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.
Blog
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Reading about Writing
Reading has become one of best pastimes ( passion too! ) in the past few years. As an eventuality, writing has gotten into my wish list. The issue is its far easier to read (anything) while its not an easy to job to write about anything, not to say, that will be read and likened.
I found this small, wonderfully written and extremely useful book in Santa Fe, New Mexico, when we were there for new year 2004. Its ‘Writing Down the Bones’ by Natalie Goldberg. It was written a few years ago and I found this just at the last minute on the last aisle after I spent 1/2 hour going around the store on full round. I think I am lucky to have sighted it. Its a great book and I attribute the book for the most part, in encouraging me to reopen my web log. I encourage anyone hesitating to write to read this one. If you dont start to write atleast a few lines at the end of first 3 or 4 chapters, I think Natalie failed!
I also just finished ‘Life of Pi’. I will spend another tail end of another good day like today, to write about it.
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Comcast OnDemand
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.
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Pictures
I am yet to buy a Digital Camera. Harini is working on it. She is the designated Family Digital Camera Expert. ( I just dont find time to spend on the loads of info on digital cameras ). We will soon buy one. Until, then take a look at some of the pictures ( old and new ) from the regular camera.. I have an entry level Canon Powershot A300 that serves the purpose. Next upgrade pending before we go to a place as good as Hawaii!Click here to open Albums Main Page
HOW TO VIEW ALBUM – HOW TO VIEW ALBUM – HOW TO VIEW ALBUM
HOW TO VIEW ALBUM – HOW TO VIEW ALBUM – HOW TO VIEW ALBUMI have organized photos from each occasion into an album. The first page displays the recent five albums. Click on Numbers 2, 3, 4 and so on…on the top of the page or bottom of the page to move to next pages to view older albums.
Click on name of the album or the picture to move into an album. Once inside an album, click on any picture to view a full size image. When viewing a single photo, you can add a comment by clicking on the ‘add comment’ link below the photo. You dont have to give a valid id to add a comment, but atleast identify yourself.
SlideShow:Once inside an album, click on the link ‘slideshow’ at the top-right corner of the page. This will bring up all images as a slide show. you can even control the speed of the show.
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Family Happenings
Marriage – Nov 06, 2003
I got married to Harini on this very special day, carefully chosen after a lot of hot discussions and phone calls between the family astrologer and harini’s thatha. I think their efforts were worth it. It was indeed a special day with Rain God honouring us right thru the three days of marriage. We had a wonderful time. Everything went as per plan, except the nalangu function, whcih we could not make it becoz of the delay Registrar office and also due to appa’s insistence that we should go to Kalayana Peruma kovil (Temple). Most of our relatives on both families turned up for the occasion. They had all praise for the way the marriage was conducted with nice coordination and relationship between the familes ( usually there will be some kind of hickups in any marriage, mainly from groom’s folks demanding something ). We all drove back in a mini van back from Kumbakonam to Coimbatore. The Reception went on well too on Nov 8th. We had some last minute delays with video guys and decoration but it ended well with almost the expected crowd turning up, inspite of the pouring rain. Almost 80% of the peope were amma’s friends / Chinmaya mission folks. Everybody said the Food was great (Annapoorna). We also left the very next morning to Coconut Lagoon Resort in Kumaragam, kerala. It was a relaxing and wonderful experience on the lake front in rural kerala.
Engagement with Harini – June 04, 2003
It all happened on a day, a memorable day. I met harini in her home in chennai. I decided right that second, that she was the one. She tells me she kind of felt the same thing. I for once realized that love at first sight, does work. I am very glad that we met on that day. We feel as if we have been made for each other. Hard to believe is it? then trust me, its true.
Part Time BE Admission for Sridhar – Dec 27, 2002
He has been waiting for this for a long time and finally he made it! This is going to be a BIG break for him and hopefully should give him the right sense of direction in his career. He is starting on Jan 2nd in GCT, Coimbatore. Good Luck and Let this be the beginning of great career for you.
The Memorable London Trip – Dec 24, 2002 – Dec 29, 2002
It was just a fantastic memorable trip. Its a great feeling to roam around in london. Though I would have wanted to spend more time and see a lot more places, I managed to see most of the important stuff. The UnderGround system is really good and they have a neat public transport by train, bus and taxis that its just a breeze going across the city. It indeed, is raining all the time, as everyone says!!! And you have to walk, walk and walk…
The Inevitable – The PC – Oct 5, 2002
After contemplating the need for a computer at our home with my parents for almost an year, It has finally arrived yesterday. The delay is also partially attributed to the delay in the completion of the construction. Amma is expected to go Hi-Tech pretty soon. Appa has already started on his computer courses in Kumbakonam and with lots of help from Gayathri, he is typing and sending his own emails nowadays. Krithika, I hear she has already started using it, as she is the most literate in computers as of now. I am expecting Sridhar to be rocking with CAD and design softwares pretty soon. Thanks to Sridhar’s friend, we got a great deal on the computer, with the best/latest configuration for less than Rs.30K.
US Grand Prix, Indianapolis Speedway, Indiana – Sep 29 & 30 2002.
We never planned for this. My colleague, Chris Collins, was telling me that he was going to the grand prix and he told me that this is cheapest Grand Prix anyone could go. I was told that people fly from Europe to see US Grand Prix as the German and Italian Grand Prix were really expensive. I thought I should go. We made it.
It was a fantastic experience. While we have watched it before on TV, the real life experience was phenomenal. Its no where close to what you see and feel from watching it on TV. Schumacher was unbeatable until he deliberately gave up at the last lap to his team mate. I had hard time contemplating the fact that they are driving the cars at 220 mph at peak speeds. We chose to support montoya, but he miserably failed on the second lap but crashing with his own team mate. But he came back to finish 4th, to save some face. Overall it was worth the expensive trip. Dana and Santhosh were with me and we had fun the entire trip.
India Trip July 27, 2002 – Aug 9, 2002
While Appa managed to build our house with his savings, it was just enough for us. Hence this past January 2002 when I was there, We decided to extend it into the next site to make it good for a family of five. The work started in late February. Our in-house Civil Engineer, Sridhar, was given the responsibility of make this dream of ours happen. He finally managed to complete 80% of the construction by end of August right on time for Appa’s Sashtiapdha Poorthi ( 60th Birthday ). I landed on coimbatore, right on time for the function, the next day. We celebrated Appa’s 60th Birthday on July 30, 2002, at ‘Then Thiruppathi’ Kovil in Karamadai, Coimbatore. We were happy to have some of our relatives come over to coimbatore for this special occasion. It was a great two days for me, especially when I was on a short two week vacation from US. The house extension and its civil work was praised by everyone and all the credit goes to Sridhar.
After the hectic two days, myself and appa went on a ‘one day’ spiritual trip to Rameswaram. This is the south most tip of India. It was a different experience, with all the trouble we have had with the tour guides, auto rickshaws, fake iyers, sitting in the ocean front doing fake ‘tharpanams’ etc. It was still worth the experience. We decided to take the early train back and we stopped over in Madurai to visit the Meenakshi Temple. We spent the rest of the day in Madurai, before catching the late night Thiruvalluvar bus to coimbatore. I spent rest of my vacation hanging around coimbatore.
I spent the last day in chennai visting some of our relatives. I met some of my best friends, VPL Ganesh, R Saravanan (Muttai) and Saravana Kannan ( Lufthansa ), before boarding the flight to Germany, enroute to Detroit.
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Personal Profiles
Appa’s Profile
Date of Birth : August 2nd, 1942
He had his schooling in Calcutta and moved to coimbatore after completing his PUC. Though he wanted to go to college, family circumstances forced him to take up some job and he started as a daily labour at m/s Everest Engineering Works ( now defunct ) in 1960 or 1962.
Because of all his great qualities, he grew up the ladder pretty quickly to become the personnel manager and served the company for almost 25 years. The company went bankrupt during 1987 and we had a tough time for a few years before he decided to move to kumbakonam to work for SRVS. He has been there ever since.
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Our Family
We were a typical Indian Middle class family, back in 1980s, when we grew up in Gandhipuram, Coimbatore, with my dad struggling to meet both ends, my mom helping him as much as she can, with all three of us kids, never bothering a bit about it. But for all of us three, for what we are today, its all because of our parents. We owe everybit of our life to them. I really thank God for getting me into such a nice family.
My Mother. – Vijaya K
She is a nice lady, perfectly managing the family and her social activities. We would have been nowhere without her. Thanks Mom, for all your caring and love. I miss you very much. She is a serious Chinmaya Mission member of Chinmaya Mission, Coimbatore, India.My Father. – Krishnamachary S
He has been our real motivation and support all through our life. All through his life, he has only thought about his children and family. No other person would have been better than him. you are great dad. He works for SRVS, Kumbakonam. He has shuttle between coimbatore and kumbakonam every month to be with his family…poor man. He only knows how much pain it is.My Sister. Krithika K
She is real cool. She is enjoying her PG college life. she is doing her MBA @ Amritha Institute of Technology, Coimbatore. She is also doing her ICWA. Unbelievably, for the amount of time she spends on TV and other things, She consistently Tops the class. Watches all the movies and listens to all latest music and gives me suggestions for the movies that I should look for here. Best, she loves our bruno so much and takes care of it like anything.My Brother. Sridhar K
He is a terrific guy. He is a “Good Bad Ugly”, all in one guy. He is a Civil Engineer by profession. He has a very good reputation for his excellent and quality work. He is interested in spiritual activities. Reads a lot of self improvement books, latest being “The Seven Habits of the Executive People”. The only problem is, being so close to our bruno, unfortunately he has inherited some qualities from him !!!. He is aspiring to find his dream job in a HiTech Construction firms like Reliance, L&T etc. We want him to start his own business, but somehow he is not convinced. He managed to do a great job in recent interview for a job in kuwait, but unfortunately didnt work out in the third round.Our Pet. Bruno
We lost our (original) bruno in 2001 ago. It was a terrible moment for us. He was another member of our family and it was hard to get over it. He was Bruno only to us, for others he was a monster. We wonder why he was always so ferocious, but anyway its better. Poor bruno, goes down like anything infront of krithi and sridhar. He knows its better to keep mum, than to get a big slap from sridhar. We all loved him so much. Dogs are really adorable, isn’t it ?.
A new comer is in now, with the same NAME!!!Myself. Sudharshan K
I am the eldest of the three. I live and work in Detroit, MI, USA and miss all of them. You can read more about me elsewhere in About Me Sections and also know me more if you read my scrabbles on my dairyMy Beloved Wife, Harini
She is the latest addition to our family. We got married in Nov 6, 2003. She is very energetic, bubbling, carefree, creative and funny. She is really in crafts and specifically, making soft toys. She has already got a collection of two cute softies, a black monkey and a white puppy. They are very sweet and you can find them hanging on the walls or windows or bed or anywhere she thinks they should be on any given moment!. She is also into knitting. She has made a muffler for me. She is also making a few head bands(ear bands) to susi. She likes cooking and baking. She makes great north indian dishes and has tried her hands in making cakes and cookies. She is enjoying her time in our small river front apartment on hudson river, in jersey city, NJ overlooking Manhattan. -
Exciting Things
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.
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Iam sick of this. Iam
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.
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Pretty Good First Day
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!
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First Day @ MetLife
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!
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Up and Running
Atlast, after a few hours of installation/configuration and ofcourse frustration, I managed to bring up MT on my site, with Mysql database backend. I think it is easy, if you follow the steps, in order.
Iam excited. Its late sunday night, Its a pretty good way to end the day. Good Night!
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Hello World! Yes, I had
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
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This says How lazy Iam!
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!
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Playing with my Voice
I love singing, though I am not trained on any kind of singing. I have always been a vivid listner of music, especially tamil movie songs and specifically, SPB. A great fan of him and more than a few people have mentioned I tried to imitate him, though I try not to. I couldnt help it. My mother was(and is) a balavihar teacher and a good singer herself. I have grown up listening to her and also listening to some bajhans from Chinamaya missions and others. Those days have been my learning platform. I spent some time singing at my collge orchestra, but it was limited to performances within our college.
It has been my dream to learn carnatic music. The time and place has not been on my side ever since I had that dream. Another wish of mine has been to re-record Ganataranga and Bhajan Mala again. They both are two great bhajan performances that I still cherish.
Harini is also a good singer, but she is more into Hindi songs. We havent tried recordning anything together yet. Soon I am planning to.
I have been reading a lot about amateur music composers ( Indians ), based out of US. They have been doing a good job and one of them, Srikkath, Studio1234, is close to a Pro. I am hoping to meet one of them and try to record on my songs on a real recording studio. I am looking forward to see one first!
The following are some of my amateur solo vocal recordings. I prefer melodious tunes and I try to render in my own style. I used CoolEdit 2000 for some. Some I recorded directly on the Windows Sound Recorder.
The sound quality and lyrics may be awful and some of them recorded in Mono, I didnt realize it.
Your Critics, new ideas and comments will be greatly appreciated. I am trying to improve with every song I sing, on and off the bathroom!
Varavendum…This is a devotional song that I have been singing since childhood
Uyire Unakkaga…This has been close to my heart for a long time and I really feel it. I added an a lite ehco… any good?
Karpoora Bommai…This has been in the top, of list of songs I like the most…I goofed up a bit in the first charanam.
Nila Kaygiradhu…I know this has too much echo on it. This is one of my first recordings using cooledit and I just overwrote the original piece with the over echoed one.
Kannamuchi Enada…I just wanted to try this one, I know I screwed a bit on the lyrics… it sounds good to me…hope it does to others too!
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its already 2003, Happy New
its already 2003, Happy New Year !!! I came back from London this past sunday night and it was just a fantastic memorable trip. It was just a great feeling to roam around in london. Though I would have wanted to spend more time and see a lot more places, I managed to see most of the important stuff. The UnderGround system is really good and they have a neat public transport by train, bus and taxis that its just a breeze going across the city. It indeed, is raining all the time, as everyone says!!! And you have to walk, walk and walk…kalellam bend kayanduduchu…I had taken a good number of pictures, hope they turn out well…i will push them online soon.
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I lost my baggage on
I lost my baggage on my flight from detroit to newark and its almost two days now and the airline is still trying to “locate” the bag…It really sucks and they magnanimously offered to pay $25 for my expenses because of the loss!!!….does anyone care?
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Yet another week has passed
Yet another week has passed by…It has a great one too! I had a long weekend vacation back in detroit as I went back home on thursday and came back only yesterday ( wednesday ). We celeberated Narayanan Mama’s 60th birthday at babu’s place in detroit and It was really wonderful meeting friends and relatives after a long time. It was fun and I enjoyed it really well. PPP ( Pen Parkum Padalam!!! ) wasnt going anywhere until yesterday. I think we have a potential match in the pipeline, but its a long way before I can say anything. I guess, I have to anyway, plan to visit home ( india ) during end of dec-jan when i will get a weeks vacation from the project during christmas & new year. lets see. Work is keeping me busy most of the days ( and fews nights too! ) and its going interesting too. Have fun until i come back soon.
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Damn, its again almost a
Damn, its again almost a week since I updated this one. Continuing from where I left it… Friday, 11/1/2002 I visited Devi and family in virginia and also met jaga there. I spent the rest of the night there. Next day, It was unusual, because they decided to have me cook their food! While I was not sure how it will end up, I knew I would do a decent job of cooking a few items. I managed to give them a small feast and It was a wonderful lunch. I left to NewJersy that afternoon and reached on time for the reception party of Ashish Johari at Ragini restaurant. Had some good time there for a few hours. Met some of his friends and it was already 1AM when I reached my hotel back in liberty corner. The rest of week has passed by without much of excitement. Work is keeping me busy most of the day as Iam exploring lot of new stuff here. Iam going back to detroit today after 2 weeks. Its going to be a great weekend. Besides, I will be staying back for narayanan mama’s 60th b’day celeberations on tuesday in detoirt and will be back in jersy on wednesday. C U
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Yet another gap…While I hate
Yet another gap…While I hate to be a lazy one not updating this often…I couldnt help it! Iam now in DC, working out of my companys Global HQ, its fantastic! I visited Priya and Chellappa yesterday and stayed at their place last night. Its good to see them after my last visit here about 5 months back. I might be seeing Devi, Jaga & fmly today here before I leave back to NJ today or tomorrow. PPP ( Pen Parkum Padalam ) is keeping up on some days! Its a tough one to decide. Hoping for the best! It is embarassing to say that you dont like a girl, which some consider as an insult. After, its your instincts which has to tell me that this is it! The proejct work at pfizer is going great. Having started here earlier than everyone else ( Luckily ) is giving a slight advantage over others in understanding the system and playing a key role on the proejct. There is tons of documentation to be read and to be produced back to them. Being a project for the regulatory group, FDA compliance standards are to be met and its been interesting so far. As the team is slowly assembled, Iam having great time meeting new people and getting to know them. Its going to be fun time for next few months. Narayanan mama is having his 60th birthday celeberations in detroit the week after next. Iam not sure If i can make it, especially when my BEA trainings are scheduled for that week. I will try my best, as such family occasions are rare here in US. See you next time!