The fall

Went to the frozen lake this morning - walked on the frozen lake, walked on snow which was 1 feet high and came back safely to the hotel.

I then went for my lunch - stepped out of the hotel and was walking towards a restaurant hardly 500 m from my hotel. I turned at a corner and next minute i was flat on the ground :(... It was so embrassing

Follow your heart

Never thought that things would take such a drastic turn in a days time...when i left India on 14th September, the job market was quite cool and a day later when i landed in UK, Lehman brothers had declared bankruptcy, US govt was trying to bail out AIG and Lloyd's announced Halifax Takeover...How the heck did these guys came to know that i am searching for a job :)

All said and done, i am sure that things would work out fine...i realise that i am over confident and i am taking a stupid risk in my life but if i do not do this now, when will i get the chance to take such a risky decision again without thinking about all the dependency factors!!! Some well wishers advised me to take back my resignation but i am not going to - i have taken a decision and whatever be the outcome, i wanna go ahead with my decision.

Sometime back i saw a video of Steve Jobs delivering his commencement speeches to Stanford univ graduates . In his speech he mentions about how he dropped out of college, about him taking the calligraphy instructions, etc. Using the above instances from his life, he mentions about connecting the dots looking backwards and about trusting in something - guts, destiny, life, karma and trust that the dots will connect somehow in the future- this will give you the confidence to follow your heart!!!

Guess this is the time to follow my heart :)

Things that i miss been away from India

Was chatting with a friend sometime back who is in Australia and we were talking about the things which we miss been away from India...so here i go with my list :

• Food - i miss the morning breakfast for sure - hot dosa, vada, idli,pongal...Am bored of eating cornflakes and bread. Want to have nagarjuna/nandhini Biryani or the avakkai andhra food nowwwwwwwww.
• The refreshing tea/ coffee with vada / bhajji at the corner shop.
• Cable TV - I miss the regional channels like Sun music, movies and the comedy shows.
• I miss the long number of hours that i spend over the phone talking to my friends- what a freedom it was to pick up and call any friend whenever you like...Also miss the text messages a lot
• Hanging out at Garuda/ forum mall with friends
• Watching movies at the theatre
• The ice cream at Garuda mall food stop
• The office coffee breaks
• Times of India
• Lays Tomato tango chips - you get so many brands and flavours of Crisp but i do miss lays tomato tango

When will this end?

Terrorism in India in the last 15 years

12 March 1993 - Thirteen bomb explosions(RDX containing shrapnel) in Mumbai. 257 people dead and 713 injured.The first bomb blast was at the Bombay stock exchange at 1:30 PM and the last of the 13 bomb blast was at 3:40 PM

13 December 2001 - Attack on the Indian Parliament by Kashmiri militants - Five gunman infiltrated the parliament house in a car. 7 people were killed and 12 injured.

6 December 2002 - Bomb blast in a bus at Mumbai killing 2 people

27 January 2003 - A bomb exploded near the Vile Parle Station in Mumbai killing 1 and injuring 28

14 March 2003 - A bomb exploded in a train killing 10 people and injuring 70

28 July 2003 - Bomb explodes in a bus killing 4 people and injuring 32

25 August 2003 - Twin car bombings at mumbai killing 52 people and injuring nearly 150. One explosion was at the Gateway of India and the other near a hotel

5 July 2005 - Five militants attack the site of the destroyed Babri mosque. One civilian died and the five terrorist were shot dead

29 October 2005 - Three explosions in the capital of India , New Delhi just two days before Diwali. The bomb blast happened in two markets in Delhi. Death toll - 62 and 201 people were injured. The first blast occurred at 5:38 PM, the second at 6 PM and the third at 6:05 PM

7 March 2006 - This time the target was the hindu holy city of Varanasi. 28 people died and 101 injured. The first blast occurred in a Hindu temple and another occurred at the Varanasi cantonment railway station. Six bombs were defused from other ares in the city

14 April 2006 - Two explosions in the courtyard of Jama Masjid, a mosque in Old Delhi. At least 13 people were injured

11 July 2006 - Seven bomb blast that took place over a period of 11 minutes on the Mumbai Suburban - 209 people lost their lives and over 700 injured.

8 September 2006 -Series of bomb blast at Malegaon, Maharashtra. One bomb exploded next to a mosque at 13:15 IST(just after the friday prayers) killing 37 and injuring more than 125 civilians

18 February 2007 - Bomb blast in the Samjhauta express (a twice-weekly train service connecting Delhi & Lahore). 68 people Killed and at least 50 injured

18 May 2007 - Bomb blast in the famous Mecca Masjid in Hyderabad. Blast was caused by RDX bombs which were activated by mobiles. Death toll - 16 and atleast 100 were injured

25 August 2007 - Two bomb explosions - first one was at Lumbini amusement park and the second at a restaurant. Two more bombs were defused in other parts of the city. 42 people died and 54 injured in this blast

13 May 2008 - Nine bombs exploded within a span of fifteen minutes at Jaipur, Rajasthan. Tenth bomb was defused. 63 people died and atleast 216 were injured

25 July 2008 - Nine bombs exploded in the IT hub of India, Bangalore. Thankfully they were low intensity bombs. 2 people have been killed and 20 injured

26 July 2008 - 16 Bombs in Ahmedabad killing 30 people and injuring 100

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We are not a country who is in war and still we have lost 891 lives and 2685 lives in the last 15 years to these cowardly act of terrorism. Think about the fear & unrest that spreads among the Indian people when such a bomb blast occurs - people from all over the country are trying to reach their friends and relatives in the city where the bomb blast occurred and it takes a couple of hours and sometimes days for peace to return.

We cannot expect the police to have an eye on the one billion population to find out who is going to trigger a serious of explosions next and there is no way for the civilians to protect themselves against these terrorist. We would have to eliminate the root of terrorism...We all know where the roots are but are we too soft as a nation to hit back on the cowards who have been playing with the life of Indians? Should we not teach them a good lesson?

Praying that someone puts an end to all these meaningless killing of innocent civilians and just let us live in peace.

Learn to respect your nation

I have got this "Know it all" Indian colleague of mine. Just to give you an example of his "I know everything" attitude- He is a pure vegetarian who has not even had egg till date but can talk about chicken and fish food varieties for hours togather starting from how it has to be cooked till how the bone tastes!!!

For the last one week, a colleague from prague has been joining us on our way to office and back home. The Prague colleague asked us as to how the Metros are in India and Mr. know it all blurts out "Not as good as in Prague". He has not been on either one of the metros (he has not visited Prague til' date) and still he says that the delhi metro is not good. When asked about the crime rates in India , his response was that the crime rates are too...How many times have you or your family been robbed or beaten up?

Come on guys- If we dont respect our country and the good things about our country, how will the foreign nationals respect India? Are we not the brand ambassadors for our country? Lets spread good things about our country

The wait...

Every day has 24 hours, each hour has 60 mins and each minute has 60 seconds .........hrrrrr...Why the heck do we have so much time in our hands - this is the way I feel now - waiting for two important decisions but i have no say in both the things...

Dasavatharam - 3 hours of unadulterated fun

Before i start, let me make it clear - i am not a die-hard fan of Kamal [:)]

If we take a look at Kamal's previous movies, it would fall distinctly into either one of this - A serious movie carrying a message or a full fledge comedy movie. Before going to dasavatharam, a friend forwarded a link to a blog about dasavatharam which tried to explain Chaos theory and Butterfly effect - the theories which forms the base of the movie. Read the blog and got the impression that it would be a movie with a serious base.

Got a team of eight musketeers and stormed the theater on a saturday afternoon - a week after the movie got released. The 12th century scenes at the beginning of the movie confirmed my thoughts of dasavatharam being a serious movie. The song "Kallai mattum kandal" is quite meaningful and is well filmed. When the movie moves back to the current times, it is jus another normal movie - good guy vs bad guy. Initially, I was trying to figure out as to where the theories fit in to the movie and after sometime gave up and started enjoying the movie for what it is...The movie turns onto a lighter note and has all the usual masala item that is required for an entertainer. Balram naidu character makes the theater roll with laughter.

10 characters by kamal - kudos to him for the idea but were the 10 roles necessary? Fletcher, Balram naidu, the 8 foot giant, Poovaragavan and Krishna veni paati avatars are commendable and Kamal has once again proved his mettle.

I was not able to understand as to why chaos theory and Butterfly effect was needed for this movie - dumb me :(. This movie has been hyped too much with the 10 characters and some theories and i think it is the high expectations which has got the bad reviews for Dasavatharam. Do not go to see this movie with too much expectation and you will enjoy the three hours of this movie - a fast paced movie with good comedy.

UK - from Hate to Love

60 days have passed since i came first to UK and there has been some serious changes to the impression that i had developed abt UK in the first few weeks.

The first 2-3 weeks here... i was seriously wondering as to how i am going to spend the next 13 months out here - i had my reasons for that but now i am enjoing my stay ...People who i have been meeting in the last few days have proved to me that the impression that i had earlier about the UK public in general is wrong. Folks out here are very polite... Thanks / sorry and please are the words that you hear very often but sometimes you feel it is a bit overdone - ex a friend went to have a haircut and told the lady at the reception -" I want to have a haircut " and the lady at the parlour corrected him "you have to say - i need a haircut PLEASE"...and at the end of his haircut, it looked as if he had a fight with the lawnmower. The country side and the beaches out here in the Uk are awesome . I also love the fact that you wind up your work by 2 PM on fridays. Indian food is much easier to get in UK

Some drawbacks - Cost of living in Uk is a bit on the higher side. Taxes here are crazy - you have tax for anything and everything...even "Garbage tax"- come on whey do you have to pay tax for generating garbage. The cost of a liter of petrol is close to 1.2 pounds (100 Rs) and 62% of the cost is tax.

Looking forward to make the best out of my stay at UK...Cheers!!!

Will it be an adventure?

Planning to go home this evening - there is some tension prevailing in the TN-Karnataka border and people form both the states have resorted to violence and they have been pelting stones on the buses that ply between both the states - hoping to reach home safely!!!

Back home

Prague trip was cut short and i had to return back to India four weeks ahead of schedule. Got a call from the Indian embassy on the 25th stating that my passport is ready and i could collect it... My travel desk was super efficient and they got the ticket booked for the next day at 6 AM. My colleagues in prague wanted to have a farewell party that night and i was in the pub till 1AM - rushed back to the apartment and finished packing by 3 AM - the cab was waiting for me and i rushed to the airport.

Landed in Bangalore at 2 AM on the 27th and had to wait for 1.5 hours to get the luggage (Am seriously waiting for the new airport to be operational - hopefully things should get better than but the distance from the city is scary!!!)...reached home at 4. There was a mandatory training scheduled that day and i was hoping to sleep through the training...unfortunately i walked in 10 mins late and the only place that was vacant was the one right below the trainers nose.