The scooter story-'Like father like son'

I'm about 6to 7 years old standing in the gap (between the handle bar and the front seat)of my dads scooter. He is driving it at a sedate pace and i can feel the wind on my face, i decided to be brave and asked Dad if i can ride. "Sure" he says and i can feel the sway of the scooter responding to my hands, feels like magic, the thrill is enormous and i'm grinning ear to ear.

I'm 11 years old sitting pillion on my pals bicycle, facinated by the cycle i cajole my dad to buy me a second hand Hero Ranger Jr. The next day my first solo riding leasson is down hill with a steep curve and further down hill ride. I'm screaming my lungs out as im thundering downhill at impossible speeds for a 11 yr old not hoping to make the curve, i make it and i feel like the all conquering .

I'm 14 years old sitting pillion on my Dads scooter when my mechanic asks if i know to ride, i lie 'Yes'. Next day i decide to teach myself, i kick start the scooter and slowly move it and oh boy it moved. My addiction started young and by 15 i was driving motorbikes and ripping my dads scooter to whatever impossible speeds it could take.

I'm 15 years old washing my dads Maruti 800, deciding to be brave i turn on the ignition and reverse park the car. Dad is mighty pleased but sternly says 'Only reversing, okay?' Gradually i start sneaking the car out for a little spin every time i wash the car and park it exactly like it has to be parked after being reversed.

I'm 18 years old, dad was out of station and i decided to take the car on the main highway. Take it out for a quick spin to my friends house about 5 kms away and my confidence is in full bloom to handle highway driving.

I'm 23 years old, dad and mom visit me in the UK. We decide to go on a vacation and im the driver of the hired 7 seater van. Dad gets to taste my real driving skills, the needle inches towards 100 miles/hr and dad sitting with a horrified expression! Priceless!!

I'm 28 years old, have my own car and my family goes for a vacation to Mysore. Dad forces the keys of my hand and drives the car. Before i realize it he is hitting 100kmph on the hills with a childish grin on his face and i sit riveted on my seat shit scared! He is 60+ yrs old and i realize where i got my genes. Its all in the family!!

Life is beautiful........in parts that is!

I sat on the couch and watched my gang of absolutely idiotic friends dance to "My dream is to fly" by Yves Larock. We were at Havana, Raintree hotels, Chennai celebrating friendship and all that comes with it, laughter, fights, jealousy, joy, sharing, crying and the last but not the least the joy of knowing we will there as friends forever.

They danced without a care in this world, the laughter, fun, gossiping, drinking was all so spontaneous. Nothing looked artificial, i could look into all their moist eyes and see the truthful innocent bonding of friendship. We have always been together in spite of the grossly different attitudes we carry as individuals. But the time had come for us to bid our goodbyes and everybody knew that on that very night.

Niteouts were never planned, Blore, Kodai, Pondy was always at a cruising distance. Drinking chai was always an excuse to drive down to Kovalam on the East Coast Road. A planned dinner will invariably be at Moonrakers in Mahabalipuram. A planned niteout will be in Bikes n Barrels and unplanned ones will always be a drinking session on the Besant nagar beach parking lot inside the cramped confines of a car.

As i watched them smile and dance and tease each other on the dance floor my mind went back to the memories and moments which will forever be etched in my memory about this gang. Its the last few days we'll all be together as individual friends. She is getting married, He is relocating to Bombay, She is flying to US and I might relocate to B'lore leaving just one guy stuck in Chennai. In effect we are celebrating the spirit of friendship and separation with equal joy and sorrow respectively.

We will thread different path, each will find his/her own circle again, we will go partying/drinking/dancing again, but for sure....if i would like to dissect my life into phases; I've just lived the best phase of my life, the guys will agree it too on their part. It can never gets better than this. Life is beautiful!!

Vagabounds

"A vagabond is an itinerant person. Such people may be called drifters, tramps, rogues or hobos . A vagabond is characterised by almost continuous travelling, lacking a fixed home, temporary abode or permanent." - Wikipedia

No im not a vagabond, it is just a reflection of the state of my mind. While im gradually getting used to the aspect of working from Chennai and making a new set of absolutely cracking friends my soul keeps harking back and forth between Coimbatore and Chennai. Chennai is a fine city (if u could overlook the filth, climate, population, traffic jams, power-cuts, water problems....etc).

I would have been bored to death if i'd not met a few people in the recent past. We form this amazing gang of jokers who would drive down the ECR to Mahabalipuram in the dead of the nite, have a few drinks at any day of the week, go for dinner at 3:00 am, make a mockery of every member and still be able to laugh it off. So coming to the point, during the times of recession and crises in the IT industry its a welcome relief for me to share my thoughts and feelings with this set of like minded Vagabounds.

Life has been tough on me the past few months, i've been drained emotionally and physically but have manged to hold on thanks to a few good people around me. My addiction to driving/bikes/cars helps me to keep adrift of the many problems. Thanks to this gang, none of my addictions are in short supply. I get to drive the best diesel engines at breakneck speeds and no one complaints.

All this bonding is too good to be true and im aware of the fact that good things not lasting long enough but may this gang stick on.........God willing!

All in a days work.

I am predominantly right brained and i know what makes a good design 'good' and a bad design 'bad'. My current project involves convincing ppl that the User Interface Elements i design is in conjection with project demands and user liking, which in most cases is just the opposite. I happen to lead the project and that makes it far more complicated because i am now trying to convince my designers and my client. Its like justifying murder to two sets of layers who are arguing against each other. Confusing??......that how it is when trying to do designs for a client who is so damn left brained!!

Trying to visually satisfy clients is by far the most challenging of tasks to a designer, i've tried and tested a few novel approaches.

• Guage his sense of dressing, a good indicator of the type of person he is. A well dressed person is slightly easier to deal with and normally has some design sense
• His desktop, a dull boring windows default desktop indicates a bad artistic sense
• His legacy system, a very good indicator! A visually good system, then your dealing with somebody with good design sense
• His mobile/mp3, an upto date gadget; then somebody with enough understanding of technology and awareness about latest design style

There are a few more ways i try to judge ppl but again, im being very subjective and am not right at times.

By the way, my present client dresses very badly but has a very good sense of color; that makes my life more miserable since he does not understand design but understands the colors used in these designs.

His legacy system is designed very well but has bad color schemes :( now how the hell should i judge this guy??

His mobile was created during the stone ages but has the latest iPod touch! Now, thats what i call extremeee.

I've been at loggerheads with him for so long now that i have decided to tell him this:

"No great thing is created suddenly."- Epictetus

Slumdog-bold and yet subtle

The British media called in 'Poverty Porn', Mr. Bachchan hated it and none of the indian directors gave positive remarks baring a very few. So wat if Slumdog Millioner shows India in poor light. Its not like Danny Boyle has depicted an India which is not true. Every frame of the movie echo's the real India which is not covered by the media.

Any movie buff will love the movie, its pure art. Hats off to the largely indian technicians who pulled it off. Indian directors should take a leaf outta this movie and try doing something fresh and fulfilling rather than the routine song/dance/sentiment melodrama.

Watch SM for the child artists, the background score and for the bold but beautifully etched screenplay. The movie moves at breakneck speed and your held riveted in a trance till the credits roll. And does it not finish in sshtyle!! typical bollywood sshtyle.

Note to Vijay fans: he is a bloody serious aberration!! For Gods sake he cannot act and is a serious pain with his do-gooder attitude. He invariably is always the hero who worships his mother, takes care of his family/village/town/city/country! If he wants to get into politics he might aswell do it rather than begging for votes with his mass masala movies. God save the indian film industry!!

Memories....ahem!!

Everybody has memories of their best moments till date. The day you came first in class(i used to!!), the day your dad bought u your first bicycle, the first time you took somebody on a date and didnt know wat to do afterwards, the first time you sneaked out your dad's car for a secret drive, the first time you crashed your car/bike....memories are aplenty and serves the purpose of day dreaming when not doing office work.
My memories of driving a motorized vehicle was way back in high school when i used to steal my dad's antique bajaj for sneaky drives. I remember the day i decided to touch past the 50km mark, the odo had only 70 or 80 as the max. These were the days when i was just learing to drive and my sense of balance on a scooter with a right engine was not too great. The needle took eons to touch the magical 50kmph mark and i was shit scared yet the rush was just magical. My heart beating a 100 paces faster than the pistons.
The same rush and adrelain, pumping a 100litres of blood into my heart came when i decided to push my Yamaha RX100 past the 100kmph mark. I had a shogun for company and it was a definite case of 'who is the boss'. That day i knew that my motorcycling days are gonna be much more fun than i had earlier imagined. My RX outflanked the Shogun and i was trembling like a kid lost in a carnival. This was pure evil rush, the rush to beat any damn bike who dares to dicatate terms to me. Having an ported RX helped me thoroughly in my college years to have the same rush over and over again but nothing like the first time you feel it.
Doing 180kmph on the Glasgow-Inverness highway on a Vauxhall with my dad and mom seated in the back bought back the exact feelings. Dad was cringing and mom looked petrified but i kept the pedal down knowing this was the only time i can get back at Dad for not allowing me to go past 100 in this old Maruti 800. The feeling, sublime!!
But the pure adrelain rush i first felt on my RX was to be overshowed by me driving a Vauxhall Zafira, a 7 seater sports version MPV with close to 3 litres. I was thumping past the 200kmph mark on the Edinburgh-Glasgow motorway well aware that there are atleast a 100 speed cameras. We were already late for the 10'o'clock London bus which my friends had to catch in order to save their job on Monday morning. For me it was enuf reasons to keep the pedal to the metal. I'll forever live that thought, the rush, the sweat, the fear, the digital speedo clicking 200, the trees and cars turning into a speck....Wow!!
That day i said "Speed is definitely better than Sex"!

Chaos Theory-Live young and Die very young

Leading a chaotic life is strangely satisfying to me. Keeping my brains buzzing and bursting to the seam has not really been my cup of tea but now its become second nature, i think about a 100 things at the same time. Guess my line of work compounds it. Nowadays i simultaneously think about my next project layout design and the color of the car Vin Diesel drives in Fast'n'Furious. Is it normal? hell no.....something is definitely wrong with me.

End of the day im so stuffed with thoughts that i have no room for actions. I tried consulting my trusted doctor friend. Try yoga he suggested but added "......anywayz software Engineers dont live to be too old, so just chill out and eat your brains while it works" .......eh??WAT??

Realizations!!

There are somethings which you realize as you grow up although most of the time u live in a state of denial. I've actually realized the following things today:

• i dont know to say 'No'
• i really need to control my weight, its no longer easy to stay in shape after ur 25
• drinking is only for fun and should not be done religiously
• learn to control your tongue when your drunk
• not all beautiful girls are girlfriend material
• speeding is fun but an arm and a leg is a little too much to loose
• your dad is always right (well almost alwayz)
• your mom still thinks your 16 yrs old and treats you like one
• your girlfriend(s) are not the end of the world
• you really need to start saving monie
• your relatives dont need you
• most of your friends dont need you
• respect your parents and buy them gifts
• your mobile is an extention of your body
• cartoons are boring
• world news actually matters
• tv serials are the worst things happening to women at home
• politicians suck big time, they can wipea@#$ instead of laundering monie
• there are genuine good people in this world
• never judge people likewise never confide in people
• cricket is the most overhyped sport in India....Dhoni prbly contributes to more than half of the GDP of Jharkkhand
• did i mention politicians are bigots, thiefs, criminals, pimps and they happen to decide the fate of our country.
• tamil is an incredibly amazing language and has to be preserved

Aimless.........ramblings

I've changed the banner of my blogspot, decided to go for the black theme......pretty gud eh?? im impressed. I thought the previous banner was nice but decided to create a new one and hey this one seems to be much better and professional!
Just when i think, i've done something well/nice/gud i realise the next time i can do it much better.
My realizations:
"U never stop learning"
"Just when u think u've given a 100%, u realize u can do much better the next time"
"Creativity is all about freedom, try limiting it, the result will show"

For all thats worth.....!!!

Either im trying too hard to rake my non-existent brains to come up with appropriate headings or im just running out of vocabularies to come up with anythin suitable for my posts.......

Well "For all thats worth" is a genuine attempt by me to address the concept of designer labels in everyday lives. My friend is crazy abt DKNY labels, she normally doesnt mind buying stuff which has got somebody's name on it. Not that i dont buy designer stuff but im quiet apprehensive abt having somebody else's name on my underwear.

People buying designer stuff can be broadly categorized into 2 types, 1) the thrill of flaunting 'u have it, u flaunt it' and 2) some just like the feeling of being in that exclusive club(limited editions) ' im classy, im rich'. The underlining principle is that ur gonna shell out a lot of monie for something thats not worth even half of the retail price. Im no God either, id happily buy a FCUK T-shirt coz its cheesy but i dont have the monie nwayz ;)

If we do a little bit of research ud notice that most of these so called exclusive designers get their stuff done in third world countries or developing nations where they can exploit the cheap labour and to an extent even child labour. No buyer is interested where his stuff is made, all he needs is some guys/gurls name written in bold on his/her underwear respectively.

U dont need designers to look good, u need confidence!!! The next time you buy designer stuff think again, your gonna blow ur money on something totally unnecessary, whereas the same people who made the stuff struggle to eat one full course of meal a day.

F-C-U-K U DESIGNERS!!!

Culdn come up with an appropriate heading!

Priyanka, my collegue is a typical indian girl, witty, smart and very strong willed, oh not to mention very stubborn. She is wat i wud typically classify the indian girl of today. U can see the dreams in her eyes, a lost trance as she guages the people around her when i sit with her in our office cafe. She talks and talks like most girls and typically she would discuss her aspirations, the things she wud buy for her house, etc etc......alwayz dreamy.

Had i met Priyanka a couple of years back i wud have categorized her in a totally different league, the rebel of indian girls, picking guys, never subdued and never beaten in an argument with the guys. Now shez happily married and very subdued, its only occationally i get to see the real her when she rolls her eyes and smirks at my male chauvnistic jokes.

My point is, indian girls once married somehow seem to loose their real self, they relate a lot to their husbands and their society, they tend to project an image which may or may not reflect their inner self. In short they confine themselves to their immediate surroundings, let me stress that in most cases they dont have an option, the society demands.

Oh...sayin so ...Raj....Priyanka's hubby is a charmer, guess very few people can see the 2 sides of a coin unless ur marrying the girl u fell in love with. Raj is lucky, most of us would never know the flip side of the girl we are goin to marry.

Saying that, im thinking abt a joke i cud use to crack Priyanka up tomorow, its nice to unleash the devil once in a while.

Diamonds are priceless?? very true

Diamonds are indeed priceless, they are beautiful, exotic and there is something abt them that makes them really really special..... they mostly come from Africa! A continent torn by civil war and poverty, rife with epidemic and aids......and all the world is bothered abt is ...the bloody diamond.

Conflict Diamond:

"...diamonds that originate from areas controlled by forces or factions opposed to legitimate and internationally recognized governments, and are used to fund military action in opposition to those governments, or in contravention of the decisions of the Security Council.." - United Nations

We as consumers, esp little princesses who want a fairy tale wedding should take into consideration that the diamonds they buy may be tainted with the blood of kids who have their arms chopped off if they dont support the Rebel movements in Sierra Leone, Liberia and other parts of Africa (remember the movie Blood Diamond). We as consumers have a responsibility to authenticate the source of the diamond we buy, any diamond which does not have a cretificate of its source is a conflict diamond.

90% of all the worlds diamonds are cut and polished in India, so india does have a hand in the 'blood-diamond' trade. So we are responsible as well for the current state of the beautiful African continent.

There is this unforgettable quote from the movie Blood Diamond "...Sometimes I wonder... will God ever forgive us for what we've done to each other? Then I look around and I realize... God left this place a long time ago..."

I would never buy a diamond ring if i knew its going to cost somebody their hands, God bless Africa.

Stevo-the man!!

Its something which totally blew me off my mind, Steven my manager was walking around with a couple of bin bags around my cabin. I didnt mind coz i know he is eccentric et times but peering above to his desk i noticed that one of the cleaners was sitting in his cabin...eh??..wat the fuck is happenin?? a manager waking around the floor with bin bags and a cleaner sitting in his chair!! Well, apparently the cleaner was not well and my manager decided to empty the bins and clear out the tables on her behalf. This he did not to gain any positive remarks from his collegues but just out of 'human-ness'. I could literally see the gratitude the cleaner felt towards Steven.

Steven could have been like any other manager, not bothering to care abt the poor lady and go about his business but he went out of the way to help this lady whom he might never have noticed the day before. I was literally awe stuck by the guys attitude, actions speak louder than words so they say, we know eveybody is gud at heart but who really does go outta the way to help people? very few indeed.

I've worked in India and Abroad and there is one fundamental difference, dignity of labour. Steven respected the Cleaner for her duty and vice versa, there is no High level and Low level here whereas in India we find a vast hierarchy and people being looked up/down upon depending on the type of job. Guess we'll have to live with it. Im pretty sure i wont find many-a-Stevens in India.

Motorway madness.........

Its 2:30 am and raining cats and dogs and i cant see yards ahead of my bonnet, yet im tearing down the motorway towards Glasgow back from Edinburgh's Hogmany. Everything around me is blurd, the dials, signals, lanes everything, never have i been so non-connected to the car, im usually a very passionate driver, i literally talk to my car but today feels so very different. Im not concentrating enough, its only wen my friend in the passenger seat shakes me from my dream world that i come to my senses.

So wat am i thinking abt, wats so fuckin eating my brains?? Id never felt so kinda strange after a New Years party, my brain just keeps harking back to the previous yrs, the people ive been close to, the people who have ment a lot to me then/now, the people who pulled the rug beneath my feet.....loads of things running in my mind, clogged with unnecessary thoughts and emotions.

When i sit down and really think abt the previous couple of yrs its been a big 'learning curve'. Ive learned a lot, matured my thinking process, been wounded, bruised and tourtured(all mentally). Now im more measured, all that bashing has really made me take a 'U' turn in life and made me stare at the real wicked face of reality. Time is the biggest healer and also is the biggest teacher.

The Gang, tkns to Orkut

There used to be this group of guyz/gals who used to hang around, I wont mention the names its really not necessary. I wont forget our trips to Koval Kuttralam, Videghi Falls, etc. We were a really nice group of teens in their prime enjoyin life until we split for reasons unknown. After the gang split i really didnt think in my faintest imagination that all of us would again end up on Orkut and be in touch again. This post is not just to talk abt The Gang but abt Orkut.

Apart from The Gang, all my long lost friends suddenly appeared outa nowhere, tkns to Orkut. And hey, im not over-reacting, i never knew it wud be humanely possible for me to establish any sort of communication with them cosidering some of the guyz i lost touch with were 10 -12 yrs bac!!!

Technology is something which we have taken for granted, my dad was dumbstruck wen i told him abt Orkut and my long lost frends. He felt sad that his generation is past that stage. We are the privileged generation of ipods, mobiles, Playstations and wat not.

Maturity in the making

Years of stayin away from home is finally bringing out ma inner-self, makin me who i am today. Harking back to my yesteryears i realise how immatured and dumb-ass ive been well i know everybody feels the same but id been a complete Idiot!!!

To start off with, id not been bad in studies but hey id never made an effort to be gud in it so therein lies ma quandry, am i gud or bad in studies? i really never know!!!
Im not a bad sports person, i still crib abt my chances of not representing my school in badminton coz my best frend bac then was my class teachers nephew and he got the chance inspite of him not being gud enough. I was quiet a gud player havin trained by a national coach.

Its school again this time, i trained with my teammates for the school zonals but never got the call- reason : my coach didnt know how to contact me wen he picked his final 11!!! therein goes my damn luck again.

Bac again in the college dayz id been a sub for the badminton team(thou' the team was only 3 ppl strong), it never occured to me to go all out and play competitive. Id happily stick around just for the fact that i cud miss my classes or get OnDuty wen a tournament is on.

As for studies, i kept loads of arrears durin my inital college dayz, the simple reason being, im addicted to my Yamaha RX100(Id dedicate a post to my bike later). Eventually i turned around to studies again and made some sound progress and passed my Masters with some pretty convincing stats. But it still occurs to me that i could have done much better had i realised b4 that the world we live in 2day is so Dog-eat-Dog.