Everyday writings of Rajesh Jain. If you wondering who he is, just enough to know that he sold his web site to sathyam, before it became sify.com. He just sold it for a little over 300 crores. Yep, crores, no typo!.
Harini always tells me this, ‘Try Try Touch the Sky’. Thats what I can think of, between myself and Mr. Jain!
Education, especially for young adults, is very important. I blatantly believe in that from my very roots. Needless to say, it is a core problem in India.
Prayatna, very sweet name, is my lastest find in the world of personal blogs. Satya, who has passion for education and media, was reflecting myself in some ways.
Interesting list of posts very much worth reading, especially the ones on public speeches in chennai. The more I read them, the more my heart reminds me to go back. Thanks my friend, you did what I couldnt, but will.
Queen Mary 2, She was indeed humongous, but strikingly beautiful. We were fortunate enough to see her this past weekend, twice when we drove past her when she resting in the docks and then last night when she departed to england, accompanied by Queen Elizabeth 2. We were even more lucky to have witnessed these two gorgeous queens paying tribute to Statue of Liberty, along-side each other, colored with fire works garlanded by newyork downtown night skyline. It was feast to our eyes and ears. Our first glimpse of a modern day titanic. Hard to believe how man could build such a huge machine and make it crawl like a baby. A memorable event.
Shame on me! Not once before I attempted to find out if there are any blogs in tamil written/read in tamil. Thanks to our friend Sathya, who took the pain to let us know some blogs in tamil. Its great that tamilians, wherever they may be, are not far behind. Here is a list for you, get ready to be touched.
There are good number of tamil websites and blogs with great content to keep you busy until you find the end of the internet.
NRISpot.com/tamil gives you an easy to way to browse through and track good tamil online content. They also have english, hindi, telugu, and other useful content for Indians.
Below, some of my picks:
This young lady is doing a great service to tamil and deserves a sure mention in the tamil onine world. I am sure you will agree after you spend a while reading her stuff. Isnt this what I should also be doing? even if it is a short step towards giving back to my native community.
http://meenaks.rediffblogs.com/
Whats in a name! No, This is the name that represents us, no matter how much our american life puts us far from this idly-vadai, this is really what we are!
http://idlyvadai.blogspot.com/
Just another blog, it gives me a flavor of writing in tamil. As I think about it, I feel like I have lost my real ability to write in tamil, thanks I could still read it. Shame on me again.
http://arunviews.blogspot.com/
An entire list, if you are not clean bowled yet!
http://tamilblogs.blogspot.com/
More than his writing, which are all very good, his tagline stuck me hard. It would have been just another tag line if said in english ‘saving my thoughts’, but read that in tamil ‘Sindhiththadhai Ellam Semiththu Vaikkiren’ on top corner on his site, its just honey to ears!
http://writerpara.blogspot.com/
A couple of ezines in tamil…
My closeness to tamil has largely become conversational only. I read very few tamil website or books, though thanks to deep longings, I bought a few tamil books when I was in toronto last year and religiously read them in full soon. So I think my reading hasnt been that bad, though I doubt if I can read as fast. My writing…I honestly dont know, its been almost a decade since i have written a line in tamil. Trust me, I feel everything but happy about this.
The world of blog continues to amaze me everyday. It appears like another revolution to me. Especially for countries like India, it can play a major role in free speech and open media. I am totally impressed with the number of people from India who religiously write their own blogs.
I was here today http://a4avaiz.blogdrive.com/ I think it is she, has a good blog, but even better are the art works, what she calls blogos! Would to be nice to see how and what she uses to creates them.
blogging, essentially writing our random unedited thoughts, is indeed a great way to let ourself out on digital world(would have said paper few years ago!). At the very least, it makes us think better, more and different the next time. For me, It gives me a sense of seeing myself through it. I make it a point to go back and read my old blogs often, atleast once a couple of months. I try hard to see if I have changed or improved, but it hardly is apparent to me.
I have been keeping my weblogs personal so far, but thought I should start writing random thoughts on technology as well, so a new category from today!
even if i dont write anything worth, I atleast intend to collect useful links here.
If you work in IT, I bet you must have heard of this, unless you work at the root level, churning out code based on no design. This is the “happening” thing in enterprise software development. Every major corporate’s IT department has either a person or perhaps an entire team of people work on SOA initiatives.
There are tons of material available online on SOA and I dont intend to write another one here ( not that I know a lot about it! ) …I found these interesting blogs from the architects at Microsoft discussing their SOA thoughts…
http://blogs.msdn.com/pathelland/
http://devhawk.net/default.aspx?date
A indian guy – http://blogs.msdn.com/ramkoth/
if you wanted a brief intro http://searchwebservices.techtarget.com/tip/1,289483,sid26_gci899457,00.html
I just added awstats to the site, so visitor statistics is available. Nice to know how many people visit our web site and how long they spend their time.
Dont panic, you still have all your privacy to visit and read and comment on whatever you would like, I have absolutely no way of knowing who you are!
All this helps me is to make changes and improvements to the website. you comments are always most welcome, its the best way for me to improve.
check out sudhar.com Visitor Statistics
True, what we use is less than 1 percentage of our brain, but I am just tired of information in this eWorld. Its exacerbated by the damn google tool bar inviting every word that I can think of, to fire a search into the eWorld. Hard to imagine what I would turn out to be if i process the google results with 100% of my brain! Sometimes I feel the pain, right on the core of the brain blob and sense the nerves pumping more blood, perhaps hoping there is way out of the head to get out and see who the heck is google blowing everyone’s brain!
I feel sorry for being addicted to google search. Its become a alternative to even ‘thinking’. Shame on me and google, It has actually made be more dumb and stupid than I used to be before eWorld was a simple world in pre-google era. Its like relativity theory, it out-lived its purpose and now starts to threaten the very world that it created. As it looks today, perhaps humans 100 years from now would have tiny google plugins affixed in back of their brain, doing auto-thinking and auto-searching for them. We might very well need another big-bang to erase this mistake!
Shortly after I moved to US from India, I was deeply struck by the importance given to creativity and innovation, especially in schools and universities. I soon realized how much I have missed and lacked. Cultivating creativity, promoting innovation, and encouraging risk-taking, especially among children and youth, has been totally lacking in India. It is one of the major factors in India�s inability to be a �leader� in any field (except perhaps spirituality) and has left her so far to be a �follower�(or �copycat� in brutal terms). This issue will be one of the focal points of my future. I would like to create a media production firm, specializing in products and services, that encourage creativity, innovation. This might seem like a simple idea, unappealing to many in US, but having spent the better part of my life in India, I know that anything outside of Science-Math-English is largely neglected concept both by students as well as parents, teachers and the society as a whole. Also this initiative is not something new, there is already lot of developments happening in these areas through media and entertainment services. But the problem can only be solved bottom up, to build a future society blended with creativity and innovation. And thats a long way to go, before we reep the fruits.
This is excert from an essay I had written for my NYU MBA app.
Yes, I have completed ( in full ) atleast three books in the past two months : Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown, Management Challenges for the 21st Century by Peter F Drucker and the once famous, Business @ the speed of thought by Bill Gates. Its pretty amazing considering I had read no book in full in past few years(But I sincerely and regularly buy more every year and read few chapters!). But as much as I say its a big deal, it was equally easy…why? For I didnt read them, I listened to them. All of them were audio books, that I smartly grabbed from the local library and listened during my 40 minutes each way commute to work. It doesnt matter, I am very glad I did and encouraged to listen to as much as I can. The one consequence was I missed listening to NPR, a great company on the air, when I am left in the traffic.
Krithi has completed her MBA, a wonderful milestone indeed in her career and life. After a short two months, worry-free vacation at home, she will fly to the city that never sleeps, Mumbai. She will take over a financial analyst job at Shoppers Stop. Its going to be a new and interesting chapter in her life. May God bless her with everything for a wonderful and successful career.
Amma is in pune for two weeks. She will have nice change with mamas and family. Its been a few years since her last visit to pune, for Bharath’s marriage. As soon as she is back, kirthi’s marriage alliance work is expected to start full blown, though krithi is more keen on trying out what she studied so hard in past few years, before getting into a wedlock.
One of the books I have always wanted to read is the autobiography of Gandhi. While that thought remained in the back of my mind, I never really came across this book and never gave a thought to find out if this would be sold today in real bookstores, though I knew I can definitely find one on the internet.
The moment dawned when I was given a $10 complimentary Barnes&Nobles gift card for offering to donate blood ( they didnt accept me since I had made a trip to India, a country black-marked for dangerous contagious diseases, in the past 1 year). As soon as I realized that the compliment was a gift card to an online book store, I started wondering what I could possibly buy for $10. Obviously no book worth reading sells in that price range. A enticing thought ran thru my mind…why not buy a used book? Well, on such moments mind works faster by flashing more thoughts that you want, I remembered Gandhi immediately followed by a reminder not to forget Nehru, Akio Morita, Abraham Lincoln, followed by few others whose autobiographies I had been wanting to read. Within a few minutes of search on the used books section of the site, MK I encountered Gandhi somewhere in a community library in wichita, kansas and Morita with someone in boston. Each of them were trading at throw away price of less than $2. I was elated and acquired them instantly. Unfortunately because of their remote existence, I had to pay more than their price for shipping, to see them united with me. After a patient daily examination of our mail box for 10 days, they both arrived safely and coincidentally wrapped in a local news paper. While the Sony creaters edition was more recent, Gandhi’s was too precious to be sold for that price. It was the first american edition printed in 1957. Somehow I sensed a strange feeling within me when I held the book out of the newspaper wrap. The papers were too old to be flex anymore, they were hard and would break into pieces if I held the book stronger or drop it. Perhaps it was the first owner of the book, who had underlined those sentenses throughout the book. I have one less thing to do when I read it myself. They both are eagerly resting, sometimes in the bookshelf, sometimes on the coffee table and yes sometimes in the bathroom, for me read their life, that just simply rewrote the future of two nations.
Why should filing taxes be such a pain? I spent the entire day today trying to understand my w2s(wage sheets) and the different forms I have to fill out for each state. To add to that sorrow is my total wages represented in more than one state! (I bet the system is screwed up and nobody cares!)
we went out for a long walk along the shore line around the liberty state park. We havent been there before and realized how much we have been missing. A long scenic walking trail, bordering the meadow park, overlooking the statue, just infront of our doorsteps. We made an incidental exit off the highway and ended up here. I made the best of the oppurtunity and got into my roller skates, had a good time skating (and walking) for 2 hours. Harini spent another hour or so taking her first driving lessons from me. She was pretty good for her first day, driving in circles!
Its taxes day tomorrow! My last chance before april 15th deadline.
In these modern days, peace and solace for me is roaming around the web. And blogging has become a way of life. The more I read the more I want to write (pity that i dont!) and that drives me into more reading and viscious circle. Another Indian rambler on the web
His recent posting describes life exactly as It appears to me today. He says ‘Life gets tough. Life gets hard. You fail tests. Your heart breaks. You lose friends. You sprain your ankle. You oversleep’ but I agree with him, ‘Goddamnit, I love life’
I want to listen to every song
I want to read every book
I want to touch every soul
Oh Almighty! I dont want to miss Anything…
my humble dedication to April, The Month of Poetry!
I guess the spirit of blogging (writing these notes) has been at the lowest for the past 10 days. I was only doing two things after-work on weekdays, one: Prepare for GMAT, two: Worry about GMAT! It sounds ridiculous, but the more I read it, the more I feel I suck!
I was reading an article online yesterday that put two words at the very top of the list of things to concentrate on during GMAT preparation, it is “Don’t Worry”. Almost everyone who has taken it insists not to worry about low scores and unsolvable questions. I am feeling much better.
This past monday, we had been to Bombay Dreams, the broadway musical show, with music by world famous and our own AR Rahman. It was the very first show, a preview for the upcoming season. We were totally taken by surprise to see the turn out, when we reached the theater in Times Square. I didn’t think so many people cared about an Indian musical to show up on the first day. Even more interesting was, there weren’t too many Indians in the crowd. While standing in the line to collect the tickets, we overheard two guys behind us, talking in Tamil. They were talking about some guy who just left them to pick up ARR. They might have thought we wouldn’t know Tamil or ARR, but I knew both. Harini and I were just nodding at the each other as if we meant ‘Woh Woh! They know ARR’…I was already feeling like a celebrity(or may be they meant some dumb ass A. Raja Ramamurthy who was lost finding Times Square!). Inside, It was totally packed, at least from where I was sitting I couldn’t see any empty seats, though I wasn’t sure about the lower level. We were on the upper level, the cheapest of the seats, but even that was $60. The show was just resplendent(very much worth the low preview price). The cast, again surprising to me, was mostly American Indians(so called ABCDs, apologize if it hurts anyone) around New York area. I didnt know the performers would sing the songs on the stage in their voice. I was little skeptical at the beginning, trying to search for the “real” singers around the stage area, but I soon realized the people on stage were indeed singing, with the music played by the orchestra right in front of the stage. The Vocals were definitely not as good as the original singers in the movie, but were close enough and melodious indeed. The lead male and female cast, were apparently professional musicians, with a bunch of US stage performances to their credit. The guy is an expert Sax player trained with the famous Kadri Gopalnath and the young lady seems to be an accomplished pianist, both incidentally from pittsburgh, whose parents knew each other thru their visits to Indian Temple. In fact, All the actors did a wonderful job with flawless dialogues and singing. Sriram Ganesh, who played a half (male & female) was unbelievable. His body movements were close to natural(After the show I couldnt believe when I saw him walking out from the backstage in a slick jean and winter cap). Ayesha Dharker was outright sexy and gorgeous in those few scenes that she made a guest appearence. It was bit confusing as to who was actually Ayesha(and I was specifically confused as to who actually was gorgeous!) as another look-alike played the same character in rest of the scenes. The English accent was fittingly more Indian, perhaps not that difficult for a crew with Indian origin, but made some laughter come long after us. Rahman’s music added the cozy ambience to the sentiments in the story and couple of solo pathos, though sounded more like in Opera, drew roaring applause. It can be debated if Rahman’s music is truly Indian in its purest sense, but nobody but him could feed the newyorker’s music appetite with a collage of Indian rhythms with a subtle western touch. The song lyrics were, as in most of Rahman music, unrecognizable. Apparently for reasons I can only guess, the guy who wrote the English lyric for songs chose to stay off from ‘Chaiyya Chaiyya’ and the song was left with original Hindi script. Though the theme was the usual Indian movie story line, the screen play(or should I say sceneplay?) was well arranged and spiced with catch songs that it didnt feel like dragging at any point. The choreography was excellent more so because one of the two dance directors is Farah Khan. The crew (assembled just for this show) performed well in synchrony as if they were professional troupe from Bollywood. Two sardrajis surrounded with Indian percussion instruments were stationed on either side of the stage, with blue lights underneath them, to accompany the orchestra with real base effects. I was surprised their timing with the scenes were perfect, without the conductor, who was with the orchestra below the stage. The stage sets for all the scenes were breathtaking. The water fountain for the wet sari song(that was must i say!) just blew me away and Whoever it was, most likely a high profile new york stage designer, did an awesome job of blending the scenes from clumsy slum to the gorgeous Bombay night skyline. On one of the scenes, I was feeling bad that they spent a million dollars to recreate a typical Mumbai slum (I could write another blog on this thought!). The make-up and constuem design didnt grab my attention until the very last scene, when the marriage ceremony takes place. The main characters were in a fabulous, bright, colorful and traditional Indian attire just stood out catching everyone’s awe. The upclass new york audience enjoyed it thoroughly. An old African American lady in the front row was totally into it that she started dancing and screaming towards the last few songs. Harini who was sitting right behind her seat was happy noticing this lady’s excitement and totally ignored the fact that the lady was too big and blocking Harini’s view of the stage. In all, It was a perfect team work, as has always been in most broadway shows. Both of us were screaming at our highest pitch, with everyone else when the whole crew came on stage to give their salutations. Before the show, I was more excited about Rehman than the show itself, but I soon realized his music wasnt everything in the show. The show didnt miss any chance to compare New York City with Bombay, but its probably New York and Hollywood combined and much more. I came out feeling proud about everything from bombay to bollywoord to Indian music. It was an enjoyable evening and well worth the time.
Until next…