Personal Weblog of Deepak Vasudevan

Artificial Incompatibility? Whilst publishing my most recent post on ' Thiruvallikeni Garuda Seva 2010 ' I just observed a bug or rather an incompatibility issue with Google Blogger-Yahoo Video. Despite me adjusting the width and height to a significant extent you can find that it still hits against the borders of the blog area. I think the service providers should ensure that their products are compatible and/or interoperable with peer service provider products' in any way. There can be competition but that should come in the way of destructive layout just like Yahoo Video does. If they would really need to compete against Google Blogger they should see that they bring out a more premier product with enhanced superior features than doing all these shortcuts.

Thiruvallikeni Garuda Seva 2010 Sincere thanks to Sri Parthasarathy* for sharing the video recorded through his personal camcorder of Sri Rukmini Sametha Parthasarathy in Thiru-Allikeni. The same has been shared along with this post for the benefit of pilgrims and devotees worldwide. Thiruvallikeni Garuda Seva 2010 @ Yahoo! Video Interestingly whenever I travel away from Chennai I ensure and my Lord ensures that He travels with forthwith without any delay of any kind and without any demur of any sort. I fondly recall a Pasuram to this effect: கணிகண்ணன் போகின்றான், காமரு பூங்கச்சி மணிவண்ணா! நீ கிடக்கவேண்டா! துணிவுடைய செந்நாப் புலவன் யானும் போகின்றேன் நீயுமுன்றன் பைந்நாகப் பாய் சுருட்டிக் கொள்! You can find the incident with the Azhwar that gave rise to this pasuram over here . * There is something interesting with this mention of Parthasarathy. My friend who recorded this video is also called as Parthasarathy and the Lord's name in Thiruvallikeni is also Sri Parthasarathy. :)

Horrendous Horror with Blogger Oh My God! Does blogger have a time machine? I was able to travel in the future for a while with Blogger. A few of my posts I had to archive to back-dates to the context of the events in response to the feedback from the readers. In the 'Post Options', I overlooked the year and it just left in the current year. As a result the post which I wanted to archive it to 2008 May was appearing as 2010 May. I was just wondering if Blogger was also having an innovative time machine to get the posts in the future.

What's in a name? I would needed to draft this as I closely would share this same plight otherwise. One of my friend is called 'Thamizh' (தமிழ்). From his tender days he had a nickname or a pseudoname of 'Ezhil' (எழில்), perhaps this can sound quite similar to our own story too. Interestingly when he got into his wedlock a few years back his spouse name coincided as 'Ezhil'. This 'Ezhil Tamil' had become now L egen D ary. The sail was not smooth enough and the ship got caught and ran berserk because of their own private reasons. Including the 'flesh-and-blood' Ezhil and everyone were actually trying to run him down and mock for using the name of 'Ezhil' and charge umpteen number of allegations except me. I stood by him to defend him through his blazing cruises through the vibrant seas, since I understand the essence of pen name and how to view it seperately from 'mundane' presentations in the world. With the current situati...

Samsung Alias 2 ™ is Verizon-Samsung featured phone for the entry-level users and for casual communications. At least for talkers only without any need for savvy communication needs this is all the more befitting phone. But there are some things I don’t like in this phone:   Too high and too much intrusive minute minder.  There should be an option to disable it. Volume should be more controllable. At least when at workplace and controlled environments I should be able to moderately control it. Too much restrictive in GPRS/EDGE App downloads. Verizon-Samsung alias should be more flexible in allowing at least MP3 and other files. Not always I can have MMSing through my email option. At times when I access the media center I see an abrupt restart of the mobile for no reason. Verizon customer care: Do they exist?  *611 runs wild calls for long and then I would just encounter a message “Signal faded. Call was lost” – Hope ‘America’s largest and most rel...

Love Vs Arranged Marriage Today I had a quick glimpse of Mohan Chandran 's Google Talk status message. It was very interesting one. Just thought I would like to share across with others too: Love Marriage is "liking a product and then owning it," while Arranged marriage is "owning the product and then liking it." In the similar context, I recalled there is another saying too -- "Try to get what you love otherwise you would be forced to love what you get". The first quote has been reproduced here with the kind permission of Mohan Chandran. I sincerely thank him for his kindness extended to have it shared across with others.

LoveLavs -- A spinoff version of LD Lavanya had been always chiding me that I get time to scribble on my blog rather than to get into the family responsibilities. My response in a little gibberish way was that this is part of my family. There has been an interesting turn of events for the couple of months causing her to set foot on blogosphere as well. Three interesting blogs of her, signed in her profile with her maiden name , are as follows. So I think now I get a protective cover of not being 'hit' by her for escaping into the world of blogs right since she herself is there. Now with me and her distributed geographically apart by a few thousand miles due to work conditions and it might take a few months before she could get to me going through the administrative and statutory procedures, I believe, the blogosphere is going to serve as an invaluable bridge. Love Lavs A devotional blog dedicated to Sri Rangam A social concern blog sourced from thoughts of the environment and ...

My Chellam celebrates her tenth birthday Come March 8, 2010 (International Women's Day) and it is a festive occasion to rejoice. It is the tenth birthday of my pet ( http://www.sitagita.com/ ). It was on 8th March 2000, she was born (launched) at Apcom computers. I have a unique pride of being one of the development team of Sitagita at 3rdAgenda. Let us wish her Many Many Happy Returns of the Day . For those interested, also check out our 9th Birthday Post here . Each time, I just post the birthday greeting right near the birthday however for others I send out advanced wishes. This time, it is for my Chellam and she got her birthday post on her birthday eve and the post getting published at 12.20 PM Eastern Time.

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...