Fell in love!

Something is wrong with my net connection at home. I have Reliance NetConnect using a USB modem and it has not been working since last week. Now, that is what has been keeping me from blogging (much to the relief of readers). This morning, I called up the customer care and they said something about a credit limit. Ridiculous concept – they give you a USB modem, tell you that you can download/upload up to 2.5GB and that your monthly bill would be 850+taxes (unless you go beyond 2.5GB of usage) and then your internet doesn’t work (even after you have paid your bills well before the due date) and they say, your credit limit is only 500 bucks and you can’t use more than that. What the heck!!!

I had gone to my home town (Coimbatore) for two consecutive weekends (some thing that I rarely do for fear of tiredness throughout the following week). The first weekend of June, I landed at Coimbatore North railway station at 6:30am and it was drizzling ever so slightly – a drizzle that could wake you up from sleep, but not make you wet, a drizzle that is like the droplets of water that hit you on your face when you are walking beside a waterfall. In the distance, I could see all the hills surrounding the city – the hills and the drizzle and the fresh, unpolluted air and the serene city (so far away from the rush and madness of Chennai) and was interrupted by, “Enga ammini pogonum?” – a burly auto-driver who, for some reason, reminded me of Teddy Bear and I fell in love with my home town all over again. The people here are, by far, the most respectful of the lot. Even fathers address their sons with respect – eg., instead of “Enga da pora?” (Where are you going?), they ask, “Engainga thambi poreenga?” The majesty of the hills (the elephant hill right behind my college, the Western Ghats where we used to go for summer camps/treks), finding virgin streams of delicious nectar (siruvani water), taking bath in small waterfalls which requires quite a few kilometers of walk into the forest and the amount of greenery (there are two institutions that keep the city green – The Tamil Nadu Agricultural University and The Forest College campus) both within the city limits! All these (combined with the piping hot Chennai during the following week) seduced me into going there for the second consecutive weekend.

During the second weekend (yesterday and the day before), there was no slight, cool drizzle, in fact, the sun was out and although it couldn’t be called hot, it was warm outside and we (myself, my sis, and a couple of my coolest cousins) could roam around the city. We went to the zoo (I know what you are thinking right about now) and then to Pizza Hut – initially we decided to order pizza from home, but I decided against it because of this. :-) Anyways, we had pizza and fun and quite a bit of yelling from my mom who had cooked lunch for all of us and all the food had to go waste! :-)

Here I am back at Chennai and all the heat it offers. I guess the next weekend is going to be a visit to Pondicherry (with friends) or Kumbakonam to a few temples.

Happy Birthday!

I know I wrote a post just yesterday. But I had to write another one now to tell this...

HAPPY BIRTHDAY, RAFA...



Here is wishing u success in the next 5 French Open tournaments!!! You are a champion and will always remain one! :-)

ITMARK Me

The past weekend was one that made me extremely happy – a weekend filled with hugs and kisses from my family – mom, sister, cousins, uncles, aunts, and grandparents – it made me very happy to meet so many relatives after a long time. I had a great time – cousins pulling my legs, talking about everything from movies to cricket to hot gossips! It was the perfect weekend…

When everything is going great guns in my life, there were a few moments which made me go “What’s wrong with me?” All such moments were because of my work place practices. It amazed me to know how much it has changed the real Me.

Things to prove I am an ITMARK (IT equivalent of AGMARK) software engineer.

1. I was at the ‘Sadabhishekam’ of my grandparents and there was so much smoke coming from the homa-gundam; I started wondering why the smoke-detectors work only during fire evacuation drills.
2. The other day, when I returned home from work, instead of inserting the key into the key-hole and turning it, I reached for my ID card to swipe it to open the door and wondered where the swipe machine went.
3. I stay far away from my mom and always talk to her over phone. Now she is in Chennai and for calling out to her when she was in the kitchen, I shouted “hello amma” instead of “amma”.
4. I write “Pls do let me know if there are further concerns” in personal mails.
5. My idea of flirting has become, “Which technology did you say you are working on?” (No wonder the cute guy next door runs like crazy in the opposite direction when he sees me walking towards him)
6. I am in a Production Support project wherein we resolve any ‘ticket’ raised by the user when they face any issue with the data in the database/in the application. It made me nervous when my friend said, “I have ‘tickets’ for the concert”. I started thinking about how to resolve it.
7. My roomie was looking for one of her DVDs and asked all of us to search for it and I said, “I’ll google it right away” without thinking. I was glared at by all of them.

God help me!!!