The hahaha of "ha" !!

coughs...and more cahoughs...oh and then I realize I am not coughing...actually I am “cahoffing”...It’s the sound of someone trying embarrassingly bad enough, to belt out a "ha" sound...Its high pressure situation...It’s like when Chandler's shouting at the back while Joey takes a piss…OMG! I realize I just couldn't place a simple "ha" correctly between syllables...believe me it's not like "arrey boss!! It’s after all a simple ha"...If you can't give the correct "ha", just go hang yourself...It’s as different as "shit - sit"…

Once we room mates were waiting for a taxi, when an empty taxi zipped past us...I, in my "killer" Hindi said, "woh taxi kaali hai na! kyun nahi roka usse"....and my friends who by then are in ROTFL mode, sarcastically says "he he! We know the taxi's black”... and several more rounds of LOL! LOL! Then I realize I was supposed to use K-H-A-A-L-I...then I am like so frustrated and ask my friends ‘Why is there so many kaali's a) kaali b) khaali c) gaali’, and one friend adds another one "khaali" which is like "he/she ate"... I was diligently registering it my grey cells, just when this another bugger clarified that it’s like "khaa-li" ... two separate words and not the same...bechaara, he didn't know that it's all the same to me...

And btw I was almost threatened of losing my offer if I aint gonna pronounce my firm's name rite...yeah it’s not Anand Rathi (as in the yester year hindi/tamil film actress), but RAAT-HEEEEE...oh puleeeeezz...

Let’s see another dimension of this cursed "ha"...Some words are pronounced the same in English-Hindi....like "bhook-book", hmm...”chuck-chaka"?? Hehe...ok ok!! that was little exaggerating...but then why leave Tamil, we have "thaali" which can mean a sumptuous palate in Hindi, but then its Mangal sutra in Tamil...let’s consider a south boy-north girl marriage and let’s assume the only common language is English...imagine the newlywed saying "I don’t like the thaali to her in-laws" or the guy telling her that "the thaali hurts during the night" and she might just misunderstand that he is complaining of indigestion! BECHAARA-that-he-is!

neways I am going back to Worli sea face and immerse myself and do "Saathagam" to get the perfect "ha"..Till then its "Shreeram" - if neone calls me Sreeram...gonna kill them - signing off!

Heavenly Life !! A hourly report on a disgustingly lazy day in a week long hol back home !!

Disclaimer: the structure of this blog is one gr8 thin i learnt from my fellow blogging friends..nevertheless my first attempt

8.00 am: (amma shouts) Sriraaaaam !! ezhundirumaa.. mani 8 aachu ... sooda kaapi tharen..

9.00 am: (appa 's warning) Dei !! ezhunduraaa dei !! (plz note the stark difference in approach here)

10.00 am: (amma again..really frustrated with my laziness) ezhundhurda kannu !! takkunu pal thechuttu vaa pappom (she really does think i am a child still) and ofcourse amma knows given a chance i might ask for bed coffee skipping the 'brushing the teeth' part !!

(and appa rejoins with his stern voice) thambi (i dunno why he calls me tht???) this is the last time I am telling you (by this time I know I gotto save my ass from getting kicked)

11.00 am: I while away some time in facebook, gmail, orkut checking out whether my friends are as lazy/ vella as I am (and then getting a sadistic pleasure when couple of them confirms it with their 'smart ass/ totally crap' status messages)

by this time I get another request from my dear parents to cleanse my "pon meni" (simply put...to take a bath) and amma ofcourse provides incentive for me by tempting me with hot, hot potato fried curry, ghee rice, saambar, tomato rasam, appalam (papad) ... (by the time you finish reading this I am already in my bathtub..he he)

12.00 pm: I am drinking my kheer with gay abandon .. amma wud ask me to rest and funnily try to get me away from the idiot box (however unluckily for amma, some of the best afternoon-after meal films wud be screened like "chinna counder") the window shades will provide the right ambience, pillow and bed once again become ur best friends and life goes on :D


3.00 pm: By the time the film (or may be a set of snack + films) get over, its coffee time (yes u r right...amma is the best creation of god yet) ... I drink away to glory wiping the creamy layer/ froth at the top all the way till the "sugar-concentrated" last drop !!

4.00 pm: time to check out the useless online paper, news paper, business magazines - jus to keep in touch with the world, I say to myself and console - (these are the ill effects of working full time...boo hoo) and then try to get an appointment with clients in chennai, so that it doesn't entirely become a good-for-nothin holiday :(

5.00 pm: time for checkin my mailbox, (and also check desperately/pathetically whether someone has replied or commented on ur facebook status :P) upload some pics on orkut showcasing you are the best narcissicist around

6.00 pm: Its time for kovil with dear amma leading the proceedings and convincing me to come along for want of best health, success, et al (and ofcourse I believe temples have a slightly high probability of success than beaches and multiplexes, if you are in serach of your "ONE")

7.00 pm: make some calls back to mumbai checking out on my 'not so vetti' friends (how the days been? hows work? ) ..by this time they would want to kill me for having a wonderful boss who gave me one FULL week off and promised to not give any work back at home...and to pour oil in fire, I would relate the menu for the day and wats gonna be up for dinner (hmm..my friends would console themselves rightly believing I would pay my dues once I set foot in Mumbai next weekend)

8.00 pm: Dinner time !! (I am sure after starting to work, home is where you seriously eat timely food)

9.00 pm: Back to idiot box !! sports, news, cinema and wat not.. (by this time appa gets irritated at my equally irittating habit of flipping channels in lightning speed) .. and currently Star Vijay is my favorite regional channel for their crystal clear differentiation in format and content !! good work !!

10.00 pm: Time for last ditch effort for a "funny" status on facebook!! (disheartened that the traffic to my homepage is on a de-growth phase) .. Orkut has become boring, uploading fotos is the only past time there (and ofcourse for birthday wishes)...Chat windows open, kadalai starts 'right-left-centre'..

11.00 pm: Time for a late night movie (nothing beats the worst punishment of unnecessarily straining the eyes and addictedly watching yet another brain numbing "romantic comedy") ..this movie watching time will be intercepted by appa's yet again stern voice booming from the bedroom warning me for the umpteenth time to hit the bed (as of amma - poor soul, after all the days work she will be dead tired to even discuss things)

1.00 or 2.00 am: I hit the bed thinking loud as to how lucky am I to have such a tension free, irresponsible life ;-) then suddenly it strikes me and I am not the least bit liking it.. all my dearest co-working souls by now might have realised wats it about...I WANNA REWIND BACK...

Noooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo...

Its ok.. Good night guys :)

Dilli 6 n after thoughts !!

Atlast ! I got myself to write another post - Now this is where i go 'Thankgod ! my mind hasn't gone really numb..i do ofcourse hav something to say' Yessss!!! I can still blog. Atleast twice a month I had felt, my dearest blog needed my attention. On the other hand this post is primarily for the following reason.

"Yellow yellow durty fellow, residing inside my head" has been so frustrated to get suddenly inundated with so much ****-- he still abuses me for taking up this analyst job -- so giving him some respite I had to unload my 'funny/not so funny' thoughts. My 'little yellow man' can now put these in his infinitely large subconscious space, so that his primary memory is cleared for further intake of data.

Coming back to the post now !! Its been ~2 months since I saw Dilli-6. And I chose it as my theme this time out of a zillion random thoughts for filling up some blog space. I decided to do a simple exercise. How many pincodes I have been associated with in my life???? Ahh..I personally recommend this exercise to people who wanna feel nostalgic and shed some tears for lost innocence!! So here it goes,

- my baby girl days (yeah i was dressed up like girl for my first 2 years) in Triplicane, chennai - 600005
- my infancica delight in Egmore, chennai - 600008
- my elephancy terror (yeah my beshht friend was Miss.A'di'pose) in Pallavaram, chennai - 600043
- my milk-spilling teens (Paal vadiyum they say) in maals filled Adyar - did i spell tht rite?? - Chennai - 600020
- mein 'MBA ban chatha hoon' days in Vastrapur, ahmedabad - 380015 (this phase also ended a passive existence inside Chennai fort for 20 years. I shud say I was well guarded..)
- transformation from wastrel food (dhanda soru, they call !!! ) to workaholic (hehe..i am not high) in all encompassing Mumbai - 400030

I can include some other meaningful existence like my internship at Hyderabad - 500081 and I am strictly excluding holiday destinations, and places where I didnt stay for more than a month.

ofcourse i was trying to see a pattern!! and ofcourse i was able to !! its really 'odd' that the numbers 7 and 9 didn't feature in any of those pincodes listed above ... now tht's eureka moment, isn't it????????? WAT CAN THiS MEAN??? frankly i have been quite indifferent to these nos. So i think they have decided to take revenge by not featuring in any of my dwelling's pincodes. B-E-C-H-A-R-A. Anyways i think we are 'even' now :P

hmmm...i seriously have no idea why i am writing all this :(

What next !!

Ok this is what happened a few months back. I promised my friends that I will update my blog once a month (read as poor souls who committed to read my blog without fail whenever I felt like pu*i*g in this space). Now thank god I didnt promise on any content specifically and took the more safer route of "randomness galore".

Then I even tried to be smart and if you have ever had the time to read my blog's masthead it would proudly display "Dhodaa..Blogger's Envy". Now few of my dosts didnt get what I wanted to convey (clue: as though I wasnt guilty of stealing Onida's catchline). I convinced myself it wasnt a great one liner after all.

While I talk of all these things I am trying to understand why in the first place I sat to write a blog. May be a post to 'Fed's Bear-nakki' and 'Treacherous Paalsaamy' on my thoughts about US economy would have been a better idea (coughs..coughs...ok I am stoppin right there). So what is it

*Is this month special?
*or is it a forced post to just make sure the blog's active?
*or is it like, "hah any way I am not gonna sleep in another 1 hour, let me write somethin"?
*or I wanna make my friends remember that I havent stopped bloggin yet?

Nayyyy!! Gotcha!! Actually I wanted to check whether it is possible at all to just sit in front of your blog screen and write just on the flow without any premeditated "MS-word" ing and posting the edited stuff. Ok atleast I was doing that just to make sure my thoughts are put in a neat way.

Ok coming back to the "why?", I feel this month was indeed special. One fine monday morning the world was in for a shock.

**World over markets are 'Bear'ish and investors are spooked at its 'Stern' look.

**National Geographic played a unique clip of usually non-venomous 'BOA's saving a group of 'Merry' go lucky backpackers. The latter were ready to be 'lynched' by some blood thirsty tribe after they lost their way in the deep, wily Amazon forests.

**And yet again it was proved 'Layman' have only superficial knowledge in their field of work.

**Warren got the 'Gold'en egg (and he hasnt killed the goose yet) and in turn he laid out a 'Buffet' and the paparazzi observes that he wasnt too big a fan of 'Stanley' kubrick's films.

**Hmm..for some reason I remembered 'G.I.A' the film where Angelina a model with voluptuous assets to her credit, got entangled in a deeply gratifying but risky web of lesbian relation and drug addiction

**HSBC is rumoured to start its new 'SBU' (the term strategic business unit was coined in Switzerland ages back during their industrialisation era. OK ok!! I just made that up)

Hey hey hey!! and 'How I met your mother' 4th season premiered this month Sept 22nd. Marshall is without a job (US recession n unemployment..the writing is on the wall), Robin is gonna apply for a new job (hmm..), Ted so badly wants Stella to love 'Star wars' his all time favourite movie in space-time continuum, Lily is so thrilled that 'sex-god' Barney has finally found love, n guess who, its the fabulous, stunning n wonderful Robin. Now this is where audience goes like "Is barney out of the cast?, Hav they replaced the character with his long lost anti-thesis twin". However Barney hasnt lost his 'being inappropriate n weird' streak after all as he sermonizes us on how bimbos are cool, and how he doesnt confuse sex and love (for Gods sake!! Audience sigh a breath of relief) .

On to other topics for the coming week, if you are a music fan and specifically Hariharan's then dont miss his Ghazal Show at Kings circle on Oct 2nd. Details are in Bombay times' centre page, and one ticket centre I remember is "Rhythm House" at Fort.

Only sad news is that I havent been able to watch "Saroja" given the fact that it did have a run in Mumbai for 2 weeks. More embarassing is that my friend who knows jack shit of tamil went to the movie and now recommending it on his Gchat status.

"Enna koduma saravanan idhu"

Hmm...Thts all folks!!! looking forward to a 'cracker' of a post next month.. Tchus :)

Chembaite or Munnaite ????????

Sounds not so funny a title right? Is it just to GRAB ATTENTION !!!!! [not to mention my insane efforts by posting my blog address on Gchat, Facebook, Orkut] .. hmm .. still puzzled though? let me give you some idea about the month’s happenings..

Yours truly arrived in Mumbai [yeah guyzz.. I am gonna earn my bread n butter here for some time] and

much delightful is that the city welcomed me [you know that feeling...a gentle, positive vibe] and

I witnessed what it really means when they say “Mumbai doesn’t stop L-I-V-I-N-G for god sake”. It’s that time of the year when as a Chennaite I would have felt really happy for a change in weather. Forward to Mumbai, cabs ply with half their tyres immersed in the puddle created, people are knee deep in water and believe me nothing stopped functioning or ceased to exist in Mumbai. Who gives a shit about whether the “dadar - eastern line” has become non functional or not. [legs, auto, bus and ofcourse T-A-X-I (eeeeeeee),Fort chalenge? Cabbie nods, you get in and off you go. When myself and my colleagues quizzed a cabbie how many cabs run in the city, no wonder he said 1 lakh] and

my worst of dreams came true when I was “chilloued” by a cab-driver, for giving mixed signals, courtesy my “pandit level” hindi and

I am working on a lot on excel nowadays – (aap sochtha, mein zyaada kaam karta hoon) – hmm shayad.. the working goes like this. One sheet for hindi nouns, another for FSHW (Frequently Spoken Hindi Words), another for verbs and tense, and yet another for prepositions. Frankly I don’t know how many more sheets will be appended, but believe me when I say, I haven’t worked so dedicatedly for learning a language to get my tense, grammar, pronunciation rite [even for my mother tongue, Tamil] and

continuing from where I left at Chennai, my friends from the fatty brigade of wada, dosai, onion pakoda got some competition in Mumbai in the form of wada paav, pyaaz bhajji and

you guess, who’s started cooking ;-) The root of my inspiration lies within lot of facts, that I wanted to badly continue my new found passion during my exchange program to Barcelona, and that my cunning soul wants all of my “pathla dosts” sharing apartment with me to put on oodles of weight [2 bottles of oil used, innumerable kgs of potato cooked and it goes on] (and that includes my Hindi tutor Jammy! Ingratitude you would say!! Help that poor soul! He cooks along with me!), and

not to mention, of course I am in the savings phase of my life [who gives a damn if it’s the same rice, dhal, potato-pyaas curry, rasam all through the week. Who wanna dine outside !! ]. It seems Einstein once observed that the “eighth wonder in the world” is the power of compounding. So my fraands, start making some savings and do some investments [ok. if you are puzzled still why this observation, that’s my pitch as a representative of financial services to make you guys create wealth] and

you know what, seriously I don’t give a damn about being a chembaite or a munnaite, becoz Mumbai cabbies are gonna continue extending their friendliness, I am gonna gobble up wada paavs as diligently as ever, be awed during the special monsoon life, while at the same time thrown into nostalgia of the Marina beach, “mulagai bhajji”, Captain’s ossum flicks, Rajni frenzy, dear tam friends and all…

Oops…have to get up very early tomorrow for an important meeting. Gracias for a patient reading, watch out this space for some more L-E-G-E-N-D [wait for it] A-R-Y stuff [yeah... HIMYM rox]

:D

!! SUMMER SPECIAL !!

Sport: let’s say F1 (atleast to virtually satisfy my unsuccessful quest to achieve high speeds on Chennai roads)

Venue: Chennai (track covers atleast half of Chennai and other highlights will follow below)

Laps: approximately 60 (because at the end of my 54^th lap, there’s a connecting flight to Mumbai, beautiful take-off expected, courtesy some gorgeous synergy between Deccan and Kingfisher)

Time taken per lap: 24 hrs to be precise

Highlights of this marathon race:

*Tracks might have unknown racers with much bulkier vehicles, may be the poor fellas don’t know the rules of the game. Pedestrians are as unruly as in the NFS 2 format. This is the latest version which I have played :P. Of course the latest I heard is that even the “know-all-about-NFS” freaks do not skip the intro featuring ‘Josie Maran’ in the 2005 version

*There are two or three beaches alongside giving the racer a feeling of Monaco ;-). That’s a bit too much. I know ;-)

*PIT STOPS adorn the tracks on either side with unfaltering frequency, their main objective being re-energizing the cells after the heat has taken a heavy toll and keeping me in healthy condition. The beauty is that the pit stops are managed by different people under various formats, famous being

Gym – Well, well!! Same old story of “joining with great spirit-one goal-killer instinct-fight the fatty army-reduce calories-follow the strict diet regimen etc” ending up in “quitting after 10 laps-irritatingly switching of the early morning alarm-late night shows-idling with friends-gossiping about IPL-and knowingly gobbling up any pizza, samosas, burger, potato wedges on sight etc”. Net effect is neutral

Multiplexes - which have their own mega credit draining system, all for watching brain-numbing movies and what with that additional mental agony of gaining those hard fought calories in the gym. Net effect is neutral again as atleast I get the relief in the company of my fellow racers having their own “summer specials”

Close relatives houses (where a small % of drained out cash comes for a few bending exercises, read as namaskarams – so what, tax free capital gains). Net effect is +ive what with love and affection for a life time.

Of course the plush offices of my cousins and friends, where cafeterias atleast motivate me to visit often. Net effect is +ive (not for my friends though :D)

And last but not the least, my own habitat, managed by my old man. However the way he is gymming and walking, his age has started on the reverse counter. Apart from the free advice, there is a never ending debate in this PRIMARY PIT STOP as to what other pit stop formats I can visit, how often and how much to spend etc. Anyhow they still allow me the benefit of inflating my tyres (the latest update is that I am very close to getting a 6-pack abs) whenever I wish to.

*Now there is this idling period for atleast 6 hours, the length subjective to how much exerting the previous lap has been. All PIT stops are closed at this hour to reenergize themselves to start the cycle again for the next lap.

*No prizes for guessing that there is no winner in this race

Hey guys, you would be wondering how the race has been going. I somehow feel this has been my best summer special race, what with technology developing so much. Wondering again ???

I was just referring to using my laptop for this blog post while I am being mobile on my 34^th lap. Its late evening and in a few hours my PRIMARY PIT STOP is going to specially screen “Chennai Sooper Kingz battling it out with Rajasthan Royals”.

Tchus !!

Interesting "issue"

Lets start with what's hot and special in Chennai "NOW"..Apart from the usual reply that "Chennai itself is soooo hot yaar" types , I could come up with

1. Chennai Super Kings led by aggressive Dhoni - news is that he is shaking a leg with "Ilaya Thalapathi (Young Knight)" Vijay and "I am slim now" Nayanthara for a promo directed by Rajeev Menon
   
2. Steaming hot coffee in Saravana bhavan - evergreen :D
3. hmm..come to think of Kollywood, we have Genelia or may be even Illeana, considering "Jalsa's" tremendous run at Sathyam Multiplex
4. oh!! how can I forget the soon to come AR Rahman live in Chennai this Sunday

However the "hottest of all" award should go to the "India's Masthead", the Times of India - quite close to 30% English speaking population in India read it, which no other competitor has achieved - which is keen on following it's strategy of, "I try to monopolize whichever market I step in". Chennai proved to be an elusive market for this Indian newspaper giant, and some officials at Bennett, Coleman & Co. Ltd have even accepted the fact that moving into Chennai was like the "Final frontier". It's quite obvious that everybody would want to have a share of this "big apple pie" (let alone not screw up the consumer habit and tastes, a la American Pie shtlye !!!, by offering a lot of blahh and sexed up material in the name of news).

The Times of India started circulation on April 14th 2008 at Rs.2, and quite naturally The Hindu is now being circulated at Rs.2.50 (it was Rs.4 before, for some special reason, as though it never expected a credible competition capable of bringing about a price war). The competition has brought some new flavor and quality, which was very evident in its first Chennai issue.


Times' editors have been harping on this customization aspect that has helped them achieve wide circulation in Bangalore, Hyderabad, Ahmedabad, Mumbai etc and its believed some poaching has already been done.

Though the paper has indeed got a fairly decent response over the first week (coupling its circulation with ARR show coupons etc), it's been studied that changing consumer habits in this industry is a very tough thing, for eg. if we take the operating system we work on, consumer's still prefer working with Windows, even though we may get pissed off to press "ctl+alt+del" when we don't know what happened and then waiting for computer to reboot. However, Gartner has reported that Microsoft has a big task ahead of itself to retain its market share (from Linux, Mac) as consumers are preferring OS that are more agnostic to applications running over it (lets have this argument though it is applicable more for techies). So its observed atleast people might change preferences if another product is satisfying with good functionality and great performance. Though it is not fair to compare the OS and newspaper market, its not that unfair either, since its as hard to make a person shift preference to another newspaper just because it's selling quite cheaply (the discussion is more bordering on emotional elements people attach to the 'daily', like 'hot coffee + hindu crossword' or 'after jogging + Editorial /politics+ Chai' or 'steam bath + home food + Friday review'. There is an inherent assumption that the content is not diluted for lesser price). So may be Times of India has a chance after all...

Another important issue is whether Times of India can sustain its "low price entry strategy". The discussion though applicable at the national level, I am restricting to how it may affect in the Chennai context. The industry depends on imported "Newsprint" for 55% of its usage. Many big dailies like Times of India use this high quality imported print. The not so rosy picture is that current newsprint costs 1000$/ tonne internationally (an increase of close to 50% over last two years). The dailies (english and regional) have already expressed their views that, the rising production costs could be met by

1. Reducing no. of pages or suppliments
2. Resorting to low quality indigenous newsprints
3. Passing the costs to advertisers (ads might become costly)
4. Passing on the cost to consumers

Considering Chennai, the first two options may not be possible for established big national dailies (quality concerns, and obviously they cant do away with the sweet smell of fresh newspaper in the morning). Third option is not a great one as ads might go to a competitive bidder, as Chennai is not a monopolised market. The last option is to be taken seriously, as Times of India can resort to that option for Chennai in near future if it is not able to see breakeven (considering huge circulation risks in achieving target and consumers aversion to shift preferences). Its not that improbable considering Deccan Chronicle has raised its issue price by 50 paise over last few years.

However these are still early days, and lets wait and see whether Times of India will emerge victorious and how other dailies counter attack "content-wise". The commodity prices not seeming to coming down, interesting things are to unfold in this industry !! Bless Globalization !!!!!