Surely a Mars and Venus difference in perception.

We were at the PVR-multiplex on a Sunday night a week ago, to watch the Tamil movie 'Singam', which happens to be Surya uncle's (as Aman calls him) latest movie. While it is good to have such a swanky multiplex in walking distance from home, a visit sets you back by close to 500 bucks. So, unless it is a really good movie, I ain't wasting money watching movies there.

We managed to get tickets only for the 9:45PM show and are in our seats by 9:40PM. After some advertisements (mostly for gold jewellery), they play the promo-video of the Semmozhi Thamizh Manadu (Classical Tamil conference). A nicely done video, it features many big names in the music, letters and movie industry. But since everyone has to be accomodated & keep the video short and interesting, most personalities get only a few seconds on screen.

We are watching the video and the stars (A.R.Rehman, Hariharan, Susheela, Yuvan Shanker Raja etc etc) and I can't help admiring the awesome blend of lyrics & music, which gel perfectly with the way the personalities play their part.

And then a female appears on screen singing. Actually, we hear her singing even before we see her. The voice is more shreak-ish (in a nice way), with the facial expressions matching the voice.
In less than a second, my mind has looked up the stored sound-tracks in my brain and identified the voice to be similar to the magical one in the "Adiye kolludhe" song from the movie "Vaaranam Aayiram", sung by Shruthi Haasan, and emoted oh-so-magically by the cute-yet-sensuous Sameera Reddy.

I had just about identified Shruthi Haasan as the singer before the promo moves on to some other personality, when my wife goes, "She has got herself a nose job and now looks gorgeous".

What ???

That girl was there on the screen for just a few seconds, during which time one had to listen to the audio, look at the moving images on the screen, recogize the personality and still there was time enough for my wife to notice the nose-job. Such a sea of difference in perception between the male and female of the species. No wonder the book "Men are from Mars, Women are from Venus" is such a big hit.

P.S.: Movie was typical Tamil-masala, but fast-paced. Surya gave his best as usual & Anushka was cute.

The twins are out of the game. But in come new twins to cheer about.

While showing promise initially, both Serbia and Slovenia got knocked out of the FIFA cup. Did leave me a bit disappointed that neither could make it even to the next round.

But news of another set of new twins was more than enough to erase this disappointment. A close friend and his wife were blessed with twins - a baby boy and a baby girl. What a way to have a complete family in one go. Congrats, new parents.

And being a die-hard optimist, I am now rooting for Slovakia - another underdog. They play Holland today and it is going to be tough. But then who said the once-in-4-years soccer world-cup was easy ?

Wow !!! What an upset. Serbia did it.

This World Cup is surely full of surprises. First Spain lose to the Swiss. And guess what, Serbia beat the mighty Germans just now. Yippeee !!!

Slovenia is to play the US today. Best of Luck, guys. Go for it.

Best of Luck, Serbia.

As I type this, Serbia is playing Germany. Formidable foes to play against, indeed. But hey, if Switzerland can defeat Spain, anything can happen.

I am at work and hence can't watch the match, but would be tuning in to the FIFA website periodically to catch the action.

Go for it, Serbia. If you think you can, you just might.

Every kid is an Einstein, if you ask its Mom.

There is a saying in Malayalam - Kakka-kku than kunju pon-kunju, which translates to "To a crow, it's little one is the golden one". Applies to humans too, because we almost always see parents talking in glowing terms about how much of a genius their kids are.

Especially the current generation of parents who believe that this is very important for the kid's development. The previous generation were kinda stingy when it came to giving their kids credit where due. Atleast my parents were. Maybe the thought process was that too much of praise can make the kid believe that he is very good and inhibit further achievement. I would like to take the middle line - give appreciation / encouragement where due, but not go overboard and thereby stifle further growth.

My wife is no exception when it comes to Aman and to a certain extent I can see why. Aman started talking early at just about a little more than 1 year, talks legibly for his age, picks up words/rhymes/meanings/situations pretty fast, etc. Maybe there are many kids out there that do all this & more, but since her comparo is limited to the other kids in the family / school / neighborhood, she feels he is up there.

As far as I am concerned, I was more impressed by the fact that he could correctly identify various cars on the street even when he was just 1.5 years old. :-) He could correctly identify an M800, Alto, Ambassador, Santro, Swift, Jeep etc. Ofcourse, the moment it came to sedans, all cars were the "Baleno" according to him.

But last weekend, he truly impressed me with a couple of creations he made on his own using building-blocks. On Saturday morning, I was going through the newspaper, with Aman playing nearby, when he nudges me to have a look at his "home" as he called it. What impressed me was
the amazing symmetry in the creation.


And then again on Sunday night we are about to hit the bed, when he shows another of his creations - a little more complicated than the previous one, but again perfectly symmetrical in design.


Called out to my wife (who was in the kitchen) and both of us were truly impressed. Maybe it's possible that many kids his age will do this without much ado, but to us it looked marvellous - proving the crow-adage so true. :-)

FIFA mania - whom to root for ?

The Football World Cup is on and the madness will continue for the next month and more. Since football is one of my favourite sports along with Badminton and Hockey, I thought it would be a good idea to get a Satellite TV connection after many years of not having any cable/satellite connection. Also would help my wife & son while away time during the day.

So, last Saturday, get myself a SunDirect satellite connection. Among the many available options, I preferred this because they cover most of the Tamil & Malayalam channels which we normally watch. And it has DD-Sports which beams FIFA matches.

But then, another dilemna arose ? Which team to root for ? Usually people root for their home teams, but since India is not among the 32 nations that qualified for the World Cup, whom to root for ?

I look up the list and see Serbia and Slovenia among the 32. Wow !!! Two really small countries and yet good enough to qualify. And to top it both countries are customers for one of the projects that I am currently working on. So, I decide that I will root for the football teams of Serbia and Slovenia.

The Serbian Football Association logo :



The Slovenian Football Association logo :


Yeah, I know they are underdogs, compared to the big cats in the fray, but hey, what is the whole fun if everyone is rooting for the sure-fire winners, ? And as luck would have it, both of them played their first match yesterday evening, India time.

The results were a mixed bag since Slovenia won against Algeria, while Serbia lost to Ghana. Actually Slovenia is doing pretty good in their group rankings. In Group-C to which they belong, they are leading with 3 points, while USA and UK have 1 points each (they drew against each other) and Algeria is with 0 points (having lost to Slovenia).

Serbia / Slovenia, go for the cup. Best of Luck.

A train-engine to add spice to a kid's B'day. No big deal - it's a cake walk for them...

Every time my wife & kid come down to Chennai, we go on an eating-out spree. There's a list of places we don't miss visiting atleast once (if not more) - Pizza Hut, Pizza Corner, ChicKing, Kumarakom, McDonalds & last but not the least "Cake Walk". Yeah, I know that the list reads like a junk-food directory and an easy way to cholestrol hell. :-)

Anyway, last Saturday we dropped in at CakeWalk (Egmore) to stock up on their yummy range of pastries. They have a huge range available & as we are making our pick, this locomotive cake is put on display straight from the oven. It attracts the attention of everyone in the bakery. Anish (whoever it is) must be really happy cutting this unique B'day cake.


By the time, we had coffee and chicken rolls, the cake was gone.

Of stale meat and no complaints.

Yesterday's newspaper had an article about the carnivores in Vandalur zoo rejecting the meat served to them because it was stale. I don't blame them - who wants to eat stale food anyway ?

For those that don't know, Vandalur zoo in Chennai is one of the best zoos in India. Unlike other zoos where you have the animals in cages, here they are housed in open areas. Ofcourse they have moats and high fences to keep them restricted to their area.

If you are in Chennai and want to have a day's worth of quality time, don't look further than the Vandalur zoo. It is an amazing experience as I have experienced a few times. Ofcourse, make sure you have a full day at your disposal, because this place is spread over many acres and to have a dekko at all the animals/birds/reptiles, it takes you close to a day.

Coming back to the stale food problem, it seems the zoo authorities have contracted out the supply of meat to some contractor who occasionally tries to pass on stale meat to be given to the animals in the zoo. As per norms, there should be someone in the zoo, who should monitor the quality of the food procured. But, looks like this simple technicality gets overlooked every now and then. Actually, always gets overlooked.

So, the poor animals (lions, tigers, Siberian white tigers etc) are thrown stale meat, which they understandably reject. The newspaper goes to the top honcho at the zoo who is supposed to manage the zoo overall and bring this to his notice.

His response is "I have not heard of such a problem in the zoo. And have not got any complaints in this regard."

What does he expect to happen ? Ofcourse no human involved in the procurement process would complain. The only parties to complain would be the tigers and the lions. Does he expect the lions and tigers to write out their grievance on A4 sheet paper, sign it and present it to him ?

A trip to Scotland in lieu of the cancelled Serbian trip

Had to cancel my Serbian trip - business justification, or actually the lack of it, to use a jargon.

Anyway, we did do the vacation at Scotland. Actually "Scotland of the East" ie. "Vagamon hills", which is in Idukki district of Kerala. Since I don't have the patience to do dual travelogues, why don't you guys (ie. any of you that are really interested) click on the following link and check out the travelogue on team-bhp ?

Happy reading.