Saturday, July 30, 2011

End of Petty Family Dispute, thanks to Tambaram Subordinate Court

The 548 day legal dispute with one of the distant family members that seeded on January 26 2010 was finally resolved amicably before the Tambaram Subordinate Court today (July 28 2011), thanks to Shanidev and our legal counsel.

A lot of mediation options did not properly work out as the other parties were either not responding or responding with hysteric hostility and hence we had to force and get a formal court order to clear off the hurdles.

Sath sath Koti Pranam Shanidev!

Friday, July 29, 2011

Ramadan Mubarak

The Holy Month of Ramadan starts tomorrow*. Our Islam brothers start to observe the divine pre-dawn to post-dusk fast, helping others and strenghtening the ties with the omnipotent omnipresent divinity.

Here is our wishes to each other on the start of Ramadan ('Ramadan Mubarak'):


A'uzu billahi minashaitanir rajim
Bismillahir Rahmanir Rahim
Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar (3)
Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar, Allahu Akbar (6)

[ I seek refuge in Allah from the outcast Satan.
In the name of Allah, the Most Beneficent, the Most Merciful.
Allah is the Greatest, Allah is the Greatest, Allah is the Greatest
Allah is the Greatest, Allah is the Greatest, Allah is the Greatest]

I am glad  that I was able to get my old friend (Afroz) in Chat who explained me several things about Ramadan.

[* Asia countries may start a day later. Check out Ramadan calculator here.]  Check out Ramadan calendar details for Washington DC:


Thursday, July 28, 2011

Rewards for Searching

Bing has a unique user loyalty program. With a simple rewards signup everytime you use Bing, you are eligible for a few points which can  be redeemed for exciting gifts from Microsoft catalog. Just thought of sharing a little gift that Bing sent me a few minutes back.


Saturday, July 23, 2011

Radhamohan/Prakash' Payanam -- An eye-opener in more than one perspective ...

Today I had an opportunity to see Payanam, a thriller-drama epicentered on a  hijack attempt on a domestic flight in India which is unfoiled by National Security Guards.  A few points about Payanam are hereunder:
  1. As a Radha Mohan's movie and with Prakashraj it does carry a very good entertainment. We can also see Brahmanandam's comedy in it, similar to Mozhi
  2. The precedence that our politicians give to their vote banks more than people's life, national image and integrity of the nation has been brought out quite clearly. I am really expecting the "2G" movie to hit screens which is being planned out currently. 
  3. The malicious journalists and their attempts to thwart the national security just to gain TRP ratings has been illustrated by a reporter who infringes airport security by trespassing as a 'fake cop'.

    How did the so-called Central Industrial Security Force was callous is another story which has not been captured in the movie? Or where they also hand-in-gloves with the reporters?
  4. On a personal experience I have seen the so-called ISO 9001-2000 certified Chennai Airport lacked basic civic sense amongst the staff leave alone lack of medical facilities causing this blogger acute discomfort in 2009-10. Now we come to realize from the research of Radha Mohan that they also do not have proper security infrastructure and the so-called security staff are just 'agents' of thugs. Let us see if Chennai Airport is going to improve something at least in the future.

    We anyway know that Chennai and Mumbai international airports are famous for bag-lifting of electronic gadgets from international passengers' checked in baggages.
  5. Politicians just offer to release the terrorist in a blatant attempt to 'satisfy' them without even consulting the armed forces.
A few good dialogues/quotes in this movie are:
  1. NSG commander blames the so-called representatives from the Home Ministry that "You are just old but not experienced" and I think it aptly applies to the ministries and cabinet too.
  2. The terrorist quotes to the passengers that in the women/child hostages were secure for the three days with them and challenges whether that would be the state of affairs in so-called police stations.
  3. Hero-worshipping has been strongly condemned in the movie. A hero who has been glorified as Shining Star has been clarified that he is in afraid of cockroaches.
Payanam a very good movie in our travel towards the progress of the nation in identifying the bad elements particularly the people's representatives.

Friday, July 22, 2011

Happy First Aadi Velli Celebrations to Everyone!

First Aadi Velli (Holy Friday of Aadi Month) today. Let us wish each other a very happy and prosperous Aadi Velli celebrations.

I would like recollect my previous post on Sri Mahalakshmi Stotram by Sage Agasthya. You can also quickly hear the slokam over here.

Monday, July 18, 2011

5th Annual Brahmotsavam of Sri Ranganatha Temple (West Srirangam)

Ensure your calendars are marked to facilitate you attend the event. You may be aware that the Gajavahanam  a recent addition to the temple (having clear the port of entry/customs regulations and registered to the temple services)

Tuesday, July 12, 2011

Had an opportunity to watch two gems of Prakash Raj

In the past two weeks I had an opportunity to watch two excellent masterpieces of Prakash Raj. A versatile actor tasted the roles of hero, comedian and villain.

Chellam! You truly rock in every role of yours!

Two of the soft touch films I loved are -- Mozhi and Abhiyum Naanum. His pranks with Brahmanandam in Mozhi are true ROTFL. Both the films are directed by Radha Mohan and co-starred by Prithviraj.

Abhiyum Naanum is a little emotional movie bringing out the affection between dad and his girl. Though he has affection his sense of upbringing her with a sense of responsibility is commendable. A sweet truly inspiring dialogues in Abhiyum Naanum are: "I know what I am doing" (from his little one right from her tender age of 15).

Abhiyum Naanum also discourages from using Sardarji jokes by bringing out some of the good quality of Sardarji. Also the way, Jogi steers his vehicle at high speed in hair pin bends of Ooty shows their confidence at wheel. Nay. It isn't exaggerated. You can see them ruling the roads when you travel near the Himalayan regions like Manali, Himachal Pradesh and Jammu Kashmir.

Monday, July 11, 2011

iPing regulation of hours of sleep

iPing is a valuable reminder call service. A gentle and efficient use of this service is towards regulating our sleep habits and getting a spiritual bliss as outlined here.

At least as a role model, I have set iPing to ring the phone around 2230 hours Eastern greeting 'Good Night. Shubh Ratri. Sleep Now. Bootstrap Spiritual Exercise'. The next wake up call would ring around 0630 hours Eastern Time 'Good Morning. Bootstrap Spiritual Exercise'. Without a reminder service we often tend to slippages of time and slogging.

But still a few people often surprise me a large:
  1. Awake till 3 AM for no reasons.
  2. I have seen a few boozing around on Friday nights till wee hours of Saturday and retiring to sleep at dawn. 
  3. I know of a MGP who claims to work till 2 AM and 3 AM but he snores away at his work desk like crazy.
Where is our Early-to-bed and Early-to-rise  culture going up to?

Mobile Number Portability in India -- Is it ringing?

Number portability has been launched in India around 2011 January. But has it been able to reach out to every one without any demur or hiccup? Airtel leads the list of complaints for unscrupulousness in denying port out rejects. The worst management of Airtel has already set a 'Quit Airtel Movement'

I just thought would make a small spreadsheet on Number Portability implementation in India and United States. Check out the same here:

Guru Poornima on 15th July 2011

Advanced Happy Guru Poornima 2011 to everyone!

Guru Brahma Gurur Vishnu
Guru Devo Maheshwaraha
Guru Saakshat Para Brahma
Tasmai Sree Gurave Namaha…

No-Voice Apologies!

I have been hearing from a few people that my ringing my phone just hits on the hard-wall of voice messaging without ever reaching me.  Is it true?

Yes and No.

Yes: This is a spiritual exercise to calm down the mind from the various vivid patterns of disturbances. Thanks to Spiritual Science Research Foundation for the enlightening articles in this direction.


Skype Me™!

No: If the caller had been adhering to the Voice Protocol that we discussed at length a few days back it should have been able to reach without any demur or delay. But if it is going to a gossip call, the caller should accept a 403 response forthwith.

Speech is silver and silence is golden. When you experience the bliss of silence you get to hear the melody of the inner conscience.

Sunday, July 10, 2011

The Wire (and Wirefree) Voice Culture

A whilst back we saw a few points about Elevators and good practices. In this one let us see a few points of the best ways to use the phone.
  1. It is always a wiser practice to ensure that the call is answered in less than four rings. Eight rings constitute a full reach-attempt in a typical telephone system.
  2. When you are in a meeting or at desk where the ringtone and/or mobile is going to be a source of distraction or disturbance it would be better to turn it off or make it in the 'Silent' mode. When I say 'silent' I am typically making a difference from even the 'Vibrate' mode. A lot of phones have a buggy implementation of Vibrate mode and they give a more disgusting fart-type sound.
  3. When you promise a call-back it would be wiser to return the call as soon as possible. If not possible at least text them and inform the caller. If you are not willing to prolong the communication with the caller it would be wiser to give an upfront intimation to them rather than giving a false and/or a mis-guidance. 
  4. When you are confronted with a voice message system ensure that you leave a word. Empty voice messages are very much irritating to anyone. When you are confronted with a voice messaging systems it is more likely that you have been charged anyway for the call and hence it would be wiser at least to complete a half-duplex communication rather than waiting for an utopian full-duplex answer-back. It also helps the callee because when they check the voice message they are paying for the access of the same and it particularly drives them crazy to witness a few crop-dusted missed calls without comprehensible messages.
  5. When you leave voice message please ensure you speak clearly and audibly. These days there are sophisticated voice message systems that can transcribe and text the callee to workaround costly and cumbersome voice mail access. Machine transcriptions can become hilarious if you are not clearer. It is also a voice exercise for you on how much speech clarity that you possess and you can use this exercise to improve yourself. 
  6. When a call to your callee is not answered it is wiser to leave a few minutes gap before attempting again rather than causing a spurt of calls like a shower of arrows from the quiver in one shot. It may that the callee is not in a situation to answer out the call or the battery might not be able to withstand voice calls. If repeat calls are not being answered it would be wiser to leave a quick, nice and brief text or voice message informing the purpose of the call along with adding a callback number and priority of the call attempt.
  7. Ensure that your ring-back  and ringtones are polite. A horrifying b-grade romantic music can be  adding color to your private living room whereas the same broadcasted on the phone effectively pollutes the entire environment.
  8. Mind your volume of the ring and the voice. A very slow volume might ambiguate the call quality and a very high volume again contributes to polluting the environment.
Just thought would share these few tidbits on phone culture. Feel free to share /discuss/add to the same. 

    The Role Models

    We do meet a lot of people on an every day basis. A few of them are immemorable that we should ensure to emulate them. And a few of them are models that we should avoid habits of them. I would like to present a brief outline of two positive figures here for everyone's emulation:

    Soorej Andrews Paul: He was the chief system administrator in one of my previous organizations where I was working between 2001 and 2004. The total focus to work, immune to the different unneeded back comments, systematic handling of network outages are for sure of his salient features. On a personal front when some one needs a caring word or a little help that he could afford he was never found to negate the said request. At the same time he ensured he maintained a distance instead of infringing into the victim's personal intimacy and private affairs. For a while he was also victimized by the politics-laden mismanaged middle manager group (a similar plight that I have shared it here) but thanks to CEO's intervention the malicious hands were thwarted in time.

    Jerry L Hampton: He is the most helpful project manager. Whatever be the incoming tasks he always ensures the same are enqueued into his little Timesheet/Tasklist spreadsheet and then takes the same from there. That way he ensures that he is not victimized by the so-called slogging syndrome. His sense of humor is a greatest thing of admiration. 'I see something screwy' is one of the commonest phrases that he uses most.  For the team he also helps in administering the network and servers. I am sure the servers would have a good time with him too. When you confront ill-will laden skunks a good one word with him would help you forget about those crazy buggers and recharge you to comfortably ignore them and focus on your work. I strongly see that he should be a strong spiritual person else otherwise a quick one liner with him can not be able to impart a good resistance wave to us.  His Droid is another source of inspiration. When in an important meeting just a coule of rings and it automatically cuts off. His magnanimity in handling with truant politicians and patience to handle bad attitude guys is really awesome. Some how we should pocket-pick these good habits and emulate too. On the humor sense the only question I would like to ask him is 'You are Jerry. Who/Where is Tom?'

    Google's Plus Venture into Social Networking

    After a long hiatus following a catastropic failure of Orkut, Buzz and Wave, the next big leap of Google into Social Networking is Google Plus. At the outset it looks appealing and promising competitor to Facebook but is it really going to stay for a long time?

    A few observations on Google Plus are:
    1. Pluses:
      1. The biggest head-ache of Orkut and Facebook Spam-source 'Who visited your profile?' is not there at least till now. Good.
      2. Glad that Google Plus is a single sign-on participant so that I can switch between multiple Google Accounts with ease.
      3. Unlike the debutant voice chat of Facebook-Skype venture which works only on Windows, the hangout feature seems to be less resource-intensive and cross-platform too.
    2. Cons:
      1. Strong security lapse. Any one seems to be able to barge into your network. Facebook initiates a friend request and you need to confirm them before letting them in. This seems to be allowing the users directly. I admit that this is not a major problem since currently whatever is going is just a limited use field trial but I would have appreciated Google Plus team if they could have brought in security right at the kernel level.
      2. Lack of profile visibility controls like in Facebook.


    These are a first few observations on Google Plus. Let me tour around more and keep updating this list.

    Saturday, July 09, 2011

    Aadi to start next sunday!

    The holy month of Aadi dedicated to Sri Andal and various Amman temples is set to start next Sunday. It also marks the start of Dakshinayanam which would run till Thai Pongal (Uthrayanam) sometime in January.

    So we have a week more to prepare ourselves for a spiritual journey ahead. A week more to practice to relinquish the unethical things that are clinging on us. After all, practice makes a person perfect!

    Let us start it with a small prayer to Thiruverkadu Sri Karumari Amman here.

    Wednesday, July 06, 2011

    "Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam (1999)" to "Pati Bana Bhai (2011)"

    In a funniest turn of events at Meerut a husband turned magnanimous to unite his wife with his ex-lover. It turns out to straight-off from the bollywood movie 'Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam'.

    Check out the news detail here.

    A few comparisons:

    1. "Hum Dil De Chuke Sanam" (1999) Against this incident "Pati Bana Bhai" (2011)
    2. HDDCS starring Ajay Devgan, Aishwarya Rai and Salman Khan
      PBB starring Nithesh, Aarthi and Vineet
    3. HDDCS is a Sanjay Leela Bhansali film based in Mumbai whereas PBB is made in Rudrapur-Meerut
    However the sacrifice of Nithesh was not well-received. It is taking different dimension to safeguard the ego of the few sects. But that is another story.

    Secular Exploitation of Temples

    For the past one week, the hereditary Thiruvananthapuram Sri Ananthapadmanabha Swamy temple is being ransacked by a team of administration officials under the pretext of unearthing concealed secret treasures and as a part of 'stock-taking process'.

    What may be the reason behind this 'diplomatic pilferage' of our Hindu temples by the so-called secularists?
    After all they have been looting the temples from time immemorial and using it to satisfy their own bestial instincts claiming to spend on secularist purposes.

    Perhaps just like our Indian Banks organize the so-called deposit mobilisation drives swiss banks should have announced something and hence is a mad rush amongst the politicians to fill up their private coffers. However, the so-called people's representatives seemed to have forgotten one perspective of the reality that in this process they are also packing their coffins with enough sins to be greeted by Lord Yama ('the Lord of Death') with a red carpet welcome according to the principles of 'Garuda Purana' in order to glorify and garland them with the following due respects:
    1. Andhakupam [Kiss* of the Animals]
    2. Sukaramukham [Caressed* and Sung with Lullaby*]
    3. Taptamurthi [A Date appointment with Agni]*
    4. Vaitarani [A holy dip in the 'river of fragrance'*]
    [* These words are used according to the Idakkaradakkal in Tamil. For the exact equivalents of the same please refer our earlier post  ]


    सर्व धर्मान परित्यज्य माम एकं शरणम व्रज
    अहम् त्वां सर्व पापेभ्यो मोक्ष इश्यामी माम सुच.

    Monday, July 04, 2011

    America celebrates 235th Independence Day :: Happy 4th of July

    July 4 is observed as the Independence Day for the 50 states of the United States of America from the British imperialistic rule.  You can find a brief narration of the celebrations across the nation from Washington Post.

    The independence day that various nations celebrate  are a reflection, an expression of jubilation that they are free from colonial rule. However we should also strive get a spiritual liberation and independance from the various colonial forces like Raja, Tama, Evil Tantriks and Sorcerers, who are intending to wreak havoc and catastrophe on the world's peace.  Check out Spiritual Science Research Foundation on descriptive articles on each of these entities.

    We wish everyone a very happy and peaceful Independence Day!

    Ten commandments towards fighting 'Global Warming'

    1. Recycle and buy minimally packed goods as much as possible.
    2. Wash clothes in cold or warm water, not hot.
    3. Install low-flow shower heads to use less water.
    4. Run the dishwasher only when full and don't use heat to dry dishes.
    5. Replace standard light bulbs with compact fluorescent bulbs.
    6. Plug air leaks in windows and doors to increase energy efficiency.
    7. Replace old appliances with energy-efficient ones.
    8. Walk, bike, carpool or use public transportation whenever possible.
    9. Adjust your thermostat -- lower in winter, higher in summer.
    10. Share these simple steps with friends and family and increase awareness.
    Tips Courtesy: Environment Defense Fund (EDF)