Salaam Karne Ki Aarzoo

An audio post. I did notice I had to improve in a lot of places - with respect to my lyrics as well as singing.

Movie: Umrao Jaan
Song: Salaam Karne Ki Aarzoo

Listen to the song here

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As usual your valuable comments solicited.

Back after a long hiatus...

Great to be back to the wonderful world of blogging. Hope not to take such long vacations in the future.
Lets see...Anyway, the last few months have been life-changing for me. Well...I entered into matrimony and saw two cities in three months. And finally am back to Hyderabad.

These two months in Bangalore were really good and so different from what I have lived till now. Waking up at 7 (which is really early for my standards),travelling for about an hour to office, that too amidst thiccck traffic and last but not the least , the pleasant-dull-cool (whatever you may call it) weather. It used to be impossible to make up my mind to get out of the cosy quilt, and if I succeeded then it would be another ordeal to bring myself to push off to work.

Apart from these, there were innumerable things that I enjoyed in Bangalore - the 'pani puri' from the boy on the roadside in Jayanagar, Lassi from Cool joint, window shopping at the forum, actual shopping in the small fancy stores, tamil movies in PVR, italian food at fiorano and the most important of all - spending time with my new found best pal for life ;)

After two long months, when I came to Hyderabad, I was kind of worried how its going to be. But the amazing team I have in office here just made sure I didnt feel as if I've been away for two months. So settling back to work in Hyd...and ya do expect some more posts coming...and if time permits some audio posts too :)

Microsoft Photo story

I came across this tool which is a free download from Microsoft - PhotoStory
http://www.microsoft.com/windowsxp/using/digitalphotography/photostory/default.mspx

Its a wonderful tool and very easy to use. You supply a list of pictures and this generates a video aka 'photo story' out of it. You can customize it with your narration or a background music.

Here is one such video generated from the pictures taken during a trip to the Nagarjuna Sagar dam in Hyderabad.


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Here is another number from the movie 'Dum'.

Song: Saanakya Saanakya
Movie : Dum



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The mood was set with the recording of the first song. :D
So I experimented with a few more songs this weekend. Here is one of them.

Song : Chinna Chinna Vanna Kuyil
Movie : Mouna Ragam
Music by : Illayaraja

Feedback solicited as usual :)

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Kanda Naal Mudhal - My "mudhal" song :)

A dream of long time has come true today.... :D
I finally got the resolve to record my first song - Kanda Naal Mudhal from the movie Kanda Naal Mudhal...a very melodious and close-to-carnatic-music song.

Thanks a lot to Anand for helping me with the mixing and for making this lazy girl do this :D

Do drop in your valuable comments...:)



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Wallpaper philosophies

Came across some "philosophical" wallpapers from coolbuddy.com. Some of them here...

If you are a vegetarian just to be nice to animals, why are you eating their food?

Good things may come to those who wait, but all the really excellent stuff will be gone by then

Don't be irreplaceable, if you can't be replaced, you can't be promoted

If you think your boss is stupid, remember you wouldn't have a job if he was any smarter

The sooner you fall behind the more time you will have to catch up

And, my favourite :-)

When women go wrong, men go right after them

Partha Mudhal.....

Had a hectic day at office and just thought of listening to some music. "Vettaiyaadu vilayaadu" caught my eyes on Raaga's front page. Though I had heard from some of my friends about the songs that was the first time I was seeing the songs on Raaga. I just ran through the singers and Bombay Jayashree's song got my full attention. Expectations raised especially because it was a Harris Jayaraj - Bombay Jayashree venture. I enjoyed the song very much. Jayashree's husky voice is just awesome! Couldn't stop from repeating it over and over again. However this song seems slightly different from her previous hits - Vaseegara and Ondra Renda. It has a comparitively faster beat and not as romantic as them :-) Also it seemed a little bit like a rhyme.
Vaseegara is the still the "most romantic" song I've ever heard.

PS: These are just my opinions on the song. I know that my taste is almost 360 degrees different from many :-D

Subtle mystery in Narnia??

The last week was really good. First of all, I had a training for three days and so did not have to do much work :-D. And then, the training was truly interesting and I didnt fall asleep(surprisingly!) As one of my friends said "It was right from the horse's mouth". It was a Windows Internals training by David Solomon....I was reminded very much of the architecture classes by Shantha mam and RP mam at college :-) although all other details of the subject are vague :-p
Another reason for my spirits remaining high was the extremely pleasant weather at Hyderabad (That too in March!?!).It is now about 2 years since I've been in Hyderabad and I already have so many things about it to cherish. I love the city as I somehow feel it sways according to my mood - calm when I want it to be and bubbly when I'm so.
So just two days in the week and it went away in the bat of a eyelid. Thanks to Yamini we decided to go to "Chronicles of Narnia" on Sunday. On Sunday, we left to PVR for the movie at about three. We were late and so couldnt get the "Panju mittai" :-( The movie was good and really above my expectations. It had slight resemblances to Harry potter right from the first scene where the kids depart in a train through the valleys and hills. However, there was one subtle thing in the movie which I don't know if it really was! In the scenes where the fawn (or whatever!) and Lucy(the little girl) appear, there were hints of romantic sparks between the two :-D The look in the eyes of the fawn was unmistakable.(Or maybe it is a god-given gift :-D) Anyways, I enjoyed the movie thoroughly.
After the movie, we went to the "Ohri's Metro" - the train restaurant that features in 'E-20 U-18'. We decided to order something differently and decided to have starters as the main dish and the main course just as starters. I ordered a mocktail which I swear will never even touch again :-(( We took some snaps in the restaurant and then came home. We then remembered we had "Madagascar" waiting at home for us. Another nice movie for that weekend!

At the "Ohri's Metro"

Shika and Yams posing while the great photographer is in action :-)











Just outside the train....Me and Yams




BTW, meet my virtual pet 'Leo' :-) Saw this in someone's blog and liked it.

Ham teacher-student khelenge...

Its been about a month since I wrote a post. So here goes one....

I've been trying to write about something for long but just didnt get the time for it. Today, even though being a sunday, I came to office as I had some pending work to complete. As usual, didnt get to work much...Was chatting with my juniors in hostel catching up on college gossips, reading blogs from near and far and so on.

I finished all this and just started to work when my colleague Puja came to office with her kid, Abhika. She's such an adorable kid...but really shy and doesnt talk much.
But surprisingly she came to my desk today and started talking to me...I couldn't make out most of what she was telling :-D but really enjoyed it. She then arranged all the dolls from my cubicle and other nearby cubicles under my table. She too went and sat under the table and beckoned to me "Ham teacher-student khelenge..".I joined her :-D
We then played teacher-student and she was telling me stories like her teacher. I forgot all my work,worries and started playing...It was such a good stress reliever...She then taught me the steps for 'Kajra Re'..It was really great to learn from her :-)We then made drawings of 'monkeys' on the whiteboards...Everyone in our row is going to have a shock on Monday. There'll be a monkey on everybody's whiteboard, courtesy me and Abhika :-D
I realised it was a long time since I enjoyed myself. :-D

A treat after a long time

Yesterday we went for a dinner treat after a really long time :-) The host was Yams and the occasion was her birthday (It was in December but the treat had been postponed till I came back to Hyderabad :->) We decided to go to Ohri's midnight biriyani as Angeethi was ruled out [:-(] as Yams and Ayesha had gone there just the day before and Deeptha was dead against Angeethi...We reached there at 10.30 to find that the midnight biriyani started only at 11.30 on all days other than Friday and Saturday...We definitely couldn't wait for an hour...most of us had skipped lunch due to the treat :-D So we went to Ohri's Tadka. Right from the time Yamini told she was giving a treat I was telling I wanted to eat biriyani...and so I didnt take much time to order. My biggest disappointment was when the biriyani came :-( It was just white rice with vegetables here and there as if they had fallen in by mistake...I decided to compensate for this in the dessert. So we headed to Havmor below after dinner to get the "Toblerone" shake....I really enjoyed it inspite of Harini's taunting about the amount of calories it had :-D..after all I had lost some calories after my trip and I had to compensate for them..:-)It was a wonderful time we had especially all of us together after a long time...



BTW, an interesting series of posts that I came across...really good :-D
http://prabhukrish.net/category/he-she/

Skiing at Crystal Mountain

The last two weeks in Redmond was pretty good for me...I learnt something new. Ironically, this matched with the new year resolution for me on the gift scratch card that I got in Subway :-) It was "Learn something new this year" and I'm happy I fulfilled it too early in the year ;-) Anyway,this doesnt mean I won't learn anything more this year, just that the learning spirit has been instilled in me with full vigor...[hope my manager reads this ;-)]
Want to know what I learnt? I learnt to ski :-).....I never thought I would ever enjoy some sport at all, me being the lazy kind of person. The main driving factors were the wide expanse of soft white snow in front of me and the feeling that I will never get to try this once I'm back to India. I joined Chetan and his friends, Prasanna and Jigar to the Crystal mountain skiing resort.
I opted for the 3- day lesson scheme which amounted to 125$. My first day lesson was on Jan 7th. The drive was also a really enjoyable one. The road was lined up with tall and dense pine trees towering up to great heights and blocking the rays of the sun. At a particular point it looked like we were going through a tunnel...see below for yourself...

The second day we also stopped in the middle to chain the tyres. The landscape was totally white draped in snow and it was snowing lightly. It was wonderful.

Once we reached there, we got ourselves registered and proceeded to the first time skiers zone. There we met our trainer for that day - Nicole. She was a sweet friendly person and I was really astonished when she remembered me by name the next week because she sees so many people everyday :-) Maybe she remembered me as the most difficult student to teach :-D Teachers usually remember slow learners ;-)

There were about 6 people in my group and the first lesson was to teach how to wear the skis. The shoes were damn heavy...about 8-9 kgs and they were almost biting my toes. And wearing the skis was a bigger problem than I had thought it to be :-) I kept falling down the slope and really had a difficult time...Then started the lessons on how to ski. I was told to make an 'A' wih my skiis. This shape was supposed to reduce the speed of skiing and so for the first timers this was to be maintained throughout. My shoes were a bit oversize and it was making it even more difficult to push the skiis apart. I could not count the number of times that I fell down that day :-(. After a lunch of veg pizza, we again went to the ski grounds. I was determined to ski atleast once without falling before leaving that day :-p. We realised that there was no class for the afternoon session. So we proceeded to the lowest slope - 'The Discovery'. Getting on into the wench was a nightmare, the wench kept moving and we had to get on to it at the right time. But once on it, the journey to the top sitting on it was fun :-) The slope was 4580 feet tall. Again, getting off the wench was really tough and I kept falling down :-( I was almost beginning to think this was not for me, when Chetan agreed to coach me. I should say he was a really good teacher and by the end of the day I was able to make 2 zero-fall skiing attempts down the slope :-D

The second day, I got longer skiis and getting up was even more difficult.During the lesson, we were taught how to turn. We had an exercise after that - the trainer fixed poles at about an yard's distance from each other in a straight line. We had to go through them without knocking out the poles. I was the last to go through. I went through the poles without knocking them off but I was skiing sideways. Until people told me after I reached down I never realised it looked so funny :-( After the lessons, I didnt want to venture bigger slopes with the others and stuck to the 'Discovery'. However I enjoyed it much more as I didnt have many falls. It was a much more colder day and was snowing throughout. I was enjoying every moment of the snow fall. I met a girl from Florida on the lift up to the slope. When I told her I was from India, she asked me "Oh! So you would have seen live elephants right?" I was surprised...why elephants of all the things in India? But then when she asked what else was famous in India, I couldnt think of anything specific :-(

At the end of the day I was really glad to remove the skiing shoes. My toes were hurting really bad. After dinner at subway and a hot water bath at home my head hit the bed. After the second day, I didnt have much pain too like the first day. For about a week after the first day I couldnt even move a muscle. But truly as a whole it was a once-in-a-lifetime experience.

Below - me in the skiing gear

Process...Process...huh?

I saw a poster today in the hallway of one of the buildings here in my office. It instantly swiped me off my feet. What was depicted there was exactly what used to run in my mind often when I used to be frustrated with my work :-) I couldn't stop myself from capturing it in my camera. Here's it for you to peek into [With some editing done to trim off things which might land me into trouble :-)]



The poster had a huge block diagram depicting the flow for a particular process. It was mostly hidden by white paper on which there were just two steps to get it done...short and sweet.[I don't have any idea about the above process, maybe it needed the detail...however it just reminded me of the mundane processes that I see]

A process for every small thing...Maybe it is a necessity sometimes, but most often it complicates things than to ease them. :-)

Retrospective in Redmond

The title is inspired by the movie I saw on New year's eve...'Sleepless in Seattle':-)

Well it was the weekend...and I had a enjoyable and tiring day, shopping. But as the night progressed, I realised it was one of those new years which I would never want to have again :-( - Alone inside a quiet apartment(of course I had the TV to my company).I thought I'll call up some people and wish them and to my horror none of the calling cards had balance :-(

Someone had asked me earlier that day about what I usually do for New year and I too had read some blogs too about the different new year experiences...This started my mind off on the long trails of thinking...about what was New year to me all these years...
I should say even though there was not much partying or celebrations in my New years, it sure was not 'yet another day'. Most of my new years were spent with my parents in Salem (It is a small town in the state on TamilNadu famous for mangoes and steel :-D)We usually had a company get-together followed by dinner, orchestra and the much-awaited fireworks. After moving to Chennai for my college, this day also meant seeing my school friends after a long time. It used to be so much fun meeting up with old friends and catching up on gossips. At the stroke of twelve we would be at my favourite local temple praying to get the new year started off peacefully.
And some of the other great times I've had during new year were at the Anna university hostel. The best thing about hostel was that I never remember a time when I had to be alone there :-D ...Those times will remain evergreen in my mind...
Well...that's past...so what did I do this year...Though not anything as much interesting I did watch a lot of movies on TV...lots of them which I've wanted to see but hadn't got a chance to - Miss Congeniality, You've got mail, Legally Blonde, Sleepless in Seattle...
And yes, I got my new camera and was exploring it...This was one of the first snaps that I took :-D

Wishing you all a very happy new year!!

A scene from my living room...