Monday, August 31, 2009

Evergreen Memories (Album Collection) :: My Wedding Promise (Engagement) with Lavanya

Evergreen Memories (Album Collection) :: My Wedding Promise (Engagement) with Lavanya

My wedding engagement and wedding albums have been remaining in my Windows Live album under 'Private View'. Lavanya had been trying to convince me and remind me each time to get them across the 'LavanyaDeepak' platform. Not sure what caused the delay -- is it laziness, is it time-availability, is it other environmental factors that have been inadvertantly creeping in for us providing a kind of hot water scenario.

Today afternoon, I just thought I would take out a few moments to get these published out. The breaking inspirations for the publishing today were:

  1. Ashok's Google Chat. Ashok is currently in California and he might be visiting India around next month.
  2. Vishnu's Part II album of his new kid.


Wedding Engagement: 12th July 2009


Wednesday, August 26, 2009

Scholarships for meritorious students with poor financial background

Scholarships for meritorious students with poor financial background

My sincere thank to Nirmala (Cognizant) for sharing with me the emailer on scholarships for meritorius students with poor financial background. I would like to share the message with other interested readers so that it can reach and cater to more needy students.

A Bangalore-based NGO ("Prerna"), backed up and supported by Infosys foundation is helping out poor students with excellent academic records. The NGO conducts a written test and those who clear the test stand to qualify for eligible financial assistance for their further studies. The current eligibility is stated as cleared tenth standard examinations in April 2009 with a score more than 80 per centage.

Interested students can get the necessary details and application forms from the following address:

No. 580, Shubhakar,
44th Cross, First Main Road,
Jayanagar 7th Block,
Bangalore.

Contact Telephone Numbers:

  1. Ms. Saraswati: (91) 990-090-6338
  2. Mr. Shivkumar: (91)998-663-0301 [Hanumanth Nagar Office]
  3. Ms. Bindu: (91)996-453-4667 [Yeshwantpur office]

Let us keep LinkedIn beautiful and clean ...

Let us keep LinkedIn beautiful and clean ...

Social networking communities are excellent tools for getting people together, building rapport and relationship. At the same time, pranksters do abuse such websites for their wilful bad gains. Orkut had been the most targetted product for such abuse by hackers. I am a hard nut to crack in my policy towards a staunch hatred for Orkut because it keeps hitting headlines time and again for abuses in varied forms.

And recently the placement and recruitment consultants seems to be having a similar foray on LinkedIn. LinkedIn is simply different professional networking community and there is simply no place on earth or under the sun for casual flirting and other crazy relationships over here whatsoever. My normal practice of dealing such scumbags is as follows:

  1. A polite reply back challenging 'Do you know me? Can you give a background on our previous knowhow?'. I would give them a decent four business days time before I choose to trash off the message.
  2. If the person replies in a way that is convincing and there is a bona fide previous knowhow, then I can add him to the network. If he is going to be another jackass sending out the same canned response crap back, then I would 'Report As Spam' and trash it.
  3. If the issue persists, I would have LinkedIn CustHelp to take the whip on them to have their asses laminated.
  4. If the issue still persists, I would parallely choose to start an investigation on him based on his profile and have his employer and other circles known about his perceived hysteria.

I admit that (4) would take a long time since it also involves a harmonious coordination amongst my other schedules and action items in my Todolist. The bottomline of the story is simple. Let us keep casual cropdusters and scumbags away from social networking communities and keep it beautiful.

Let me know how you tackle such menace and let us help grow a prosperous community by keeping off such vicious pests. As a salient example, my today's latest trap was a recruitment consultant called (http://www.linkedin.com/in/srini007) from Consult One India. In this particular case, all steps (1) through (4) have been completed.

Sunday, August 09, 2009

MTC buses in Chennai are adored by beautiful quotations

MTC buses in Chennai are adored by beautiful quotations

I have observed a number of MTC buses these days in Chennai wherein nice quotation stickers are pasted near the entrance and exit of the doors. The transport corporation is also busy in using these spaces to enhance its rapport and relationship with the commuters. I would like to draw your attention to one of our recent discussions on this topic over here.

The other useful quotation stickers that I came across are being generated by Temple Divine Success. The website is available over here: http://www.templedivinesuccess.com/

Disclaimer: There seems to be a small issue with reference to this website. Google Advisory has allegations against this website as distributing malaware. I had to investigate this website armed with Inbox Web Security Guard and found that a few third party services that they have embedded seems to be causing this issue. I have written about the advisory to info (at) templedivinesuccess.com. One of the first replies seems to be that they have started investigating on the issue. Hence I have *hyperlinked* directly to the website. You may like to check out the Google Interstitial warning on the website over here to see if you would like to visit the website with appropriate security precautions.

Sunday, August 02, 2009

Who is the real vector?

Who is the real vector?

Today afternoon I had a chance to visit my workplace because of little Todos in my tasklist. I had a friend who visited the same time too. I had a casual chat with him for a few minutes before he was leaving for the day and he was telling that he was actually not feeling well with a little high temperature and common cold. Since these days, the incidence and prevalence of H1N1 (aka) Swine Flue seems not to be that uncommon in any part of the land area on the planet earth, there was a little affectionate teasing as whether swine flu visited him. He immediately screamed in negation because of the fear of it.

As the discussion progressed, we touched something philosophical. It had been common that quite a few of the diseases are linked to some bird/reptiles/rodents. A few examples are:
  1. Dog (Canis lupus familiaris) is associated with Rabies.
  2. People say the fur of the cat would be a more common infectant for those suffering from asthmatic conditions.
  3. A little recently there was a largescale epidemic amongst the birds and they called it 'Bird Flu'. Because of so much media hype and politicians pushing behind it a significant number of poultries were forced to kill hens and cocks in an attempt to 'contain' the infection, as the news and remedial measures saw for it.
  4. The more recent one is 'Swine Flu' (H1N1 influenza). And the latest animal that is being associated with this disease is a domestic pig. And during early days of Swine Flu news in Chennai, Chennai Corporation was atrocious in hunting out for domestic pigs amongst the various slums and to slaughter them without mercy.
Though all these are some of the diseases affecting the physique of one living entity or other in the beautiful planet earth, I am just wondering if some one of thought of the following diseases spread by Man (Homo Sapiens):
  1. Avarcious Greed
  2. Unwarranted Lust towards womanhood
  3. Short-temper
  4. Crazy infatuation towards mundane attractions (or rather distractions).
I am actually drawing the attention towards these four points which are better described in our Sanskrit slokas as Lobham (Anger), Kamam (Lust), Krodham (Short-Temper) and Moham (Crazy Infatuation). Would there be an initiative to contain the spread of this epidemic too? In my view, I would say WHO or other alternative agency should declare the rampant and reckless spread of these as a global mental health emergency and any such associated vectors should be quarantined as deeply as possible from the face of the earth to make it continue beautiful.

When we have have so much infection from our own side, I don't think it is justified to throw allegations on our dumb friends and to slaughter them for no fault of theirs. I am actually reminded of Kaviarasu Kannadasan's lyrics (also features in a song 'Vandhenda Paalkaran' in a famous Tamil movie Annamalai:

அட மீன் செத்தா கருவாடு நீ செத்தா வெறுங்கூடு
கண்ணதாசன் சொன்னதுங்க
பசு இருந்தாலும் பாலாகும் செத்தாலும் தோலாகும்
நான் கண்டு சொன்னதுங்க

(Meaning: When the fish dies it becomes eligible as an edible sea food besides a health tonic like in Cod Liver Oil whereas when a man dies he just needs to be cremated without much of utility value, not to involve discussions like organ transplantations and research topics. We are more concerned with utility value to Planet Earth. Similarly when a cow lives it gives milk and when it dies its skin becomes a valuable asset to make leather products).

There are a few more thoughful quotes in the same song which are as follows:

  1. தன் ரத்தத்தில் ஒரு பாதி பாலாகம் பிரிப்பது பசுவோட வேலையப்பா
    அது பிரிந்தாலும் பாலோடு தண்ணீரைக் கலப்பது மனிதனின் மூளையப்பா

    (Meaning: A cow gives milk by internally converting its blood as milk. It treats it as a service to the global welfare. And the same cow's milk is being diluted using water by avaricious human brain for selfish business purposes)
  2. சாணம் விழுந்தா உரும்பாரு எருவை எரிச்சா திருநீறு
    உனக்கு என்ன வரலாறு உண்மை சொன்னா தகறாரு

    (Meaning: The cow dung is also a fertiliser for a lot of (paddy) fields in India. When the dung is dried it is also used as a holy ash in various temples. And now the poet challenges man as to what real history does he have compared to these?)
  3. நீ மாடு போல உழைக்கலையே
    நீ மனுஷனை ஏச்சுப் பொழைக்கிறியே
(Meaning: The cow is really hard-working. The poet challenges the man as he is lazy and only knows to piggyback on another's effort as a blood-sucking leech.)

For a complete version of the song in Tamil, check out this weblog however the author has completely written it in Tamil.

Saturday, August 01, 2009

"Speak Less; Speak Softly; Speak Sweetly"

"Speak Less; Speak Softly; Speak Sweetly"

Today during my visit to my bank in Adyar and whilst waiting in the banking hall for my transaction to be completed, I observed a small slogan that they had put near the teller counter

"Speak Less; Speak Softly; Speak Sweetly"
The background of the slogan was also colorful and glittering. I am sure I would not need to explain the meaning of this phrase in depth and hence just thought of sharing this quote with others too. Thanks to Central Bank of India for sharing out the nice slogan.