Guess I'm just a weekend blogger:-).

I've been attending a personality development class in office for the last 3 days, a welcome break from Servlets,JSP's and EJB's.

I cant say I learnt anything new but it was excellent time pass. One of the module's covered presentation skills. Each one of us were required to come up on stage and make a presentation on any topic. Easy enough huh? One important constraint though, we would be filmed on camera :P. So the 24 of us came one by one on stage. Some confident, some akward, some incoherent with fear.I think without the camera, we would have all done well. Just the knowledge every word we uttered, every gesture we made would be recorded caused some of us to become extremely self concious.

So after we'd all been taped came the fun part. Watching ourselves on TV. I'd been the first to go. I was fairly impressed with myself :P. I liked my voice, my glasses and I was quite natural :P :P. I kept grinning like an idiot though. People told me I had a smile on my face all the time, so it was a good thing. Personally I thought I grinned like a deranged orangutan.

Also I was struck my resemblance to actor Matt Damon.No I'm not trying to flatter myself nor am I comparing Matt Damon to a deranged orangutan. I just think I have quite a resemblance to him.

Last evening my mother and I attended a play by The Madras Players at the Egmore museum. It was a one man play, the artist being the famous PC Ramakrishna. The play was titled 'Mercy' and was about Euthanasia. It was about a man whose wife slips into coma. 1 month, 2 months, 8 months pass and she does not come out of it. The man does not know what to do. Should he prolong her life, never knowing if she will ever wake up or should he ease her pain and kill her? He remembers how his wife was always in favour of mercy killing. So after torturing himself for a long time, he decides to ease her pain. He wants to mix sleeping tablets in her feed at 9:00 PM. By 11:00 PM it should all be over. Just before he does it, he drives to a temple about 2 hours from the city to beg forgiveness from his wife's favourite diety. On the way home,it starts pouring heavily and his car breaks down. Its 2:30 in the morning by the time he comes home. He enters the house and finds everybody in his wife's room.Its a miracle, she's regaining conciousness!

The wife slowly regains her health but the man's guilt eats away at his heart. To think he almost killed her! Everyday becomes more burdensome than the one before. Finally he cant take it anymore and he kills himself.

I found myself quite affected by the play because it was uncomfortably close to what my family went through when my father was in hospital. The sheer frustration and

madness the actor depicted was exactly what we experienced.When well meaning relatives come and tell you to go pray at this temple, do a thousand pradharshanams at another temple, smear this holy ash on my fathers forehead, feed the poor at another temple, dissolve jaggery the shore of yet another temple...it drives you mad! What kind of God needs all this nonsense?

I really didnt like the ending though. I know that every play usually ends with a twist but I couldnt digest this one. Was he not being terribly unfair to his wife by killing himself?

So those have been the events in my life this week. I have an alumni meet in college today, guess the update will only come next weekend :-). So until then, goodbye.

A most memorable sunday.Went out with my classmates from the office to a resort called the Blue Lagoon in Neelankarai. Ate breakfast, played beach volleyball, went swimming, ate a bloody good lunch, chatted around , played more volleyball and finished off with a bit of cricket.

I came back home with every part of my body screaming bloody murder. Not to mention being tanned nut brown. Thanks to 2 days of heavy lifting at the gym and yesterday's excursion I was so damn sore.

I couldnt sleep at night due to a dull annoying pain in my left shoulder. I tossed and turned, went to the bathroom a few times but just couldnt go to sleep. I lay awake tired, confused and for some reason, feeling very sorry for myself.At around 1:30 I woke up my mother and complained about my shoulder. She immediately went and got some iodex and gave me a small massage.I went to sleep after that.

Woke up and had to leave for work. We were all sun burnt and sore and none of us listened to lecture on Servlets and JSP's.

Guess I'm going to have to avoid the gym for a couple of days.Should also go through the books.Dont want to go through 2 months of training and still emerge an ignoramus :P

I watched the 'Aviator' today.Decent movie, a lil different from what I expected. Not for the general Chennai crowd though.Most of the people in the theater found it too boring.Cell phone conversations were abundant during the movie.

Training goes on. I'm learning a lot of new stuff. The comp sci guys and IT guys do have quite an advantage. They are a lot more comfortable than the rest of us. For the EEE and ECE guys, its a bit of an uphill task to follow the instructor.

I had so much to say this morning, cant remember any of it now. Perhaps tommorow then.Gnite.

I've made up my mind. I have to become a Java Certified Professional by June 10th, ,my 22'nd birthday.

Its always bugged me a little that I havent had any intellectual accomplishments in my life. I was a pretty ordinary student in school and college. I've won prizes for debates, plays and my writing...but never for the more brainy stuff.

When I did my final year project in college, I played more of a supporting role. I took care of the documentation, preparation of slides for the presentation and stuff...the same in school..and it really annoys me now.

So I have my eyes set on the certification now. I really need something to tell me I can do more with my head than just write.

I worked out with a celebrity yesterday...none other than the O Podu! man Vikram....

I entered the gym, signed in, changed my clothes and walked into the basement where the weights are kept...and lo and behold, I see the back of a man with shoulder length hair tinged a dirty brown. He turned around and I recognized him.

So I immediately decided I would pretend to be unfazed by the mans presence. He was after all just another guy working out. Why would things have to be any different? Unlike the others who couldnt take their eyes off him, I would remain cool, calm and just get through my workout. Having decided this, I picked up a weight roughly double of what I normally use and began pumping with exaggerated gusto.

There's something about being near a celebrity that charges you up.I recklessly picked up the heaviest of weights and launched them into the air. Then I realised, so was everybody else...

In between, Vikram flicked a stool I was using. I would have objected normally but for some reason I tried smiling a gracious smile and let him have it.

But for the outrageous hair, he did seem to be a normal guy. He was pretty friendly with everybody and we even took turns using the Tricep Pushdown machine( I used about 40 pounds more than I normally would)

I ended up pushing myself like never before. I lifted much more than I thought possible.Its amazing what you can do when you want to impress people.

I am a little ashamed that I got so carried away...but I did have a great workout...all because I wanted to impress a guy with dirty brown long hair....

As I write this blog entry, sounds of a violin playing carnatic music are wafting through my head. I do not recognize this piece of music. Perhaps I heard it somewhere or maybe I'm some kind of genius who composes scintillating Carnatic music in his head without being aware of it :P.

Why a post on carnatic music you might ask? Why would a culturally ignorant boor like me choose to write on what is considered a divine art form? Let me tell you why.

Throughout my formative years, I never really appreciated any Indian art forms.Bharatanatyam bored me and Carnatic music put me to sleep. Words like 'Raaga' and
"Thalam" were esoteric words limited to old pensioners and the occasional geeky teenager with thick glasses and lots of coconut oil in his hair(in all probability an IITian). Unlike western music, you need a tuned ear to appreciate Carnatic music and I never bothered tuning. Western music was easier to appreciate. The lyrics were simpler to understand. You dont need raaga and thalam to headbang to Metallica.It would be difficult to imagine Kurt Cobain stopping his concert and asking the audience " Can you identify the Sruti? " Pop, Rock and Roll, Disco,Jazz, Blues, Trance, country, folk etc..none of these are subtle forms of music. No special training is required to enjoy them.

Now at the age of 21 years, 7 months and 25 days...I realise I'm a total ignoramus when it comes to Indian culture.That kind of attitude was ok when I was a teenager trying to fit into the crowd but really not admissable now. I'm at a phase in my life now when I no longer appreciate rock and pop with the same enthusiasm as I did as a kid. Simply because after a while, they all sound the same to me. There's only so much you can do with themes like love and frustration.I dont want people like Eminem making money just by talking about their pent up anger. And I mean talking, not singing. I hate the whole 'attitude' thing.

I attended a carnatic concert last evening and I realised that it was sort of ok....not bad at all. A pretty famous old man played the violin and he would often stop and ask the audience to identify the raaga....and they got it dead right each time.Me? I had no idea what he was talking about...and it made me feel ashamed.

There was a Manipuri dance after that...and I found it sweet...very pleasing to the eye..quite strange considering I've never really appreciated dance...

I've made up my mind. I cant go on living as an ignoramus. I have to attend more concerts with my mother.Something tells me I'll be missing out on a lot unless I do so.

I havent blogged for the last couple of weeks, the chief reason being 2 weddings in the family.Not to mention that I only want to sleep once I get home from work.

Its 5PM on a saturday now, the first saturday off from training thank God. I slept through the afternoon properly today, unlike the uncomforable 2 minute naps in the chair at the training centre. The kind you just cant help taking after lunch. You've eaten well and the instructor is droning on about relational databases.....and your eyes just involuntarily close. You sleep for about a minute and then you suddenly jerk awake, afraid that the instructor might have spotted you. 5 minutes later, you doze off again. The process keeps repeating until its time for tea.

My mind is still fuzzy from sleep, I shall continue this later..