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..

We had an 8 hour session on Software testing today and the class was striving valiantly to stay awake after lunch. The instructor decided to pep us up a bit and so he asked each one of us to introduce ourselves and also list the names and hobbies of those who spoke before us. I managed somewhat because I was the 5th person to speak but the information got distorted as it passed further and further. I had listed my hobbies as reading novels and writing humour. Thus I was slightly taken aback when bengali girl right at the end got up and hesitantly said " He is Dinesh. He enjoys drinking and washing TV's"

Training is kinda hectic. I have 4 tests and an assignement to submit tommorow. When I get back home, I only want to eat dinner and crash into bed. Guess I got used to the easy life at company P :-(

My first day of training and I'm already having some severe time management problems. It took us some time to settle down, understand the local computer network , figure out where all the study material was stored, login, access information etc. Then the schedule for the next 2 months comes out and we find we have a test on 6 subjects on wednesday! We open the material online immediately and also find that 3 assignements are due tommorow :-(. So how do I spend my day? Do assignements which must be submitted before the deadline, or study for the test where we must get more than 75%?

The assignements are partially done, will finish them today. How am I going to study for the test? I havent had time to even open my books :-(.

Other than the one post about my own experience with the tremor and the tsunami that followed, I havent written more on the subject unlike my fellow bloggers.
Bloggers like Kiruba (http://kiruba.com) have dedicated the last three weeks to gathering information and more importantly collecting aid to help those affected. Hats
off to them.

Why the silence then on my part you might ask. Curiously enough, I havent felt the urge to write about the suffering of the people in Tamil Nadu. One reason being
that its been more than adequately covered in other blogs. The more important reason being....I just didnt feel like.

At the moment, I am quite immune to other people's sufferings. I dont want information on how many thousands lost their lives or how many lost their homes and livelihoods. Somehow, I dont really care. My own life has been turned upside down in the last 6 months. I'm too tired from figuring out where I stand and towards where I'm heading to bother about the difficulties of other people.

7 months back, my house was alive with laughter. Weekends would be the time my dad would be home. My cousin Harita would have come home for physics tution. Prashant would have finally got a day off from work and would have hilarious Taj tales about eccentric guests and gargoyle staff. My mother would be multitasking, dividing her time evenly between cooking lunch and arguing with my father. I would wander from room to room, savouring the life in my house. My apartment looked gorgeous in the morning. The light streaming in through the large windows in the hall, the very pretty clock above them..it was picture perfect. My house was warm and comforting. Other than the occasionaly argument with my dad about my career and my education, I had nothing to crib about.

Now my house seems lifeless. I'm confused about my own life. A lot of responsibility has suddenly dropped on my unprepared shoulders. I'm in charge of my own
life, my father isint there to keep me in line. I could cross the boundaries he had set if I wanted to, I havent yet but I'm scared I might.

I think its going to take me some more time to figure out where I stand and where I'm heading to. Until then I'm not going to care if people die from tsunami's or earthquakes. I'm not going to feel outraged if Jayendra Saraswati is arrested or released. I'm going to be an apathetic citizen until I have my own life figured out. Until then, I ask the world not to share its problems with me. I'm not interested.

No other expression conveys with so much feeling, the horror I had to go through with the HR from company P as "MACHHAN! ROD YETHITANGE!".

I actually dont want to write about it. Let me just say that I wanted to let the P HR know I was going officially. So I came up with this phony story and gave it to them........ and I got caught. I gassed for an hour and they asked one tricky question after the next until they forced me into a corner. It was so humiliating.

It smarted for a while. The HR made it seem like I was the liar, I was the bad guy..they made me feel guilty about lying...it hurt. Not that I ever admitted to them I was lying..

Now however, I've had time to reflect in all that happened and I realise...I dont give a shit. If they didnt have a bond, I would never have lied. Its completely wrong on their part to force me to stay. Given a choice between paying Rs 1 lakh plus interest and lying, I chose the latter. I have nothing to feel guilty about. I had a better opportunity in a better company and I took it. So screw them.

I've also completed my joining formalities with company C. I have a two day induction program and then I start training. A new start, a new beginning. Might as well forget about the past. Wish me luck.

My cousin's kids visited a couple of days back. The son was 4 years old and hell bent on destroying all my property. The daughter was 1 and would scream bloody murder if her mother put her down even for a second. Between the two of them I nearly went out of my mind. Most of the day was spent running behind the boy coaxing him to put the phone down, pleading for the safety of my cell phone, imploring him to stop banging on my keyboard, gently preventing from ascending my cupboard and most of all fighting my temptation to let him jump off the balcony. As background music we had the second kid wailing her misery all through the day. My sorrows doubled when they decided to spend the night. I cornered my mother right then and warned her that I would not be having any children of my own and she'd better not entertain any hopes of becoming a grandmother.

The next morning as I bade them goodbye, I could'nt help but sigh with relief. Turning to my mother, I asked her how I was as a kid.

" You never ate and would shit green pellets " came the terse reply.In those brief words, my mother described the beauty that was my childhood.

I'm so glad I'm 21.

2 major updates in my life:

1) I've quit my job in company P...and not in the most straightforward manner. I told my PM I wanted to leave as soon as possible.Told the HR I wanted to leave...and then I just left. I dont plan on going back to my office.... I feel terrible about the way I've gone about it but I just didnt have a choice. If not for the bond, I wouldnt have had to slink out..I could have left with my head held high.

2) My cousin Prashant who lived with us for 4 years left for his home in Calcutta. His mother wanted him back. Now its just my mom and I.

I've been sitting quite vetti at home for the past couple of days. I spent day 1 watching XXX (the Vin Diesel one in case you think otherwise). It was admittedly one of the most cliched, mind numbing action movies I had ever seen.Its all attitude and no stuff. There were times when the dialogue was so corny, I thought the movie was some sort of spoof. You sort of expect the film to build towards something better but it disappoints you right till the end.Vin Diesel looks like a beefed up Adam Sandler. I kept expecting him to trip and fall.

I havent done much on day 2 and it makes me wonder if I'm wasting away my youth.

That so called mild tremor I was talking about was worse than I thought!

http://www.ndtv.com/environment/Earthquake.asp?id=15959&callid=0

Well, I've had my share of excitement in the morning thanks to the mild tremor
which gently shook Chennai.I was lying in bed awake but too lazy to get up
when I felt someone try to tug the mattress from beneath me. I sat up and
looked around but my cousin Prashant was fast asleep.I then looked at the half
empty water bottle next to me and I saw the water in it sloshing about though
no one was touching it. Puzzled I got up and came to the hall. I asked my uncle
if he'd felt anything too. I then saw that all the bottles on the table had the water
shaking a bit. Quake, I decided. So I woke Prashant up and tried to bundle my
grandmothers and get them downstairs. Grandmother 1 was ready to come
down while grandmother 2 was too involved with her morning religious dose
from the TV to bother. " Its fine now! " she insisted. " All ok, we dont need to
move!". Prashant and I had to almost forcefully drag her out of the house.

" I have to go to the bathroom!" she announced and locked herself in much to
my irritation. I was getting pretty worried and as my cousin waited next to the
door,I got all our slippers out, took my wallet, cell phone and the cordless. My
grandmother finally emerged and we dragged the entire lot down insisting that
the lift shouldnt be used.

A few puzzled people were standing outside unsure of what had happened. Not
many people came down because they were fast asleep on a sunday morning I
guess. We stood on the road for a while not sure of what to do. Grandmother 2
was quite annoyed that she was missing out on her daily dose of spiritual
enlightenment and kept insisting that we go back up. Here I was, her noble
grandson who'd probably saved her from a wall crashing down on her head and
she was more interested in some pot bellied priest dispensing holy tit bits.

The initial excitement soon wore off and people began returning home. I waited
a little longer to see if my building would come crashing down but sadly it
did'nt.So much for a grateful grandmother I guess. We came back home, made
a few calls and checked if everyone was ok. I called up my mom who'd left for
Bangalore yesterday and asked if she'd felt anything there. Nope, only Chennai
seems to have been affected.

I've finally got my joining date from company C : Jan 7'th. A nice way to start the new year :-).

I'm bunking work at P today. I'm just wasting my time as well as my project manager's. My PM is a pretty nice guy, it makes me feel guilty that I'm going to have to lie my ass off to get out of P. I cant help it though, the bond I had to sign claims I have to pay Rs.1 lakh if I quit before 2 years. So I have to lie and squirm to avoid payment.

Wish me luck...

Well, 6 did become 12 and 12 equals 1 so everybody's happy :P

I decided a couple of days back that I have to go swimming on sunday. I used to love swimming as a kid but I never got around to visiting the pool often. The last time I went swimming was about 3 years back at the IIT pool.

So on friday I realise I dont have have a pair of trunks. I walked into a shop and asked for them. The chap looked at me and displayed some pretty bright looking stuff. Various shades of neon were displayed. I took my time and finally picked a turquoise blue shade. " This is the large size, could you give me the medium size please?" I asked. He looked me up and down and said " No sir, this will be perfect ". I was slightly insulted, I didnt have a big waist did I? I ended up buying the large size anyway. I came home and tried it on and it was so bloody tight :-( . My once 30 inch waist is now 32...have to get it down.

This morning, I wake up early have some coffee and bannanas for breakfast, squeeze into my trunks and get onto my cycle ( incidentally, I was wearing a Tshirt and jeans in case you think I would cycle around Chennai clad in nothing but neon trunks). I get past the IIT gate and the watchman stops me and tells me the pool is no longer open to visitors :-(. All my efforts were a complete waste....

Are there any pools in and around Adyar? If you have any info, do let me know.

I envy those guys with smooth silky hair. Those whose hair bounce and shine with health all the time. Those whose hair through which you can pass your fingers smoothly and not encounter any road blocks.Well, I am NOT one of those guys.

My hair defies any attempts to model it. It remains flat when I try to make it stand up and stands to attention when I try to flatten it. Its thick and dry and believes in inertia. To pass a comb through it in the morning is pure torture. Every strand firmly refuses to bend itself into shape. My hairs interlock and cause immense pain when I pass a comb across my head.

As a child, my father taught me to comb it from right to left, like he did. Now for the past year or so,I have reversed directions. Now different parts have to be combed in different ways. The front can be coaxed into bending right while the back of my head just bristles at the touch of a comb. It stands erect and refuses to accept any change in direction. So I comb the back like I used to as a kid. The middle of my head wont bend either way so I just comb it towards the front and hope it will stay down (it rarely does). The all important 'vagidu' or line of parting is not a straight line but a meandering curve.Hair on either side of it always want to move to the other side.

I have discovered that applying water on the head is an admirable way of decreasing hair ressistance.My hair can then be shaped perfectly.This phenomenon though is temporary and as my hair becomes dry in an hour, my head resembles a battleground.

Oil by itself is not a shaping agent as I have found. You head can drip Parachute or Himalaya or Dabar Amla but in no way is the hair going to be subdued.

So what I usually do is wet my hair, add oil and then comb it. The theory is that the water can be used to shape the hair and the oil causes the hair to stick to its position.

Yesterday I purchased some Brylcream Extra Strong Hair gel and applied it vigorously this morning.The bottle claimed I could style my hair in any way I wanted it, be it a funky spiked look or a a casual tousled look. I chose the conventional parting of hair and what do you know, it works! My hair now feels like its been stuck into position with fevicol. Its quite plastic in places and I'm afraid that if I bend a single strand, it will snap like a twig.

I think the entire problem is because different parts of my head are accustomed to different inclinations. I was wondering if I could perhaps ask the barber to just cut straight instead of choosing a parting, my hair problem will be solved. Isint that what they do when they spike your hair? Should I spike my hair? Do let me know.

I walked home from office yesterday (ie) from Spencer Plaza to Adyar Grand sweets. Took me about an hour and a half. Why did I do it? Well you see I usually take an auto home from work every evening and it costs me Between 50 to 60 Rs ( I cant even get into the bus, its that crowded). Now thats about 300 a week and 1200 a month! So I thought I would walk a little further and perhaps get an auto at a cheaper rate. I walked and I walked and I walked and I thought to myself " perhaps I can walk the entire distance" and I did. Its not that tiring if you do it in the evening. I certainly wouldnt attempt it while going to office.

Perhaps I shall try it again today...