Category: Daily Notes

We had another good weekend. Susi came over from ithaca, NY. She was visibly happy and excited to get a break from her usual routine at cornell. We visited Balaji Temple at Bridgewater. As always on a saturday night, it was flooded. There was a group of non-indian visitors, possibly from a community group, curiously stopping at every idol-house and astonished at the rituals, bhajans, dressings, jewellery etc. A japanese turned over to me, as we were doing a pradhakshanam ( a walk around an idol-house ) and asked me, why everyone is standing patiently in a line, to touch the brass bell hanging from the top, to make that sound (it sometimes is annoying when nobody around expects it). I was very happy to explain to him the reason, which i read incidentally, from one of this little books, that came as a gift to our wedding, from Swamini Vimalananda of Chinamay Mission, Coimbatore. The book explained the reasons behind some of these procedures that we do at home and in temples and at time on streets ( slashed pooshnikkai ! ).

The reason for using the brass bell in Hindu temples is to block and arrest those other unwanted noises coming from elsewhere. This more often happens during aradhana of the diety, when holy vedic hymns are recited. It also helps to grab everyone’s attention towards the diety and force them to listen to hymns instead of talking.

On our drive back home, susi mentioned that she wanted to see brookly bridge. I said no big deal. We drove straight into holland tunnel ( we live just off the entrance to holland tunnel ) and across manhattan and into the bridge. We didnt realize we were in manhattan bridge, until i looked over to see brooklyn bridge to my right. We took a short trip into brookly and turned around and this time I made sure we drove into Brooklyn bridge. Susi was happy. It seems she had a poster of the bridge in her bedroom and had always wanted to see it.

The rest of the weekend went pretty quick and here I am on this monday morning meeting spree. Got to go for next one, bye

I finally managed to finish my write up on ‘A Brief History of Sudhar.com’. It sounds like a great title, not sure if it turns out a good read. I glad I am able to document it. I am sure I will find it a good read after a few years from now.

I also wanted to write, a very short note this time, about what software/hardware I used to run this site. My next task in hand.

I am really tired today. I have become busy these days at work, as I am getting my hands wet with a lot of teams and projects. Its good to start on a bunch of them and hopefully it should consolidate into a handful of projects.

Every work day includes a full 45 minute commute from home. This is probably another reason I am feeling tired. Just sitting infront of the wheel and staring on the highway isnt easy, though I have started listening to audio books and impressively completed a very good book ‘Management Challenges for the 21st Century’ by Peter F Drucker. The drive back home is even worse as it gets dark early around this time of the year, around 5PM and the yellow glaring head lights from a bumper to bumper traffic from the other side of the highway, causing trouble to my, already astigmatic eyes!

Days run so fast and nights even faster. We made a wonderful trip to detroit. We had nice time with friends and relatives, though we wish we had spent more with some of them. Personally, I felt a sense of home-coming. I have spent 3 years going back to detroit on friday nights. For most part of those years, I have been flying back from newark, the very same airport we flew in this time. At times, I still feel that I am on travel and that I am living here for a short time only to get back to detroit for the next weekend.

I have started running regularly from this week. This puts me into a very tight schedule after i return from work and pretty much is the reason for my inability to post a note on my weblog. To top this one, work has been little hectic this week. I am feeling much better I could find a little bit of time, though terribly tired than usual, to write down some of my thoughts.

Sometimes I have a feeling that I write as I would speak it or say it. Is it very spoken english, that i write?

http://www.onelook.com/

This is a great site OneLook to search in all dictionaries across web, not just dictionary.com. It also provides everything on one page, that way you dont have juggle between thesarus and dictionary. I am sure it will help me a lot and hopefully improve on my vocabulary!

I have been spending the last two days in writing the history of sudhar.com. I have no idea who would be interested in it. Its getting longer than I had expected, partly because I might give more details than required in some cases. The biography ( if i can call it so! ) will be released tomorrow ( hopefully if i dont get too much excited to write even more! ).

I am also running out of disk space in my little primitve PC that runs this site. I still dont know whats the way out, guess have to call prasanna for rescue.

I might go to Toronto, Canada for a week around 20th Feb on an official trip. Harini will sure accompany me. Great plans ahead, Detroit, Canada, Susi visit, Chicago and what else?

We both have also put on a little bit of weight! Inspite of our efforts to cut down on rice, I think the mother nature is playing her cards against us. A serious emergency plan has been worked out ( to workout ).

Harini is little disappointed that Birthdays only last 24 hours!

Good Night!

Its harini’s Birthday today. She is really excited since we are celeberating her first, together. I gave her a sweet surprise with a Diamond Ring. It was beautiful, the moment I saw in the store I thought she would definitely like it. She was indeed very happy with it. She also deserved it since I have been telling her that I should get a diamond ring as a complement for her great cooking. She does a great job making the house too. I think its a fitting match. Besides, she is madly in love with rings and would take one for her toes too, after she runs out on her hands.

We had a very small party last night, with just two of us. A candle with numbers 24 lighted the midnight darkness. The white cake with red words that said ‘Harini’ tasted very good. I couldnt do a good job with icing, as I had left the icing tube in the refridgerator by mistake, with the cake. I had taken a few pictures of this sweet night, will be published to gallery later this week. I completed the ceremony with my gift pack and a very senti card from Hallmark.

She has been busy since morning with calls from all over the place, including calls from india. Its nice to see a few people calling up and wishing her, especially those you didnt expect. A bunch of email greetings added more excitement for the day.

We had planned to get into the city and go around a bit. The weather looks great from inside, though I hear its very cold on the radio. We might visit a few places and come back for a good dinner.

Now you can understand why iam so crazy about this. I think its feeding the animal within. I just came across this one Worlds Best Blogs

http://www.smh.com.au/articles/2003/09/26/1064083180276.html

Check them out, you wont realize how soon you could lost in world of internet and amount of creativity the lies within.

Once in a while ( more often ) i get off from what i am doing at work to read something online. Again, it has to be very different from what i am doing. Lately, I have been memerized by the Blogger phobia and ask Harini, she would say a dozen things about it.

Ok, about the site i got into today(now), http://www.blogd.com/. Looks like maintained by a guy in japan ( most likely an american working there ). Well, its a good self published website. He write quite well about politics and everything else he is interested in. The site looks more like running on MovableType, I am not sure. It definitely one of those Blogging systems.

The most interesting aspect of it and the very reason why I got into this site is ‘EyeLid Twitching’. Thats exactly what i searched in google and this guy’s site seem to have propped at the top of the results, surprising to himself, for no reason. From what i read, t all started when he mentioned about eyelid twitching in one of his blogs and few people commented on it and few more commented and all of a sudden people started linking to his site, thinking it had some serious discussions about it. He calls his site now, Mecca of Eyelid Twitching and it is not.

Having read that, my eyelid twitching is gone now. All i wanted to know was why the hell it twitches all of a sudden and goes off all of a sudden. I was even more curious about some belief in our indian culture about left and right eye twitching. Each eye twitch has its own and I know one of them is good things are coming. I just dont know if its for Left Eye?

It was a very productive day at work. I had very informative discussions with Fred Shumake, Art Harris, Tom Seal, Sanjay, an hour with each. I getting a good hold of the things that I am working on.

Visalakshi is here with us just for the day, since she had to meet someone here in exchangeplace early tomorrow morning. Harini went up to grand central to pick her up.

I got Gallery php utility up and running on my server. I am slowly migrating all my images from my current photo category into the gallery website. Its little tricky as it creates the thumbnails of the original images as you upload them. But the gallery itself looks awesome and I am really happy about the state of the website today. Its very consistent with what I have been wanting it to be. I am also using it as a platform for me write more, though i dont know if I am improving.

I had also written a long mail to sumi today. I hope she finds interesting.

Everyone is asleep. Harini is upset that everyday I am spending way too much time on this computer and with setting up the site. I know this is cutting down on the time I spend with her. I wish I had more than 24 hours a day. I know its very hard for her, as she spends the entire day alone at home. Somehow this was interesting enough to me to pull me these days, I hope to change the pattern pretty soon. Once I have the photo gallery and the rest of the website consistent on a whole, I should only spend a few minutes a day with my daily notes. Lets turn it up. GN

Harini is already done for the day and is trying to get into her sleep mode, while i am staring at my computer, thinking about what i should write in this daily note.

why am I getting into this confusion everyday, about what to write, while I can think of a million things to write, when iam driving on my way to work! Its wierd. There are so many things that i could possibly do, I havent written a mail to my friends and cousins in a long time and why dont i do it NOW? I dont know!

Didnt I want to write about the books I am reading lately? well, then i need to metion here that I belong to that platinum club of book readers, who buy books, sincerely every month, only to leave it in the shelf after 10 pages ( may be 20 for you and 30 for someone ). It hurts when I look at my shelf everyday, I can sense each book, throwing me a dumb sigh on me, asking me, why did I buy them, when somebody else would have cared to open those unopened pages to free those unread words into this world. The sad part is I pick out some books, once in a while and read some random pages in the middle of the book and console myself for a great day of ‘READING’. How I wish that I could open a book and have that feeling and satisfaction that I have enjoyed and read that book from cover to cover. strange mind indeed, is mine.

Attended the new hire Orientation at the Bridgewater Crescent Building. They made a good decision to shorten the whole orientation to two and half hours. They squeezed all the topics to a slide or two, especially the MetLife history was just a slide, easily could have bored us with 15 slides of history, that not many would have cared much. We got a good idea of the company and its products and services. They spent a fair amount of time and employee benefits and services, one of the good things being pay back for your fitness workouts etc.

The rest of the day went by going over some readings. We have a dinner outing with my Bearingpoint folks. Harini and I are going. She seems to be sick today, though she is saying she will be alright. Its going to be late before we get back from the city. Another short night of sleep ahead I guess.

I have been wanting to write about a lot of things on this website, but just cant get my hands/time around it. This past weekend went by without writing anything. I dont think Iam doing justice to reading Natalie Goldberg, who insists that we should write any crap, atleast for a few minutes(30 mts recom) a day. I stole a few minutes from my work today, before I leave home, to drop this note. I am looking forward to some good times ahead.

I am not sure if my writing itself has improved since I have started this log, which was one of my primary goals, besides maintaining a diary that i could go back to read in future. Good start atleast.

I am glad I am posting my note again. I was afraid if I would leave yet another months of gap before my next one.

Its super bowl weekend and the game is nearing a nail biting finish I think as I write this.

The past two days was pretty good. It passed by faster than I had expected. I was hoping that i could get somethings done on my reading front. bt couldnt accomplish much. We went out to Suresh place on saturday for lunch.

I had planned to go to the NJ Tamil Sangam Pongal Celebs get together, mainly because I thought I could see Srikanth from Studio 1234 in live action. Unfortunately only after 1/2 hour into the programme, we were told that srikkanth couldnt make it. I was little disappointed as I had been planning for this for almost 10 days. Anyhow, we enjoyed the orchestra. The group of around 10 folks did a fantastic job to keep the crowd dancing and whistling. The song selection were done well enough to mix the old songs and new ones. Mr.Sreedhar, did a good job compiring for the function. He appreciated, thanked and also gave due credit to each one of the orchestra members, inbetween the ongs and mixed them up with funny conversations and jokes. The whole group was also very friendly, enthusiastic and energetic. Mr.Ramani, who leads the group did a great job running the show. He sings pretty well too, sounding like TMS. Singers Sunder and Suresh did a good job mixing up their styles with the song and dancing too. Female singers were start attraction, harini special with mentions. They were cool on stage and were singing better than their male counterparts. Manmadha Rasa song topeed the first half of the show. Some of the folks couldnt stop jumping out their seats to dancify for this duppanguthu. Uyiren Uyire song could have little faster, it seemed slow to me. Suresh was showing off on stage at sometimes, only to miss his timing and pitches. He was too loud sometimes. Sunder showed his capacity as a good singer. He did a few alaaps before some songs to showcase that he is a talented singer. I have listened to some of his recording with srikkath. Overall, it was a very good performance and thoroughly enjoyable. Our wishes will be there for them to grow.

Sunday went by with Bubu(Harini’s cousin) and Vadivel visiting us. Harini cooked a good sambar/rasam/poriyal meals and a cutlet snack for the evening. The game must have been over by this time, I got to go to see who won.

I have my orientation at MetLife tommorow. Its going to be another quick day and good week ahead, as I would start getting my hands wet at work! GN

I have been to this site before and have read a few articles, very good one. But I happened to read the About Sulekha.com parts of the site and its very interesting to know how it all started. It truly started as a miniscule website and now a monster indian/south asian community website. I enjoy reading the articles and weblogs, of Satya Prabhakar. He is a fantastic writer and I could a freshness in his words and perspectives. The thing I didnt know was he is the CEO of Selekha.com, surprised isnt it?. yeah he is. He has a good style and wish I could write like he does.

I had a great revelation when I found today that movies on Comcast OnDemand where free…well, most of them are infact free. I was always thinking it was movies of pay-per-view type. I never cared to open up the OnDemand menu either on our digital cable. I was elated today when I looked thru the menu items on OnDemand for the first time. Some of the collections from HBO, max, Cable Favourites were indeed good ones. I think its a great product and I am sure I will find it of great use, when I get back home from work at 7 and decide to watch “Curb your Enthu…” with my Dinner at 8.

I am really excited today. Harini made another beautiful, cute white puppy stuffed toy. Its really sweet. Yesterday she made a black monkey with long hands that you can wrap around anything. So we wrapped the monkey around the puppy and they both are comfortably sitting in the floor lamp stem!

I am also excited after I successfully imported all my old Blogger.com web logs into my MT. It was irritating as Blogger.com failed to ftp it back into my server. I finally manged to create the file format myself and imported into MT. Cool. I am happy. I am also looking forward to customizing the templates, importing my old web site content into this, setting up the image gallery and imporing my old images. Harini has been taking a free Digital Photography course online and she would be finishing it soon. Its not a main stream course, but a simple 5 lesson intro to digital photo. I am hoping this would help her to decide on our new digital camera purchase. I am really looking forward to it as I could post the pictures of our house, the frozen hudson around (if we get it before it unfreezes!), our little puppy and monkey and everything else around.

Added to the excitement is the snow storm tonight and tomorrow. Means, I would stay back home tomorrow. Though I would be working from home, its good to stay back.

I spent a good deal of the day today at work reading lot of Architecture stuff. Bill is excited about the ACORD/HR-XML discussion we had. I need to explore more on it. WebMethods is also in the list. Portals presentation is going to be interesting.

A great day by all means.

Iam sick of this. Iam trying to export this weblog into a format which i then could import into my MT(MovableType). This damn publish is not ftping the file, dont know whats going on, everything seems to be ok.

I am halfway into sleep already. It was a pretty good day on first day of work. Lot of interesting things to work on, definitely a good change for me. I think I will be working on WebMethods and Web Portals. Lot of things to catch up on these areas.

Back home, Harini spent the day making a black cute monkey fur toy! Its very sweet and has long hands and short legs so you coudl wrap it around windows or anything you can think of. Its right now, hanging on our lamp poles! I was very impressed and glad she could spend her time on something like this. She has also made some great coconut cookies. I tasted a piece and it wasnt bad at all. Definitely some improvement from the broken cake from last time!

Tried to import my Blogger.com weblogs into MT, but unfortunately my FTP server is down and I could publish to my site from Blogger.com and hence cant get the file to be imported into MT. This sucks!

Today is my first day of work at my new job as Technical Architect at MetLife. Its been smooth sailing good so far, mainly becoz I have worked with a few folks in this team before. Looks like lot of things happening and hopefully I should end up working on some interesting stuff, little different, if not entirely, from what I was doing in bearingpoint.

Its been a while since I have worked seriously. work life after marriage has been
pretty low key, since I wasnt doing much at bearingpoint ( pfizer ). For last few weeks, I was on vacation as I knew I would be leaving BP soon.

This MT weblog system installed last night has also added to excitement of new job. I was thinking about posting this message as soon as I got here. But held up in meetings with the folks here.

Mohan, Bill, Todd, Jim everyone seem to be really excited about our start ( another guys vinel started with me today). Lets get rolling!

Hello World! Yes, I had to use this proverbial getting out of the nest words…you might have thought i had forgotten this blog…yes, you are right…I thought so too!…ok enough of my beating around…sorry anyone who cares, I havent been updating this for what…almost 6 months now. 6 months…amazing how time passes by and more so in my case feels like it passed by like sonic jet and so many things have happened…the best of all, I have found my life partner Ms.Harini Rajagopal. I just want to sum it up in one short sentence, she is very sweet. I made a short visit to india in june, got engaged on June 4th, spent a day with harini hanging around in chennai. It was unforgettable. I have moved out of pfizer into ASCAP and then, unfortunately, moved back into Pfizer. Things havent been going on well at pfizer, owing to lots of reasons, least of which is poor project execution ( imagine what other reasons! ). Thanks to luck and some good team work, things have going fine for past two months and the project is getting revived and we see some light at the end of tunnel. I am expected to go back to ASCAP after we are done here. Continuing long term at Bearingpoint is looking gloomy. The guys who run the company are trying to figure out what the company is supposed to be doing as opposed to what it is doing and what it has been doing! I have started to float my ears and eyes around for something better. I told myself a few years back that I would never move to new jersey to live here. I didnt know, such strong statements are not always made to become true! I spent a day today searching for houses in bridgewater, new jersey. Cost of living in NJ is just unimaginable. I am getting bored now, lets hope I come back soon to post some more updates. c ya

This says How lazy Iam! It has been 3 months now and looks like i wasnt able to get 2 minutes from my freaking life every day to update this! Damn myself Here Iam working on a saturday, and hoping we will get out of here pretty soon…coz we have the Cup Finals tomorrow!