Birthday wishes of the year 2010

It has been a week since my birthday. And it was a good one too if we look forward for the years to come and not worry about the years gone by and apparently the number of candles I blew before cutting the cake. Chini had to keep them stand in a large bowl to avoid using fire extinguisher over the cake.
Anyway, the day went good. Few surprises, great food and treatment equal to a free man! Now I am waiting for another year even though I know I will have to blow off a bonfire next time. Coming to the point, the birthdays are always special and something you count on other than the presents are for everyone’s wishes.

Starting from your school days where you could wear casual dress while everyone comes in a uniform and walking to all class rooms and hear everyone sing “Happy Birthday” for you, birthdays are really special to celebrate. As you move up the years, you get more than wishes and include cake on your face and kick on your butt. I wonder why people do that. But everyone got it for their birthday and so you would want one too. Happy day of the year! Back to the birthday wishes now. How different we celebrate our birthday and wherever we are, there is always one thing that makes the day a real birthday. It is the simple two words “happy birthday”. With the world being so big and our dear ones spread apart so far, we are wished by so many means. Apart from the telephone that made them sound closer, e-cards and social networking sites made everyone just few clicks away. So my birthday this year too had lot of wishes sent through various forms.


With nothing better to do, I thought it would be fun (for me) to chart down the numbers and statistics.

There were a total of 70 wishes including all advance and belated wishes. And as if everyone is closer by technology than reality, most of the wishes are through internet with 26 from Facebook itself. This is really a surprise as until last year, Orkut was the most widely used networking site in India. I believe lots of us were bribed to move to Facebook by games like Farmville and Mafia wars. There were a total of 12 wishes through telephone and 8 by electronic email which includes a cute message from my one-year old niece. While these numbers are normal like every other year, the shocking numbers come from SMS messages – Just 2. The guy who was banned by Aircel for sending SMS messages over the limit during college days received just 2 messages for his birthday. Time truly changes as years pass by. This could also be because of being in US away from free messages in India. Other surprising counts are from instant messaging and e-cards with 3 and 1 respectively. There would not have been any e-card if not for my in-laws. Thanks to them. I did get 7 greeting cards made of wood pulp commonly known as paper though 6 of them came from my Chini and the other one surprisingly from the apartment office. Now to rank the various wishes, the first phone call was from my dad, sisters and mom; instant message from Tirupur; Facebook and Orkut from Chini’s friends Karthikeyan and Mathan respectively; email from Kumaran; SMS once again by dad and the person to wish directly and through greeting card and also the first one to wish on the birthday is none other than Chini. Thank you. And whats more! She is the only one who gave me gifts in this year. So you guys not to feel bad, I am still accepting presents. Gift cards and credit through online transfers accepted.

PS: I have to speak about those who forgot to wish me too. Hey loosu, where were you? You used to wish me every year. Perippa, you forgot it. I had to call you for the second year now. Balappa, you almost forgot and anyway you are the last one to wish me. I am glad for that. And for the rest, that is ok. There is always the next year.

Wishing everyone a Happy New Year 2010!

New sun rays of light ahead,
the world is brighter than before.
A day to dream higher;
An year to make them come real.
Shedding away the sorrows of the past,
Bringing along the happiness alone
and the lessons learnt so long -
To make this year count
as you wished for, dreamt for, prayed for.
Everything sweet, everything you need,
More than what you deserve and
All that you desire in this world.
May your prayers come true.
And the world rejoice in harmony, peace and you.
Happy New Year!!!!

Its a Fresh start.... once again

Happy New Year guys and girls!. A fresh year has started. Time to bring back the resolutions you lost in the previous year and new ones that you might want to add to the list that you would be lost before the next year. Am I starting my first post of the year in a sorrowful tone? Why so negative? Yeah! Why am I being so negative? Let’s start again. Time to fresh start your resolutions that you will try hard to maintain till the start of next year. That’s better I think. Good. I think this is the first New Year eve that went away without much excitement except few calls from friends and home. The year changed while I was in my home watching TV and talking to friends. No shouts or fireworks to welcome the year. But it was good. It was good to feel the New Year eve to be just another day and what’s better than starting the year with sitting on the couch and watching your favorite movie (The Dark Knight) on the TV. It is like blessing for a relaxed and peaceful year ahead. And So I slept very early in the night around 12:30 AM which is early even for any other day for me.
Believe me when I say I woke up early at 7:30 AM. And it was not to switch off the alarm and to get back to sleep. I really did wake up 7:30 AM and made few calls. But then, I went back to sleep. Another sign of a peaceful year ahead I think. So after relaxing and comfortable sleep, the New Year started truly at around 11 AM with more phone calls, Google chats and orkut scraps. Funny but common was wishing "Happy Birthday" instead of the Happy New Year". May be it should be considered as wishing the birth of the year 2009. So all went well including having work on a holiday and few interesting mails between the DBAs, developers and support that is always fun to watch. And if all these seem so normal for any other day, the blast was the Project party at Zuma Fun center in the evening. Visit the site and you will know what fun it promised.... for the kids. Now visit this photo album and you will know how great we were ... as kids. A perfect start for the New Year indeed.

Happy Birthday TP - Born to rule the world

Born on the day of fools
Guided me in everything what I am
I regret we couldnt be together today
Unable to greet you directly
Praying things will go back to normal
Wishing you the best on
Everything you wish everyday
On your own special day!

Happy Birthday Brother!

Pongal - Software farmer's celebration

Pongal is one festival that people celebrate very grandly without basis of any religion. Though it would appear to be a Hindu festival if you are not clear of the history, a little knowledge would make you realize that it is a festival of the farmers for making a good produce in the last year. That is why it is also known as "Uzhavar Thirunal"(Farmer's day). And it is indeed a blessing that it is made a State Government holiday for all organizations even though its based on farmers only. This is mainly because Agriculture is considered the backbone of India; and it is true. But none of these mattered when you are a kid waiting for your dad to bring the long sugarcane that will lead to your mom shouting at you for leaving the chewed sugarcane bits all over the house.
Pongal in our home had always started with bitter very early morning wake up calls from my dad who says that we must be awake to greet the sun on the auspicious day. My answer is always to postpone the meeting for 5 more minutes and would get back to my sleep. But the lazy time will be over once we are ready for the prayers infront of the pot placed on the fire stove. With adding jaggery to the pongal and the pot overflowing like they show in our village movies, it would mean a fresh start of the busy day. The rest would go on with chewing sugar canes all day infront of the TV watching the special programmes in between the in-house fight for the remote. Honestly, Pongal is not an appealing one as food to me. I would prefer a festival on Dosa or Puri if we have to have Pongal(food), because the festival is named after that. (Or is it the other way around?). So the breakfast will include fights and cries for Dosa while my dad would be strict on making us eat Pongal only. But mom will always be there to help us out saying "He already had little after the prayers and that is enough.",(Little - Unquantified small quantity which might range from few rice grains to whatever fits in your finger tips.) and would start serving dosas to us.
This Pongal was a very different one though. With no one to command to wake me up, I said Hi to the sun when it was already up and was close to wishing "Good afternoon". But I had better plans for Pongal this time and decided to cook Pongal(food) in the evening. So when the evening came close, we got all the ingredients for making pongal and gathered a team of 5 including me. This includes Naren, Srikanth, Ajaz and Nimesh from the Track 3 team. Please be reminded that the team contains the building blocks of our project and any harm that my pongal might create would have a huge impact on the whole. So with much care, I(not WE) started preparing Pongal with the recipe from my mom. Everything was set and the cooker was kept on the stove and turned on(which I usually forget). The next step is to wait till the cooker whistles. But the wait turned out longer as the cooker being shy refused to make any whistles and hence did not tell us the status for a long time. With no prior experiences in cooking, we continued to wait with the logic that as the new cooker from Srikanth's home is double the size of our usual cooker, it might take double the time to cook. Though we are not sure whether we were dumb to wait double the time, it raised some doubts that the project is going to be a failure. Naren already started making curries separately as a backup. After a long wait for more than an hour and as the cooker was still feeling shy, we decided to make it whistle unnaturally by holding the vent-weight up to let the steam rush off. But I must say that the luck was on our side and when we opened the cooker atlast, the pongal looked bright and with jaggery and cashew added, the dish looked very close to the original Pongal and even the taste was certified to be very good by everyone. We even had fresh coconut slices to add special taste to it. Ajaz was very cautious though and waited 10 minutes after we have had my dish and checked if we are good and healthy before having for him. You can also find the recipe for the pongal(food) below which might be helpful if you are bachelor and have not had pongal in the recent past and might not be able to recall the actual taste.



Ingredients needed: (Serves 3 to 5 persons)

1. 1.5 cups of rice
2. 0.5 cups of split Moong dal(small light yellow colored)
3. 2 cups of milk
4. 5 cups of water
5. 4 tbsp (or about 1 cup) of Jaggery (You can add more if you like sweet)
6. 10 or more Cashews and raisins
7. 5 to 10 pieces of whole cardamoms
8. 3 tbsp(more if you like) of ghee

Step 1: Mix rice and Moong dal in cooker and wash it with water for two or three times.
Step 2: Once cleaned, drain the water away. Add 2 cups of Milk and 5 cups of water.
Step 3. Close the cooker lid and put on the vent weight and keep in the stove and keep the heat to high.
Step 4: Wait for a long whistle and then reduce the heat to minimum.
Step 5: Switch off the stove after 10 minutes.
Step 6: Once the pressure becomes low, you must be able to open the cooker. CAUTION: Do not open the cooker with force when the pressure is high. The cooker might blew up its contents and will cause serious injuries.
Step 7: Dissolve jaggery in little hot water separately and mix it well with the rice in the cooker.
Step 8: On a small pan, heat the ghee and fry cashews, raisins and cardamoms in it.
Step 9: Once it becomes hot, add the contents of the pan to the cooker and mix it well.
Step 10: Serve hot!

Phew! It is difficult to write the recipe without any silly jokes in it. Anyway, it is great to make a big social contribution to the bachelor community atlast.

HAPPY PONGAL!

New Year - Once again

Yes! 2008 is here. The year has changed again. Its been changing at an interval of 365 days for the last 3 times and at an interval 366 days before that. But for software professionals like us, the New Year rarely changes exactly at 365 or 366 days. For example, when 2005 started I was in India. But when it was changing to 2006, I was in UK which celebrated 5.5 hrs later than Indian time. So I enjoyed 365 days and 5.5 hrs in 2005. But then when the year changed to 2007, I was back in India by which I was in 2006 for only 355 days and 18.5 hrs. This appeared to have balanced the extra 5.5 hrs I enjoyed in 2005. But what can I say, this year I am in US and celebrated New Year 10.5 hrs later than the previous year which means there was 365 days and 10.5 hrs in 2007 and 'My Manager knows' how many days I will have in 2008. Its wicked that being in IT field makes even the calendar unpredictable.

And here are the questions for the New Year.

1. Where were you when the clock stuck 12 and the year changed from 2007 to 2008?
I was standing in the middle of the road, South Tyron street; 5th street to be exact. After being blocked entry from the dance club because they did not think I could dance with my Woodlands shoes or may be they got scared that I might hurt someone's feet. Explaining that the heels of the girl who went infront of us can punch a hole in every foot inside and my shoes are harmless compared to that did not impress the guards. So left with nowhere to party, we waited with the crowd for the light to change to green. And we were crossing the road when the clock showed 12:00AM with everyone busting to shouts and screams. Yes! I crossed the 5th street of South Tyron in the New Year eve.

2. Who was the first one to wish you?
Few minutes after the year changed, some drunk girl wished everyone on the road and unfortunately I was there next to her when she wished aloud those words that included the four lettered forbidden word in the middle.

3. Who was the first one you wished?
Srikanth. After returning to the car, we realized that we haven't really wished each other and said it before some other drunk can take the chance.

4. What did you eat first in the start of the New Year?
It took about an hour before I could taste anything in this New Year and it was a Milkyway chocolate bought for my last birthday laying frozen in the refrigerator.

5. The most important question: What is the New Year resolution?
My resolutions are very fragile in nature and I always leave them on the edge of the table which results in breaking them as earliest as I can imagine. But here are some resolutions that I probably should take for the New Year.

• Watch the calories - This is the resolution that I make and break almost every day.
• Think before you spend - Definitely important one considering the shopping spree I made in 2007. Atleast I must not buy anything more than the already existing purchase list.
• Follow Gita's words - I am talking about Bhagavad Gita here. "Do your duty. Don't expect its benefits"
• Spend more time on blogging - It is not a resolution. But its a desire towards my passion. This should not be a difficult one compared to the other resolutions.
• Learn cooking - After seeing the movie Ratatouille, I realized the true meaning of "Anyone can cook". But the question that remains is "Can everyone eat" what I cook?

!Happy New Year!

INJEY wishes you a Happy Diwali!

Lights to celebrate the victory of good over darkness
Sweets to wish happiness in all your life
Crackers to remove unwanted noises in the mind
Fireworks to wonder for an amazing future ahead.
Wishing you the best of everything in this wonderful day.

Happy Diwali!