Personal Weblog of Deepak Vasudevan

Aiswarya pooja and Mahaganapathy Homam Dates-2010 @Anupuram Sri Ayyappan Temple (Narasangkuppam) ASHTA AISWARYA POOJA(05.00 PM.) MAHA GANAPATHY HOMAM(06.00AM) Date Day Date Day 28, February Sunday 13, February. Kumbham-1 Saturday 29, March Monday 15, March Meenam-1 Monday 28, April Wednesday 15, April. Metam-1 Thursday 27, May Thursday 15, May. Idavam-1 Saturday 26, June Saturday 15, June. Midhunam-1 Tuesday. 25, July Sunday 17, July. Karkitakam-1 Saturday 24, August Tuesday 17, August. Chingam-1 Tuesday. Malayalam New year 23, September Thursday 17, September. Kanni-1 Friday. ...

TukTastic -- A cute little amazing website of an autodriver in Chennai I have been following a few news articles regarding Samson who is an auto-driver opposite Taj Coromandel hotels in Chennai. He has a website designed by one of the UK tourist who was amazed by the driver's honesty and friendliness to tourists. Samson is very much tech-savvy autodriver. He can check out his website 'TukTasktic' over here . Let us wish him all success and let us hope that other auto drivers too emulate him in being honest and tourist-friendly.

Interesting website URL of Subway, Chennai I was searching out for Subway, Chennai locations near Guindy and landed upon an interesting URL of them: http://www.9841782929.com/home.asp They have another domain name (as deduced from the email addresses in the contact page as http://www.pinkpapayafoods.com/ [named after their business] but currently it is serving 404. I have written them so that they can correct the same too. You know why I wrote them to correct it? It is in accordance with our ' Share and Grow Together ' policy that we discussed sometime back. I have another interesting observation too with respect to this domain. In US and other countries, mobile numbers are considered personal assets and little confidential to disclose. In India we have a little relaxed mindset with respect to the same. However, having a mobile number itself as a domain name is kind of very radical thought that this business is proposing to the world!

The devilish Saturday and Sunday syndrome for the past few months ... I believe sometime back we have been discussing about the malefic ways in which our society is being pulled towards particularly on Saturdays and Sundays . I recall my school correspondent's inspiring quotes that we should treat holidays as ' holy -days' rather than wasting them over mundane pleasures. But I believe with the increasing perils of bad media and intensifying kali effects , people are more attracted towards mundane pleasures rather than eternal bliss and/or self-realisation. I typically observe that because of vicious circle of people who involve in all sorts of crappy activities involving arranging to schedule a demo for thier insurance product on saturday, scheduling your time for a business activity which they ought to perform (and thus they escape for a nourishing date with their partner) misusing their authority our general productivity suffers significantly. I just thought of sharing t...

The bane of second saturdays, forced shutdown hours on the current trend of business ... These days when every business is ushering to service the customer 24x7 and set up virtual offices by leveraging the benefits of Internet as their extended office, I observe that our government organizations and offices of the state-central administrations still cling to the age-old practice of second saturday holidays and forced shutdown hours during lunch break. Typically I would like to draw the attention towards the following observations: Take any private bank for example like ICICI or HDFC. You can see the branch services from dawn to dusk without any break. The staff does take tea/lunch breaks but in turns so that the business as usual does not stop for the customer. The customers who walkin anytime during the period the bank is open can avail the same service at the same time period without any typical effect of 'particular hour of the day' (like lunch hour). Whereas in the case of ...

Why does people particularly in Chennai have a craze for telephonic conversation more than to email? Most of the service providers and business establishments particularly in Chennai are so crazy about signing anything verbally rather than through email also. Even a simple business query that you write to a business establishment would take months to draw their attention and comprehensively get addressed in all aspects whereas they would be glad to spend with you hours together on the phone call. What is the reason for their phone-mania or email-phobia? Over the phone everything goes vocal. There isn't a kind of evidence of conversation. People though in authorititive cadre really lack a sheen lustre of holding responsibility of their job and feeling proud for it. They want to 'escape' their responsibilities and 'shriek' their moral obligations at any cost. This can be clearly visible when a telemarketer calls regarding insurance based on your credit card that they...

Distressful effects of stress This week headlines of every leading newspaper had been seeing three to four top news about people taking extreme steps just because of stress created either by their immediate family or because of societal impacts. This can be considered as a part II read of our earlier post " Uncontrolled Anger -- Salient Example in Mumbai ". Some of the recent incidents are: When tax rage goes over the edge ...[The Austin Tragedy] Depressed youth fires for about 36 hours in Lucknow. Senior leader of TN CPM (W R Varadarajan) goes missing. Former Defence Minister (George Fernandez) goes missing. I just thought of sharing a few recent incidents of the previous week which demonstrated the malefic effects of stress, created either from their personal or professional quarters. The need of the hour for everyone is to identify the mischief-mongers in their own society and to keep them aloof.

"Experience 3000" A number of people would have experienced the start of Saade Saathi in the most recent Saturn transit that happened in September 2009. The total period should be about 2555 days (spanning seven and a half years). Since the effects of any planetary transits are visible even a little before and little after, I just thought of having the caption of this post as 'Experience 3000'. The objective of this post is that the period of seven and half years is not just bolt out of the blue. If Lord Sun is revered as a king of all planets, Lord Saturn is considered as a hard task master and judgement giver. The turbulences during this period is to be taken in the positive aspect to realise and repent one's own folly and thus incorporate suitable corrections in our day-to-day lives towards the service of the Lord. A while back I believe we did discuss about Rahu and Ketu along with the fact that planetary debilitations are an indicator that we would need to c...

"Sani Bhagavan Magimai" -- A devotional serial in Polimer TV every sunday Whilst posting about 'Vada' shrines in Tamil Nadu , I just recalled about the television programme that Polimer TV is airing every Sunday at 9 AM. It is called 'Sani Bhagavan Magimai'. You can see a flyout about this programme in the picture below: Interestingly I have not got the opportunity to see this programme and kept missing it till last week and with the grace of the Lord could catch up a few minutes only today afternoon. It is again the grace of the Lord to share the same with other readers for everyone's benefit.

'Vada' shrines near Chennai In Indian languages like Tamil or Sanskrit, 'Vada' (வட) stands for 'North' and is normally a shorthand for 'Vadakku' (வடக்கு). Over the course of time, I have been observing a number of shrines which were prefixed with 'Vada' and found in various places surrounding the immediate 'Greater Chennai'. I just thought I would share a few of them for the benefit of readers: Vadapalani: This place has the famous temple of Lord Murugan and also the southern place where the temple of Lord Murugan can be found in Tamil Nadu is called 'Palani' (near Madurai). Vada-Thirunageswaram: This temple can be found near Kundrathur Murugan temple and the temple board says that temple deities can be worshipped and pariharams-poojas be offered akin to Thirunageswaram temple (for Rahu and Ketu). Vada-Thirunallar: Thirunallar is the famous temple town near Karaikal for Lord Saturn ("Darbaranya Kshetram"). I have observe...

"Share your shortcoming with us. Spread the good word with your group and neighbors" You can see the following quotation spread across a lot of business establishments in this part of India (Tamil Nadu) in Tamil: 'நிறைகளை நண்பர்களிடம் சொல்லுங்கள் , குறைகளை எங்களிடம் சொல்லுங்கள்'. The exact verbatim English translation has already been done as the caption of this post. This effectively achieves the following: Avoids the unwanted back-talking against the business or service which shoos-shoos the potential customers of them and discourages them from thinking positively and progressively. When you talk face-to-face their negatives, an honest person takes it in the right direction and makes a good humble endeavor to improve their workings. I don't care about the coward who wants to 'escape' from health comments/criticisms and I don't think we have any space to talk about them or time to think about such skunks. There is also a related benefit or saying in T...

An interesting prankster that attempted to demoralize but eventually contributed thoughtful ideas ... There was one interesting spam comment in my post " Blood Donation -- Do's and Don'ts " which I have shared below as a picture. No doubt that this spammer should should be suffering from sort of psychic trouble and hence trying to discourage others from helping the community. Nevertheless, I just thought I would siphon out a few good thoughts lying latent inside his own gibberish crap: "deepak don't post any unwanted information. the information which you are posting is very old and not informational. so dont waste others time and make others to read your blog. if you don't have work keep quiet." The spammer lost his sense in sharing out the comment in the right place. He should have used the the contact information from the profile section of my weblog to intimate me this more general thought or at least he if feels that what he posts was in the sam...

Desperation would make things look and feel dearer ... A couple of weeks back I had an opportunity to accompany a friend of mine from Thailand and he had been to India on a shorter trip before he returned back to Thailand last Friday night. Whilst chatting about something I had an interesting saying from his mouth which is a kind of variant of a known proverb 'Haste makes waste'. He was telling about the Chennai's autorickshaws. He was telling that whatever be the situation if you even give an iota of 'benefit-of-doubt' to the autorickshaw driver that you are currently in the sense of urgency, the fares would quadruple and you would end up paying through your nose for a distance which should just cost you peanuts otherwise. We were discussing about the applicability of this autorickshaw observation to other context as well. Take any other occasion for example. When you show the desperation for a certain thing to the service provider/other party, they would, for sure...

Time is the only entity in the universe that flows with quiet certainty—never pausing, never flinching. It doesn’t stall for grief, nor does it sprint for excitement. Which is why we've held fast to the adage: “Time and tide wait for none.” Yet ironically, we hear polar laments almost daily: “I’m totally busy—I have no time!” “I’m bored to death—just killing time!” Both declarations miss the plot. Time isn’t something to possess or eliminate—it’s something to partner with. Through systematic planning, active reflection, and iterative correction, one can achieve something near excellence. ( Let’s not invoke perfection—that realm belongs to mythology. ) So when someone complains about time—either its scarcity or its excess—perhaps it’s not about clocks and calendars at all. Maybe it's a sign to pause the task, not the timer. Reflect. Rethink. Realign. If clarity remains elusive, a good psychiatrist might help sweep the mental attic—because oft...

Another feature in its cap for VIT... My alma mater VIT has another great news to share. Its Founder-Chancellor ( G. Viswanathan (aka) GV ) has been nominated as member of Board of Governors of the Indian Institute of Information Technology (Design and Manufacturing), Kancheepuram . Check out for more details from 'The Hindu' page over here .

Blood Donation -- Do's and Don'ts Blood donation is a very noble deed as it saves some one's life. I recieved one email article containing various do's and donts on Blood Donation which I just thought I would share it out with others here: Dos: You are between age group of 18-60 years. Your weight is 45 kilograms or more. Your hemoglobin is 12.5 gm% minimum. Your last blood donation was 3 months earlier. You are healthy and have not suffered from malaria, typhoid or other transmissible disease in the recent past. You have eaten a low fat healthy diet few hours before donating blood Donts: You have suffered from cold / fever in the past 1 week. You are under treatment with antibiotics or any other medication. You had undergone a major surgery in the last 6 months. You had taken any vaccination in the last 24 hours. You had a miscarriage in the last 6 months or have been pregnant / lactating in the last one year. You had fainting attacks during last donation. You have re...

Let us extend support to our little tigers ...   The rapid and reckless industrialization and rampant disturbance to the ecosystem is depriving tigers of their ecological home and denying them the right to live on this earth. As a result, the tiger population is fast depleting. WWFIndia and Aircel have started a mission to protect the tiger homes and save its population.   You can check out more about this movement from ' Save Our Tigers ' website. Speak up, share your voice and if you can send in a few bucks as a donation it would be a great effort forward to save the tiger population.

Mission SafeSocialNetworking_EcoSystem These days every Tom, Dick and Harry enters a social networking system and sends out invitations to expand their community. Sometimes hysteric people use this to vent out their emotions too. Check out our earlier narration of an incident here . I was just thinking we can make a constructive use of these crappy persons too. The product of this research is Mission SafeSocialNetworking_ EcoSystem. I am currently using a simple Windows forms desktop application made in C# that processes such emails, generates a customized application form for each spammer. If the spammer is really pursuing further, it also allows to track payments and responses through NETWORKING_PERMISSION_GRANT or NETWORKING_PERMISSION_DENY. The following response generated by the application itself would explain the modus-operandi of the application and our noble mission to safeguard our social networking communities. We support Google Orkut's goal outlined here to p...

Time-limited free plastic surgery at Pasam Hospital, Kodaikkanal I came to know about a news of free plastic surgery that is being organized by german doctors at Pasam Hospital in Kodaikkanal. Anyone who is affected by burn injuries can register for a treatment at the camp. Besides this, those with ailments in eyes, ears, nose and lips can also register for a treatment at the camp. To register, please contact the following address: Pasam Hospital, MM Street, Kodaikkanal Telephone: +91-4542-240778/+91-4542-240668 Email: pasam.vision (at) gmail.com