I have been thinking abt...

I have been thinking about the virtual cages people put themselves in. For instance I have been working for the past 3 years and I am still not sure whether this is what I wanted in my life. No, I am sure this is not what I wanted. But the problem is I don't know what ELSE once I stop doing what I am doing now.

I think many people I have come across face the same problem. They feel they have it in them to do something bigger, but they find it too hard to let go of what they have. And believe me all of them are holding on to things they don't want.

The most successful people of this world do what they like. And that is what makes them successful. But I don't think just having the courage to let go and follow your dreams makes you successful. It is just that we come to hear only the success stories. There may be hundreds who got trampled on their path and regretted their decisions. You need courage and LUCK.

What then? There are two options. There are two paths.

• One leads to success and happiness. But it is filled with all sorts of dangers and there is a risk of failure.
• The second path is the one most people take. It is easier and crowded of the two. But here you live like Zombies, following the group instead of following your dreams.

I am currently on this second path. I have the choice to go back and take the right one. But the problem is I don't know where it lies. (Sigh)

Tada Falls...

After the Vandaloor trip we decided to get a bit more ambitious. This time we decided to hit Tada falls which meant we would have to ride more than double the distance this time. We decided to do the trip on a Saturday so that we will have one whole day to rest. This was not the first time we had planned to visit Tada, but somehow I had a feeling that it would happen this time.

There were 6 of us, all my roomies except Riji. Unlike the vandaloor trip, we were able to pull in Thorappan also this time. I don't understand what has happened to him. He is usually the one who leads the way when we decide on trips like these (The Mookaambi trip is still fresh in my mind). Anyways he did come in the end and that is what matters.

Sixtu and AG collected the route details the previous day. We hit the NH-5 leading to Calcutta and almost 50 Kms down the highway took a deviation to the road which leads to Kalahasthi, some place in Andhra/TN border. After that we lost our way a couple of times, but finally did manage to reach the place. From the highway it is nearly 12 - 13 Kms through narrow roads with a couple of deviations here and there for which you will need help from the locals. After this there is 3Km ride which I can easily say was the most difficult ride i have ever had (not that I am much of a biker ;)). You can hardly call it a road, it is 3Km path filled with medium sized stones on most part and loose sand on others and both these surfaces are a nightmare when you are on a bike.

After we covered almost 3Kms on this so called road we found out it was hardly possible to continue further on bike and decided to park our bikes there and continue on foot. It was an interesting trek as the stream from falls crosses your path in a couple of places. You have to wade through knee deep water in these places. After an hour of treking we reached one such place in the stream where there was water up to neck level and was perfect for a swim. We spent some 30 mins there and enjoyed the clear water and serene surroundings before we proceeded towards the falls. Major who as usual was carrying his heavy digi-camera was thrilled by the surroundings and went on a shooting spree.

From here there was no clear path and we had to follow the stream to the falls. This was the most difficult part of the trek as you have negotiate your way through slippery boulders and knee deep water. Because the path we had to take was hard, we made slow progress and it took more than an hour to reach the falls. But when we did reach the place we were glad we did not turn around midway as view was breathtaking. It is a 20 feet high fall with thick vegetation on one side and a plane rock face covering the other. Immediately all of us shed our clothes and ran in to the fall in bare minimums. We climbed in to a small crevice which was hidden by the falling water and spent a long time there. The falling water was working magic on our aching bodies and after some time we were feeling as fresh as it is possible. We were ready for the looong trek back.

On our way back we had an early dinner from a roadside hotel as all of us were famished. Our journey back was uneventful except for some dare devil riding from Thorappan and unfortunately I was his pillion rider.

Back home we hardly had the energy to stand on our foot, but sprawled on the floor we went through the beautiful snaps Major had captured in his camera. This is one trip I will never forget.

Vandaloor

Went to Vandaloor zoo last sunday, 8th Jan. It is 40Kms from our place(Thiruvanmiyur). There were 7 of us (Me, Maneksh, Lejo, Sixtu, AG, Shawn and Sebin). We took four bikes.The ride was uneventful except that I ran out of petrol on the way. Luckily this happened directly in front of a petrol pump. The zoo is good when considering the variety of animals they have there. But the way they have designed it disappoints you. You don't get a good view in some of the cages and in these they have the most popular ones. Still it is a nice place and they also have a Lion Safari which we could not try bcoz of time constraints.

Major (Lejo) as usual was carrying his heavy digital camera and was able to get some good shots. But halfway through we ran out of charge in the camera as we were trying a lil too hard to get some good shots of a tiger. So we couldn't capture on film (there was no film, just a usage, it was a digicam) some of the animals we encountered later.

After we were through with the sight seeing we went to the restaurant there for some snacks and to keep Maneksh busy ;). Then we hit the highway and it was back home.
All in all a day well spent.

15min Memory Blocks.

Some new ideas which may seem "Wow" when you hear them the first time, turns out to be the greatest disasters when they finally get implemented. Yesterday I saw the movie Memento. No, it is not the remake of the hit tamil movie Gajini. It is actually the other way.

You can't blame the tamil director for lifting the idea from this English movie. The story line in itself was too good to be ignored. But in both cases the final product was nothing less than a disaster.

In case of the english version, the director tried to experiment a lil too much and it spoiled the whole soup. The hero in the movie suffers form a weird memory loss problem. He can retain in his memory things which happened in the last 15 mins.Yes it is a bit confusing. I am not sure whether he loses the details of 1st minute in the 16th minute, 2nd in the 17th and so on or whether he loses them as contiguous blocks of 15 mins. But i think the latter is true. Now his wife was raped and murdered by some guy and our hero is trying to trace him by overcoming his condition. Now because he loses his memory every 15 mins, the movie runs backwards in overlapping blocks of 15 mins, simulating his memory. This may sound great, but when you watch the movie you get so confused that you wish you would have rather spent the time understanding the unified field theory.

There are certain rules that ought to be followed in every movie. Some of them which were violated in this case are:
->The movie needs to have a proper flow.
->The ending should justify the story.

About the tamil version the lesser said the better. The movie did move forward unlike the english version, but they added so many villains, so many unnecessary characters and so many foreign locations that it confused you even more.
Atleast the english version was a bold experiment. But I don't understand what were they trying to achieve in its tamil replica. How this became a blockbuster defies common sense.

Bosskey: The Matrix

From Matrix - to - Metrics...Click on the image.

Waiting..

I noticed something very interesting while waiting for someone the other day. If we analyse these every day situations more deeply we will notice there is always a set of people who always wait on a second set of people who always come late.

The irony here is that on very rare occasions a person belonging to the latter set finds himself waiting for someone. In these instances they will be at their most irritable mood when the other guy finally turns up. The reason being simple that they are not used to waiting for someone.. because they usually come late. Unless there some one who is worse he/she never has to face such a situation.

So don't keep waiting ppl who are not used to it. Keep it for the punctual ones.;)

PS: I belong to second set :)) The "set of people who always come late"

Bosskey - The first Strip

This was the first Bosskey strip. Click on the image.

Bosskey - An Intro

Bosskey is a cartoon character which myself and some of my friends here in my company created. Before I introduce the character i will explain how it all happened in the first place.

Here in our company we have public folders in our mailboxes. These folders are divided on the basis of the subjects of the posts. Like we have general, sports, cartoons etc. One fine day for some reason we were asked not to post any copyrighted cartoons in the cartoons folder.

This in turn led to ppl coming up with their own cartoons. There were quite a few cartoons which were really good. Most of these were based on the lives of software engineers. Invariably the the main charater always happened to be a clever guy.

Inspired by these cartoons myself and 3 others, Ashwin, Madhav & Bhaskar decided to come up with or own version of software engineer. We decided for a change our hero will be less on common sense and high on adventure. The next thing was to come u with a suitable look for the character. Ashwin and Madhav felt Bhaskar had all qualities for a ideal cartoon character and this in turn resulted in Bosskey(Bhaskar slightly modified ;)).

Bosskey is an everyday software engineer who never falls in groove with the carporate life like many of us. He feels many activities carried out in the corporate world serves little purpose.