gajabhuja funda

pelican-4

A pelican taken on a visit to Nallapattu bird sanctuary. More pics up in my flickr page here

Posted by Unknown at 12:19 PM 3 comments

Viswanathan Anand Radio Interview

And so there was this interview with Vishwanathan Anand today morning on the Radio network (Hello FM, 106.4). In the middle of pseudo's who tend to use English (with their fake accents, of course), while talking on a medium like Radio, here's a guy who was talking in plain and simple Tamil. Neat.

Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 9:31 AM 1 comments

Nice one

Got this interesting image as a e-mail forward.

Note to Indians, please, for the love of Mary or whatever, stop buying Ford and Chevrolet brands. They are nothing but petrol drinking machines. I am amused whenever I see a Ford Endeavor or a Chevrolet Tavera pass me by.

Heck, those gas guzzling pieces are being rejected even in the country where they are being made, and morons out here flock to buy them.

Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 11:54 AM 0 comments

Poo Vaadai Katru

Another of Illayaraj'a amazing work with guitar pieces far ahead of its times, in 1982, to be precise. This song is from the movie Gopurangal Saivadhu Illai. As is his wont, Illayaraja gave some excellent songs for Mohan, and this one is no exception.

Check out the string arrangement carefully to relish it.

Shyam

Tags: Illayaraja,

Posted by Unknown at 3:31 PM 0 comments

Firefox Video Downloader

Many a times, when you are watching some video in youtube or some other website, you see a "Embedding disabled by request", and you are then left wondering as to why this jerk took the trouble to upload a video, yet does not want people to download and enjoy it at leisure.

Anyway, if you are using firefox (you are missing something if you do not use it), here is a cool extension, or rather a toolbar, which helps you to download the video.

Note that I am not talking about windoze users as I believe the latest version of real player helps you to do the same.

Shyam

Tags: Firefox, Youtube

Posted by Unknown at 2:06 PM 0 comments

Point to Ponder

I am quite sure that this post may have its fair share of hate mails. But then again, this blog exists for the sole purpose of venting out my puke and hence, here it goes.

The Malegaon blasts happened sometime back. A female sadhu was arrested. She is being put to trail. Almost all the news channels went to town claiming that the perpetrators were Hindu terrorists. In fact, if my memory serves me right, there were quite a few news broadcasters who were worried that this would cast a slur on the "secular" status of India.

Now, we have this Bombay blasts. The media is going to town saying terrorists from Pakistan are behind this. Now, why not label this Muslim terrorism ?

If a BJP comes to power, it is not a secular party, but when Congress comes to power and blasts happen all over the country (eight to my count, including Bombay), obviously committed by Muslim terrorists, the secular fabric of the country is still being maintained, simply because a secular party is ruling the country. I think the media is more interested in saying whether we are secular or not, rather than ensuring the security and safety of the people country.

As long as a policy of minority appeasement is followed, no one is safe in this country. Note that I am not advocating suppression or oppression of the minorities. We just need to give them whatever is due to them and not go out of the way to make their life comfortable. The government and the media must maintain a balanced stand while dealing with terror.

A case in point here is Mohammed Afzal. It was proved beyond any doubt that he was behind the bombing of our parliament. He was given death sentence by the Supreme court of India. However, the sentence is yet to be carried out. What kind of message does this send across ? Point to ponder. If we are not tough on terrorists, they would be tough on us. As simple as that.

Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 9:48 AM 0 comments

State Bank of India - Loan to purchase a computer

And so when the rains were lashing around the city and power was shutdown as a precautionary measure, I got down my childhood comic book collection and leafed through them. Imagine my surprise when I saw this advertisement from State Bank of India offering loans to purchase a computer. This advertisement was published in 1989. The basic crietria has not changed much from 1989 to the present days. Just that in 1989, you need to have a minimum of 2000 rupees as your monthly income. Adjusting to inflation, I guess that would work out to 20,000 rupees in the present day !

I was quite impressed with a line in the advertisement "The world is moving towards a computerized age....".

Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 9:36 AM 3 comments

Velachery Floods

Here are some pictures from the flooding that happened over the weekend in Velachery, Chennai. Thankfully enough, my house was spared. Water had reached till a point around 50mts from my house. However, the road that we need to use to get to the outside world from my house, was thankfully, only under 2ft of water. Things could have been worse you know.

In all this, I think one needs to appreciate the police and the local administration officials. The police were there making rounds of the affected areas and trying to arrange some kind of help for the people who were marooned.

The residents of Ram Nagar near the MRTS station, resorted to agitation to expedite the clearing of water from their locality. Unfortunately, construction of the MRTS railway lines had cut off the drainage systems from their area to the Pallikaranai marsh. It was indeed nice to see the people trying to act to get their problems solved, instead of sitting around and lamenting that the government has not done anything for them.

Shyam

Posted by Unknown at 9:38 AM 0 comments