Then I graduated

July 8th 2007, I graduated along with all my friends, with a Masters in Information Technology, from iiitb .
And here are a few snaps :-)

The venue..

We did the 'walk'..

We took the oath..

We graduated..

My parents..

Ritesh

TC,Swathi,Ajay,Myself and Janani...

It was one day we are not going to forget in a long long time... Wish you all the happiness in this world Class of 2005'.

Goodbye MSR :-(

June,2007 saw the end of a lovely term at MSR. Here are a few goodbye pictures and a collage we presented to our team before leaving.

This is Joseph, our manager. I really miss him..






Here is a picture of myself,Robin and God. Yes, we called Samarth, God for his amazing technical abilities and also for the fact that he often managed to develop a halo around his head in photographs. I have picked a few fortunate pictures where God has decided to be humble and show himself clearly.





























On the Left, we have Thanuja added to the group. Thanuja was from Srilanka. She was a really sweet person and taught us tons of stuff about life in Srilanka. One amazing thing that I learnt was that in Srilanka, they actually have 'Religion' as a subject in school. And each student gets to pick the religion of her choice and study all about it. I thought that was really interesting.















To the right, we have Robin and Mohit. This is a picture I took and am very proud of. I think both of them have come out very nice in it.




And finally all of us, just before leaving.. It was a sad day... :-(

Apologies for the long absence

A very good morning to all of you!! Its a beautiful day, and I want to start it by writing a post or two.
I hope to be a little more frequent than I was the past few months. :-)

Cheeni kum

I went for 'Cheeni Kum' (pronounced as chee nee kam)(literally translated to sugar less) yesterday in the evening. It was running (I wonder why they say a movie runs..) in Rex..

Cheeni Kum is a refreshingly funny story about a 64 yr old Buddha(played by Big B), also fondly called 'Ghaaspuus', who falls in love with a 34 year old Neena(Tabu), who he reciprocates with a polite 'Thangdikabab'. Ghaaspuus heads a restaurant that claims to be the finest Indian restaurant in London. Neena doesnt do much.(Or atleast I couldnt figure out what she does for a living).

The movie begins with quite a few boring scenes where Ghaaspuus disciplines his fellow workers and gives them valuable gyaan about the art of cooking. For a minute there I thought the movie would be another 'lesson in sahi aur galath, and anushaasan' that Big B loves to deliver. But luckily Neena steps in and Ghaaspuus falls in love..
The oddly matched couple actually look cute onscreen.. The movie is filled with a horde of witty repartees and situational humour and a fortunate lack of unnecessary dramatics.. The couple is just like any other teenage couple you see in reality and you soon forget the age factor.. Infact everything seems great until Ghaaspuus and Neena decide to get married. Thats when Ghaaspuus meets Neena's father, Paresh rawal who is 6 years younger in age.Thats when Ghaaspuus (as well as the audience) start realizing how ridiculous the situation seems...

There are a few other angles to the movie... One of which is 'sexy', an 8 year old girl who keeps ghaaspuus company at all times, other than when he is in his restaurant. Sexy unfortunately, has blood cancer(or some other such thing) and is undergoing chemotheraphy.Sexy, along the way, manages to unknowingly teach ghaaspuus and us, a number of valuable lessons in life....

One other interesting character is 'Colgate', a waiter in Ghaaspuus's restaurant, with an extrememly amusing personality and two shiny white bunny teeth. Unlike many other comedians in Hindi movies, Colgate manages to entertain you effectively without getting to the point of irritation...

Everyone has played their part very nicely.Music is nice, and luckily limited and in the background..(Yes, songs in the middle of movies can be extremely irritating). On the whole a very entertaining movie that you can watch once.

Con artists on Indian roads..

I had been out for lunch on Brigade road today, with a friend. Lunch done, we walked to where we had parked our bike.We successfully manoeuvred it out of where it was jammed between two other bikes ( I wonder why parking lots are so crowded on Monday afternoons.Is everyone as jobless as myself and my friend were?). Anyway back to the point. After easing it out of the jam and backing it on to the road, we were finally about to leave when our con man came running from nowhere demanding his fee.

I cannot help but wonder, fee for what? For standing around and watching us struggle with our bike without moving a finger? For coming running to us in time and grabbing our attention? Exactly for what were we paying him?

I, being the prim and proper myself( as lots of my friends put it), asked him for the ticket. "Ticket??" he asked."I don't have any ticket". "Duh." I said. "I'm not giving you any money without a ticket."

Lot of people call me adamant and too 'by the book'. But the fact is, I did not know why I had to pay him. No, its not the money.Its a question of ethics. I don't mind paying him ten times that if he could show me some evidence that the money was going to someone who deserved it. The government for instance, for letting out the space to park. A laborer who cleans the footpaths. Heck, even someone who helped us get our bike out. But our man did nothing of that sort. He just felt he deserved the money.

What I have to say about such things is that, without parking tickets to sell, he has as much authority to demand a fee from people, as you or me or the person sitting next to us in the restaurant we ate. Just because he dresses up shabbily and walks around the bikes and pretends like he is doing something, does not give him the rights to your parking fee.
If he did help you out,you might like to tip him (Absolutely nothing wrong with that.Just a show of gratitude). If he was walking around begging, you might take pity upon him and give him something ( Nothing wrong there too. ).. But this virtual begging with a cocky attitude. Nope does not work.
If anything, know that you are NOT obliged to pay each and everyone that walks up to you on your shopping trip. Use your discretion. Pay if you feel like. But if you don't, know that you don't have to.

Gyms overrated??

Last week, a few colleagues of mine checked out a gymnasium/fitness center called Talwalkars very close to where we work. On questioned as to how it was, the following is the reply that I got. "Hmm it was quite nice. But slightly expensive." How much is slightly you ask? about Rs 8,000/- for three or four months.
Huh? Excuse me. I was pretty sure I had not heard right. Either that or I was old. Really really old,belonging to the previous century probably.

Well, it looks like I am getting old. Because yes. 'slightly' is that much. And as if I was not old enough already, there was more news. Gold gym trying very hard to sound as reasonable as possible stated that they charge only Rs 5000/- a month. Their argument is essentially that you can end up paying upto a good sum of 1,00,000/- if you try an annual membership at a gym at any five star hotel. Which costs you around 8500/- per month (if you take an annual membership ie). And if you dont, then it could go upto 10,000/- a month.Phew.

On the bright side, most of these gyms do come with state of the art equipment and trained professionals to guide you with well planned (or so they say) programmes. And they even allow you to bring your own music sometimes :-).

With all those facts out there, do I think it is a good deal?? Well, though I am getting used to the idea, Im afraid it hasn't sounded as appealing to me yet. But there are tons of people who think otherwise. And as long as there are, Talwalkars and Gold will continue on their successful rampages..

Do you remember your dreams??

For the past few days I have been spending a lot of time reading about 'Dreams'. How/Why they occur. What do they mean. How can you get rid of recurring dreams.And a lot of other interesting trivia.

Did you know that..

1.there is a kind of dreaming, where you are aware of the fact that you are dreaming. Here, dreamers are often able to exercise a certain amount of control over their dreams and their dreams appear to be much clearer in nature to them. This is called Lucid dreaming.

2.one of the explanations for Deja vu is that it is actually the memory of dreams. That when you feel like 'this has happened before sometime', it is probably because you dreamt about a similiar situation earlier.

3.we dream on an average of one or two hours every night. And we often even have 4-7 dreams in one night. (phew)

4.men tend to dream more about other men, while women dream equally about men and women. (hmmm :-))

5.little babies do not appear in their own dreams :-( until the age of 3-4. They only dream about other things/people..

6.Dreams are normally telling you something about yourselves. Your unconscious mind is trying to bring to your attention what your conscious mind is trying to ignore.If you remember only bits of your dream, those bits are probably what your unconscious mind chose to bring to your notice.Apparently one of the ideal ways of getting rid of recurring dreams/nightmares is to lucidly dream about it and face your fear in your nightmare. You should check out The Dreams foundation for more details.

7.The above site also tells you how you can improve your Dream Recall which is the ability to remember your dreams :-)

8.Another exciting thing I read about was that there is a category of sleep called the REM sleep (Rapid Eye Movement Sleep) which constitutes close to 20-25% total sleep for a grown human being.REM is characterized by rapid eye movement(obviously), low muscle tone,irregular heart and breathing rates etc. It is believed that one tends to strongly remember and visualize the dreams that they had during REM sleep,after waking up. This is quite interesting, inspite of the fact that it has been proved that dreams and REM sleeps are not directly related as they are controlled by different brain mechanisms

9.Also, Most dreams(the bad ones atleast :-)), generally belong to one of the following genres. where you are being chased or attacked, falling,unprepared or late for something,stuck in slow motion,nude in public, trapped or drowning etc..

Whew, I could go on and on. Dont forget to check out the wikipedia article on Dreams.

Oh I forgot to tell you why I ventured upon this in the first place. I had this dream the other night.Now I know it was a lucid dream because I was amazed at how I was so aware of the fact that I was sleeping. I wanted to record the dream because I did not want to forget it and I even remember feeling too lazy to get up and note it down.So I kept telling myself 'Girl, you got to remember this.' And all this was while I was dreaming. I know this because I continued to dream. :-) It was quite an exciting experience.
I will tell you about that dream some other time as I cannot possibly fit it here. And do not fret, there is not a chance in the world I am going to forget that dream. It is really amazing what you can tell your unconscious mind to do. A typical example being when we are travelling (usually alone), and we remind ourselves to get up at 5:00 because the train reaches our destination then. And yes, without fail, you will open your eyes at 5:00. Try it out :P and Sweet dreams...:-)