and my cousin unni the freedom fight stories and how congress party as such built the back bone of democratic india. After his passing away, we missed all those stories. Things moved on many corrupt politicians tarnished te image of congress party. The more and more i read about it, i felt that the congress party lost its purpose. It was just a huge cauldron full of filthy politicians waiting to loot the country and sell it. And this was a general feeling amongst the public. Years later many political parties took this as their selling point and worked as independent political parties. Governments moved from one coalition to another, we even had a prime minister who could not speak hindi (supposedly our national language).

Now is what i feel the era of change, voters dont go for big names or charisma spilled by a celebrity. They are in look out for youth and excuberance. All the recent elections indicate us that, its not that voters are in look for a change, the simply want young blood with purpose injected into our democratic machinery. Ok, this doesn't means any ram , rahim and peter will contest and win elections. The election manifestos had to be well sort out and rigid with lot of study involved.

This brings us to the main person leading the revolutionary, Rahul gandhi. Yes it rings a bell doesn't it? He has no big victories or an encouraging support, but he is hitting the sweet spots. Me personally did not give any hope in him when he was introduced into the arena. I felt he was always pushed more than he launching himself. Maybe his last name was making his shoulders bend coz of the huge expectations wound around it. Gandhi clan always were the usp of the congress party, but with some out of the box thinking rahul is entering those areas which is giving many sleepless nights to hundreds of politicians including our own behenji. He was always criticized by opponents for not coming to the grass root level and mingle with the common man. But boy did he do that in last few months. He is starting a new revolution and giving hopes to a millions of helpless people out there.

So how does it matters us?? His Raison d'être is to curb the middle men and bringing voice to aam aadmi. I have hundreds of friends saying to me "My country need me only to pay taxes and cheer for indian team". Rahul works for the former part of the sentence, by opening up contact centres across the nation. This is a new facet in india, by involving more people he is slightly winning their confidence. For all the people in my countrywho wish for a change, brace yourself and look out for rahulji( as he is known inside party).

This blog by means has no inclinations or opposition to any party. Its just a whole hearted compliment to a young man, who is willing to break the shackles which many of us are not.

Jai Hind!!

Patriotism and its gimmicks!!!

Patriotism, ehem!! I can speak of whole day about it,thats what i felt initially. I consider my self very patriotic and stubborn about the ideologies behind them. A few weeks back this infact was the hot topic for discussion, and guess what??Though all of us were of same nationality our theories were different. After all everyone is influenced by the environement and the surroundings. Mine is militia to say the least. My father, grandfather, uncles most of them part of the defence services in india. For me patriotism is like give your life for your country, the coveted 'param veer chakra' (honorary medal for martyrs in active military), the elevated feeling during 'jana gana mana' and many more. Certain times cricket too gave that effect, it gives great pleasure in cheering for your country. The tri-colur waving across and lot of fellow country men supporting our team.Now as years go by i just see it as a 'bloody sport' and nothing else. A money churning machine is what cricket is to me, and being from kerala my natural inclination towards football.


So working in an alien country (though for an indian firm) makes you question your patriotism once in a while. Yes, sometimes it does pinches you. Are we doing enough for the country that has guarded you with all the aminities, education, infrastructure? May be not. I notice one common thing about people working abroad, they never waste a chance to point a finger at our countries drawbacks. They compare with the likes of US, UK, Australia, Canada and keep going on with typical hysterical tantrums like 'is desh ka kuch nahi hone waala', 'humare desh ko govt or politicians saath milkar loot rahe he'. Most of the time i make my self available for a verbal warfare with these guys. But now i feel i cannot force my beliefs into them. They themselves are not having the courtesy not to pinpoint their own country.

As ever i have lot of faith in our country and the way it functions. Things are changing for good and we are raising the bar everytime. Support and a bit of patience is the buzzword. Remember the proverb 'Rome was not built in a Day'. A country with 100 billion and 40% of them uneducated we are still a long way to go. Before we compare with other countries, think about our limitations and real chances.
Its easy to point finger at others, when you do that your other 4 fingers are pointing at you.