Anger Management

While a lot of folks who know me can never guess it, I suffer from an acutely short fuse. When the stars align themselves just about right (which happens once a day), I get angry for every single thing. While age and a lot of public outbursts has taught me to bury the outward reaction to anger. What was not taught by the previous two factors was taught by a job wherein a lot of my time is spent in listening folks telling what is going wrong in their organization. And when you see there are folks who try to channel frustration to better themselves, you cannot help take a leaf and try to achieve that zen state when you can use your anger to make yourself better.

Talking about anger, I think the subject of my anger been, not very surprisingly, been my family. Any other mother or father would have completely disowned a son who in a spate of anger is prone to say anything that happens to be thought at that very instant. The only person in the family who perhaps should be fine with me is my anger is my sister, who has no fuse at all. In fact compared to her, I appear to be a shaanthaswaroopi! With most of the outsiders, when I know I'm angry, I just move away - knowing that all it takes is a couple of sentences to irrevocably break the rapport built over years. There have been occasions where I have snapped and have paid the price of burning bridges forever.

Recently there has been a lot of changes at work and unfortunately, there are people who have no clue about what their position entails with whom I have got to tango. Not exactly the ideal situation for a person like me. Last Friday perhaps was a day that could have ended up being really bad - the day was saved by a very good colleague/friend of mine who was on Lync chat with me who sent me the IMDB link to the movie above. It had a quick effect to get my ranting off - perhaps he was aiming at self preservation but seeing the link made me take a chill pill and perhaps get off the kool-aid train at the right time - I'm sure I would have fired off an email to someone which would have ended really, really badly. Already a couple of work folks inquired on Monday if everything was alright on Friday - they were unfortunate recipients of some of my emails that day! I know that there are folks who suffer from the same malaise as me - anger. I have, with experience, identified the following ways to control anger - sharing them here with the hope that I'm passing the wisdom :-)

• Physical Exercise: I once read Bjorn Borg (my third favorite Tennis player after Sampras, Federer) had a resting heart rate of 32 bpm. I have over the last year, made it a habit to eat healthy and work out - not necessarily pump iron - but to swing the racquet (Racquetball or Tennis) whenever I get a chance, making it a compulsory habit to run at least 30 miles a week. And recently, I got a low cost boxing bag which has allowed me to let the atrophied muscles let it rip when it rains/when I wake up late etc. As a result these days my normal resting heartbeat rate is 45-50 bpm. I initially I was scared that it was bradycardia, the absence of any other weird symptoms convinced me I was on the right track. A subsequent good effect has been that I have lengthened the short fuse - It takes a lot to get me angry these days. There are still certain buttons, punched in the right order can make me snap like a crocodile.
• Work & Allied Activity: I would (very loosely) classify myself as a technology enthusiast and spend a lot of my time reading (possibly useless) stuff on Engadget, CNet, Mashable, Techreview, Tech Republic, SmartPlanet and almost anything that talks about Cell Phones, Computers, Cloud Computing - thanks to this acquired interest for a guy who had no clue about what IMAP and POP meant 5 years ago, I was till recently considering setting up a home email server. Thankfully, Office 365 saved the day.

Hopefully I make progress on the new found Zen state of mind and not regress into an Adam Sandler mode!

Dream Come True

There were countless hours when I used to argue about Tendulkar versus Richards with my dad, Tendulkar versus Lara with classmates in school, Tendulkar versus Ponting in college. Just talking for Tendulkar gave me goosebumps, leave alone glorify him. If I had the opportunity to watch him play - which was sadly curtailed ever since the idiotic Set Top Box made its presence (rather, absence) known - there was untold joy. Straight Drives were imaged in the memory to be spoken about with friends the next day. Statistics were religiously studied, analyzed and thesis were presented on why he was God and others were not. Cover Drives and flick of the pads brought more smiles than deepavali crackers and badaam halwa. But as fate would have it, if there was Tendulkar batting at one end, the batsman at the other end would be Manoj Prabhakar (or Sanjay Manjarekar or Praveen Amre or Vikram Rathore..) casting a dark shadow on the unbridled joy of watching SRT bat. If at all irony had a visual definition, a random Indian batting score card in a game played in England/South Africa/Australia/West Indies between 1990 - 1996 will suffice.

Since 1996, SRT had two other sidekicks - Rahul Dravid and Saurav Ganguly. While one of them was a flat track bully and the other a technician of the highest order. Apparently, God had smiled on another God - or so it seemed. But combine some inept captaincy (1999), some Theevetti Dhadiyan attitude (2003, courtesy Sodha) and horrible planning (2007, Courtesy Greg. C), SRT could still not get the one thing that would foolproof his resume - the World Cup winner's medal.

2010 - An Indian Team where SRT is referred to as Paaji. And then, the captain, MS Dhoni. In my opinion, M.S. Dhoni is the best thing that happened to Indian Cricket since Sachin Tendulkar. Both of them have completely different batting styles - while one is the surgeon, working with finesse and precision, the other was a brute-force butcher. But it needed both of them combined to bring home the silverware that every person in my generation coveted and desired beyond a lot of other things. MS Dhoni has brought a quality that is often not found in a lot of Indian leaders - a straightforward approach and a never say die attitude. And best of all, consistent with the adage that "when the going gets tough, the tough get going", Dhoni just slapped all his critics with one masterful, mother-of-all-captain's-innings and father-of-all-under-pressure-innings in the WC Final.

SRT and Dhoni, both of you deserve to be venerated. You have made my 20 years of cricket fanticism culminate in a memory that will live with me forever.

My two favorite pictures from the final (courtesy: Cricinfo)

P.S: For morons who say MSD is lucky, you can be called lucky only when things go your way once in a while. When you get things done consistently, then the appropriate word will be "good" and not lucky.

Mathematics from the Mahabharatha

Hats off!! Click

To Whomsoever It May Concern

This is just a vent for my frustration - I know this really makes zilch difference to the issue at hand.

Dear Prime Minister's Office,

First off, congratulations for heading one of the most openly recognized corrupt Governments in recent history. An achievement that requires dedication, hard work, perseverance and of course, the X-factor which only the Congress Party can provide. After Kalmadi and Raja have had a field day with what used to be called as public money and after our beloved 'son of the soil' Rahul Gandhi has clearly and conclusively demonstrated why he should never be given the keys to his own apartment, you've managed to surpass all my expectations in one masterstroke.

Sachin Tendulkar is one of God's gifts to India. On this particular aspect, I want to make it clear that it is not an opinion or an argument being put forward, but an established and inarguable fact. Of course, with the entire (pseudo) secularism that is being spewed by Digvijaya Singh and the like, I should perhaps qualify that statement as Tendulkar is the Holy Father's / Allah's gift to India. I do not care if the news that was leaked was a rumor or not. Once there is this talk about presenting him with the highest civilian honor amongst the public and/or the media, the graceful (and respectful to Sachin) thing that you can do is to just go ahead and confer the honor on him. Sachin who has brought joy and pride to countless Indians deserves at least this much. Whether a player who plays for a club team (BCCI is not a Government organization - On a parallel track, thank God for that or else Sachin would have had to pay a bribe to the Sports Minister to have gotten into the team in the first place) deserves the highest civilian honor is a moot point as you have on multiple occasions conveniently recognized the BCCI Cricket team's achievements as possible and probable cause for National pride.

Bowing to this public pressure would surely not rank as one of your worst decisions in the last so many years. I understand that your blatant pandering to vote bank politics means that Kalmadi is removed from his post 3 months after the Common Wealth Games and our esteemed ex-minister A. Raja has the gumption to state that he is being targeted because of his socio-economic status (a new euphemism for caste), when even his own kid will tell him that he is being targeted because he was at the epicenter of one of the biggest scams in Indian politics/administration. And of course, your party sees it fit to have an alliance with one of the parties that was originally alleged to be behind the plot to assassinate an Indian Prime Minister (it is very convenient that the commission that investigated the entire matter gave a clean chit to everyone who mattered and their grandmother). After so many brilliant moves and decisions, actually, conferring Bharat Ratna on Sachin might be your best achievement in the current term at office.

Apparently, the reason being propagated for denying Sachin the honor is that he is too young. I do not know about the places where you come from, but as far as my (limited) knowledge goes, in almost all major sports realms, you achieve immortality before you are forty. And to a level of certainty we can safely state that what Sachin achieves after he is 40 and before he is 60-70 (or dead) will be definitely lesser than /equal to in magnitude to what he has already managed to achieve between 16 years and 40 years. If you are still going to maintain that he is too young, I would kindly entreat you to apply the same paradigm of constraints on Mr. Rahul Gandhi who has systematically and conclusively proved that he neither has a sense of history (RSS slight - I doubt whether he would know who Veer Savarkar is) and current affairs (saying Hindu Fundamentalists are the major threat to the country's security when fundamentalists from a particular religion periodically engage in long term ethnic cleansing in the Kashmir valley). Based on his (lack of) knowledge in history and current affairs, involving him in any capacity in the Government is a bigger threat than corruption, religious fundamentalism and other perceived threats, as it is precisely such ill informed folks who engage in the afore mentioned threats to the country.

Again, based on the 50 plus years of Congress rule, expecting you to do anything that would seem sensible and logical to most of the people in the country will imply I'm smoking a banned substance. The only silver lining is I can get away with it as long as I agree to pay the bribe.

2010 - The Year of SRT

To the man who has had a wonderful year - breaking ground on the 50 test centuries terrain and beating all the young, T20 bashers to scoring ODI's first 200 and of course, taking the Mumbai Indians to the IPL final - Sachin has done it all.

Truly, blessed are we to have been able to watch this genius in live action. If at all there exists anyone/thing that can be called God's Gift to India, SRT is the one.

Thanks to Cricinfo/Getty Images for the picture.

Endhiran!

**Posted in Claps and Boos**

Sci-Fi movies have been rare in Tamizh movies. The genre is a difficult one - especially given the fact that the exposure of people, to enable them to think akin to the Matrix or the Bicentennial Man, is going to be difficult outside of the major cities in TN. Shankar, thanks to Sujatha's collaboration (my suspicion), has been able to deal with the concept/question of 'what if machines could feel emotions?' in a way that is very layman friendly.

Instead of trying to do a structured review, I think let me collate things that made me clap my hands (nod to where I'm writing this!)

• Rajni Kanth - he is there in every scene of the movie and has stood up and delivered in a way that only he can. Thankfully, the movie had zilch heroism/image boosting scenes. Having said that, Rajni shows us a sneak peek into his power-packed performance days of 70s and 80s by playing the character of the Robot quite well. His robot character pretty much dominates the second half of the movie and if done badly would have caused a nasty stink. His comic timing, dialog delivery timing are almost impeccable and make us wish that he can turn the clock backwards and start growing younger. Of course, there were scenes where you were able to see through the make up of the scientist Rajni Kanth; But it is only a sad attestation to the fact even when he is 60 years old, there is no other lead actor who can take over the mantle from him. In terms of style and charisma, Rajni beats Vijay, Ajith, Surya, Vikram and all later actors put together black and blue. If any other actors claims to aspire to be the replacement to the Superstar title, they should be made to watch Endhiran and that will cure them of their conceit and vanity.
• Graphics/Props - for Tamizh Cinema standards, the special effects, props and graphics were fantastic. Special mention has to go the sequences with multiple robots and the scenes where the skeletal robot makes its appearances. Lots of times money is spent in tamizh cinema on song sets and costumes (Shankar himself being the guilty one lots of times) - but here Shankar (and of course Sun Pictures) have put the gargantuan budget to good use. The detailing in some scenes and real life dynamics that have been incorporated into some scenes were quite good, again, considering we are talking about a tamizh movie.
• Story/Screenplay - After some patchy work like Boys and Sivaji in terms of story and screenplay, Shankar makes a refreshing switch back to his halycon days of Mudhalvan, Indian with a solid story with a screenplay that kept me from looking at my watch for the entire running duration - a feat that only few tamizh movies have lived upto recently. Though not entirely flawless, I would say that Shankar's admission that this script was thought of a decade ago is true, given that is very well thought out and laid out like a crisp dosai!
• Background Music/Songs - ARR - enough said!

Try as I might, it is difficult to pick a negative (fanatics of arthouse cinema, indie film junkies and perfection pattabhiramans, will not be seeing this movie and would not be reading this review as well!); But if I had to, the only thing would have been that though Rajni Kanth pulled off the role of the robot, it would have been amazing to see him in his youth doing the same role.

After a really really long time, I have seen a tamizh movie in the theaters which has made me feel that it was worth every cent!! Not often do you see a costly and hyped movie living up to its expectations, but Endhiran does; and I think Shankar owed me a big one after ditching me and robbing me of my money in Sivaji!!

If you liked Endhiran as well, go ahead and review it at www.clapsandboos.com

Get Ready Folks!!

Thalaivar back to form. I hope Shankar does far better than Sivaji - The graphics in the movie is fantastic - almost comparable to Hollywood standards! Sep 24th, can't wait for it!!!!

Fake Email - A Rant

I keep getting these obviously fake emails - from places like Uganda, Nigeria etc. I really do not know which moron will even believe these fake-sters. In fact there is a variant of this that tells you that you are being offered a $10000 per month job in some god forsaken place on an oil rig. The next time I get that, I'm going to put it up here as well: So here is you dose of humor for the day:
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Attn:Sir/Ma,

This office received an instruction to release your payment.The chairman Africa union (au) in conjunction with his European union (eu) counterpart have agreed to ensure that the good relationship existing between them is re-echoed and therefore have decided to make payments to all beneficiaries been owned by Africa union member states via contracts,inheritance and lottery winnings/other related payments.

In their recent interview with British broadcasting co-operation (bbc) they agreed that the recent grant to African union be utilized for the payment of such debts through our bank. However the (au) secretariat will handle all the processing to avoid the battered image of our continent concerning financial transaction.

You are hereby requested to choose from the below options of payment for confirmation.

1) BANK TRANSFER:

Requirement : Your bank details.

2) BANK DRAFT:

Requirement :Your present home/office contact information.

3) Automated Telegraphic Machine (ATM)

Requirement :Your present home/office contact information.

We wait to hear from you .

Yours faithfully,

Mr Edward Van (SECRETARY).

AFRICA UNION SECETARIAT BENIN REPUBLIC).

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Abivaadhayae...

When you are the son in a household with one son and one daughter, you pretty much learn the basic fact that your role in the general auspicious days in the household is to be the 'edupudi', helping my folks to move objects, cleaning spaces and of course, going out to get the items for the festivities. The one day in the year when the guy in the house is given a token 'vanakkam' is on the Aavani Avittam. You get asked if you would like Poli or Sakkaraipongal. In spite of it being a fleeting moment of being attended to, it is a reassuring feeling.

Till the time I was in school, the advantage of studying in a 'nambalavaa' school was that Aavani Avittam was declared a holiday and the school used to start late on Gayatri Japam day. The only catch to the Aavani Avitam holiday was since you were not supposed to eat anything before doing sandhyavandhanam and the fact that typically the main food was served at 11am meant that you had to wake up early, bathe, do sandhyavandhanam, then go to the samithadhaanam and then do Kaamo-kaarsheeth japam and then the poonool changing meant that as soon as the 3 course meal was served, you pretty much crashed for 2 or 3 hours after that. The disadvantage with these one-off holidays in India is that once you sleep during the afternoon, once you wake up, you feel depressed that you lost the day. One more round of batchanam in the afternoon and religiously do the evening sandhyavandhanam (you feel guilty if you don't do it as the entire day revolves around the poonool) and do 'palakaaram' (consisted of good tiffin material - Dosai, Chappathi kinds) and then since I was supposed to not have rice, do a mega round of fruits after the tiffin and then go to bed. All this made the task of waking up on Gayatri Japam all the more difficult. You still had to, and you religiously use all counting tools (fingers, thannile kodu, dharbai pichu podudhal) you make sure you exactly say the mantram 1008 times. Then, the advantage of studying in the 'nambalavaa' school was that you could proudly display your 'nambalavaa' traits of forehead markings and kinda overdo the part by having painted wrist and arm markings. You and the most of your 'nambalavaa' classmates talk about how you did/did not do the 1008 thingy (this was in middle school). If you were in high school, then sufficient care was taken to wipe out the marking sufficiently so that there is just a hint of it, leaving people to guess whether your were religious or not. Oh, the stupidity you go through during adolescence.

Once you go to college, though the Aavani Avittam day goes as usual, Gayatri Japam does not come with a late start. So you hurry through the 1008 and you are extra careful to wipe out all traces of your early morning activities and you go to the college bus stop and take extra care to make it seem that it was just another day. The fact that I studied in one of the most wannabe colleges in Chennai meant that you had to publicly disassociate any link to 'nambalavaa' activities. You could either do this by going and eating 'chicken pizza' in Pizza Hut, eat from the same plate with nanbargal and do all those cinematic stuff or silently not commit to being a believer. You just shrugged off questions regarding Aavani Avittam and carried on as if it were just another day.

Once I came here, the first year was marked by an extra-ordinary enthusiasm to follow our rituals in this 'ayal'naadu. With typical trademark vetti scene that characterizes me, I not only went through the rituals myself but also forcibly dipped my two room-mates in the Aavani avittam sauce as well. But unfortunately, none of us could cook well and so we ended up going to an Indian restaurant and I ended up eating onion chutney - talk about irony. I think God kind of decided that I was too dangerous to be left alone and so I ended up being a part of the 3-S veedu, where one of the S, he of the perfect tambrahm cooking skills and the perfect vetti scene skills took me under his wing for all Aavani Avittam days. He pretty much made sure that I at least said the correct version of the chants (Dakshine paarswe v PaschimE Parswe) and made sure I did not do 'aagadha' karynam such as putting the discarded poonool on the Southern side or using the wrong pavithram etc. This year, I had to be travelling on Aavani Avittam. I always consider that sometimes coincidences seem to favor me. On that vein, I ended up travelling to the same city where S lives. And the height of coincidence being my work and hotel being 15 minutes away from his place. So I almost invited myself to his house in the morning and went through the ceremony and in the evening, went to his home and had dosai and chutney (made the authentic way using wetgrinder and India mixie). I have on various occasions, questioned whether God likes me or not, but today, I can say, I was one of God's favorite beings.

David McCandless: The beauty of data visualization | Video on TED.com

David McCandless: The beauty of data visualization | Video on TED.com

Sins Against Gender Stereotype Tag

After RealNirmal tagged me, he has at least on 10 occasions reminded me of how evil I'm to not complete a simple tag. From what I understand we gotta say traits in us that go against the typical gender stereotype.

1. Cleaning
I like to clean my apartment, car, desk.. whatever that can be cleaned. I'm quite religious when it comes to cleaning that I get multiple cleaning utilities - Clorox Wipes, Microfiber cloth etc. I do not mind if things are scattered around and look clumsy, but I cannot bear to see things with a layer of dust or strands of hair on the floor etc. The only time that I do not clean is when I'm mentally preoccupied. In fact, when I'm going through phases of unhappiness/distress, the first signs of it are a dirty car and apartment. I also love to clean my utensils. I believe more in me cleaning the utensils than on the dishwasher. Talk about being an engineer.

2. Shoes
I have a collection of shoes - literally. I cannot wear the same pair of shoes to work two consecutive days. I have a belief that if I wear the same pair of shoes everyday, I'd put my foot at risk of an infection.

3. Shaving
I hate shaving. While I know its good to sport different beard styles, one of my secret wishes is for some technology to either make shaving a monthly once activity or, better, once-for-all activity.

4. Gambling/Poker
While anyone who is someone knows to play the Texas Hold'em, I do not know ANYTHING about Poker. In fact through most of the movie 21, I was just wondering what the hell the game was. I have never been to a casino or Vegas. My only reason to Vegas, if at all, would be to see the sights and shows that are famous.

I really cannot think of anything else being my sin against my gender.

I really do not believe in tagging folks, so if you are interested, go ahead and spill the beans.

American Airlines - Sucks - Part II

http://www.cnn.com/2010/TRAVEL/08/18/new.airline.fees/index.html?hpt=T2

No more reason to board the flight for fools.

American Airlines

I generally try to avoid American Airlines, the company that has led the way in customer dissatisfaction for a long while now, in my opinion. Though they might whip out some random study that shows they are best or whatever, my co-workers and I have all had really bad experiences with them, consistently. Yesterday was no exception. At Dallas Fort Worth airport, the flight to Tampa had its gate changed three times, and each time from one corner of the terminal to the other. And the icing on the cake being there was not even a hint of an apology from the personnel announcing the gate change. They had the smugness that comes from the knowledge that the passengers have already paid money and are about to be screwed, one way or the other. And the flight was delayed by an hour and 15 minutes and again, till we got into the plane, there was no hint of any reason as to why it was delayed or an apology. Once we got in, there was an apology all right, but for all the passengers, there was no reason offered as to why they are being delayed on a flight for which they have paid money in advance.

All this reiterates my opinion that American Airlines is one of the worst airlines companies in America. Never again will I make the mistake of booking a ticket with them, even if the next ticket is 100-200 dollars more expensive.

Homo Phobia and Intolerance

With the recent ruling in California annulling Proposition 8 - Marriage Protection Act, immediately, a section of population erupted saying that Planet Earth is going to be overrun by Homosexuals and all that.

It is quite interesting to note how people have labelled a particular trait in humans that has been scientifically ruled out to be a conscious choice is generating so much of intolerance from folks. Given enough padding for the demographic inequalities, I can surely make a statement that the number of heterosexual sex offenders is greater than homosexual offenders - the dehumanizing that section of the population seems to more a result of the fear of the unknown than anything that is qualified.

As soon as I make an argument like this, the immediate question from some acquaintances is whether I'm gay. While it is interesting to see that people assume that if you are just portraying how intolerant people are, they assume that you have a personal stake in the issue. While I have never had a gay friend/acquaintance (at least not openly or known to me), I don't think I can see a couple of guys making out (I exactly stopped watching Sean Penn's Milk in the first 5 minutes and I never had the gumption to see 'those' parts of Brokeback Mountain), I don't think that should influence my tolerance towards a microcosm in the population that is increasingly being portrayed as evil, sex maniacs and what not.

While this is one side of the story, the homosexual populace does not endear itself to the other section by displaying outright 'weird' habits - like guys sporting perfectly shaped eye brows, wearing some ill fitting clothes and of course talk without any 'raagam' and feminine hand movements and all that. The other day, at the airport I saw a guy who was wearing a ill fitting Golden jacket and a big peacock feather on his neck. All this outward declarations and crazy dressing does not help this group to be seen as just another group of people by the section which is already scared of what it does not know/understand.

But the biggest surprise has to be Glenn Beck supporting the ruling and of course, my question to Comedy Central is when they are planning to screen Sarah Palin interviews as a part of regular programming.

Sachin

Perhaps the most well remembered part of my childhood would be watching SRT bat. I did not have the opportunity to see Albert Einstein or P.G. Wodehouse. But I will always be glad that I saw SRT in action. To me when it comes to the art of batting, there is God, then there was Bradman and now it is SRT. {In ODIs he is in a level of his own - but the World Cup scar remains! :( }

I think I can tell generations after me that I have watched Sachin play live in action - and I think that shall define the sports experience of my age. There cannot be a more hounded public figure who has never had any scandals or gossip or other dirt attached to him. There has been no other player who has simply represented India on the wold stage like he has and like he will.

To the best possible man to achieve the ultimate feat of longevity in tests, Salute!

Food for Thought

A very interesting (albeit old) set of videos:

Trivial - No More

I have, over the last one year, had the opportunity to see the impact of online persona over the actual persona. Recently, a few of my friends launched Claps and Boos, which is based on the desire of people to be socially networked online and the other big interest of most Tamizh makkal/Desis - movies. As a part of doing some spadework, I realized how much people let others know of themselves online.

I have over the last one year, hoped to maintain some form of online anonymity. I make sure my updates on Facebook is seen only by people whom I know and trust, deleted my Orkut account and of course, culled out most of the personal references from my blog as well. While people have called me anything from paranoid to being a jerk to keep most of my facebook friends on the other side of the wall (pun intended), I can only say that there is some method to the madness.

Family - Previously when I was in high school, college, there was an easier way to keep family and friends apart - but now it is beginning to get difficult. When a friend puts one number risqué comment on my wall/blog, I'm quite at a dilemma as to what to do. I hate to delete people's posts/comments as I do not believe in censorship - but, I can only imagine my mom doing a double take seeing some of the stuff that my friends seem to say/write. I have not solved this one just as yet as the only other way is to put my family on the other side of the wall - which will have serious repercussions which I do not desire. Right now, I think my family is becoming sane enough to realize what to see and what not to see. :) And recently, when Orkut Tamizh Cinema Community was hacked by a moron and was held to ransom, I realized how open/vulnerable personal information is when some idiot tries to hack you over reasons that are so stupid, that it is not worth risking your family's online information - especially when you have a substantially younger sister. Nothing is worth seeing your family pulled into the public over some stupid (non-)reasons

Work - Recently, when my company was trying to hire someone, my manager walked up to me and asked me to do some Facebook/LinkedIn research on a potential candidate he is vetting. even though I knew since 2006 that people were looking into these stuff, being asked to do that and finding some information that was really not pleasant to report to my manager has created a permanent scar on me to ever attempt a completely transparent online profile of any sort - especially Facebook which is supposed to be a completely personal application. I do maintain that I try to have a different set of actions at work - just because of the industry we work for, I cannot be as opinionated as I'm in my personal life. So, that has a great deal in this desire to be anonymous.

Friends - This is one of the prime reasons, though its been listed third; I have over the course of last few years, gotten to know some fantastic people online - with Blogeswari, Hawkeye and MeThinks topping the list, who, I would have never known if not for the internet. In fact, internet has also been responsible for me knowing RealNirmal better from the image I had of him from my college days - he had a particular nickname which was not easy to like, you see! :)  But for the past couple of years, I have been waging a battle against many of my friends' perceptions of what certain comments/blog-posts/wall posts mean. While I have completely avowed my lack of trust/interest over finding any kind of relationship online, people seem to want to give their own spin to what I say, the pictures I post etc. This is fine when it happens to be tongue in cheek comments from people I know well, but sometimes some idiots online do not know the level of liberty to take and barge in on a completely personal thread with a friend. Decidedly random acts of adding people, liking something online are given twists to bizzare, that I have stopped accepting any friend requests from people I do not know!


To summarize, I want to see whether I can doctor/cultivate my online image. I have already seen some success as some of the folks who read my blog think I'm an extreme right wing guy, while people who talk to me in person are of the decided opinion that I'm quite on the other side of the world. So far so good, lets see!

Bad Fake Prank

Endhiran - Sneak Peek

You saw it first here! :D

$75,000 Needed

For all those of you who think you owe me something, please feel free to contribute towards this expense. I accept checks, credit cards, cash and for the really interested, the book itself.

Please note that any dhaanam and dharmam done towards one number ezhai brahmanan will make your life sezhuchify.