Personal Weblog of Deepak Vasudevan

After COM-Surrogate it is now Pregnancy Surrogate The effect of IT on our real life is significant in more aspects than one -- Good Positive and Malefic Catastrophically Disastrous. IT brought in the following good things: Radical renaissance to our society Woman uplift Economic improvement to the society. At the same time we incurred the following negatives too: Too much westernizations challenging the integrity of our nation on the pretext of em-en-see culture Security Threat to women at workplace Bad notion amongst people that IT people are spendthrift and lazy. Check out our previous discussion here . Well! In this evolution chain there is one more new milestone that has started now. In Windows we have something call ' Com Surrogate '. Here a process runs outside its sphere of the caller. Similarly the new trend that is catching up is 'Pregnancy Surrogate'. Even singles from elsewhere liking to have a kid outsource this task to Indians. After 'IT outsourcing...

The demise of Ananthu K Bhat, the beacon light of Balalok :: May his soul rest in peace It had been a tremor-struck week for every Balalok product with each of the alumni group reeling with tear-filled messages conveying the death of our correspondent (Ananthu K Bhat) in Mysore. AK Bhat (as he is affectionately and better known as) had not been just another school correspondent. He had been the heartbeat in the development of every soul that was part of Balalok. It had been more traumatic for Vanitha K Bhat, the Principal of Balalok who had just lost her son (Prakash Bhat) only a few months back . Balalok was not another school where only students had their mundane bookish schooling and examination-oriented education. It was a learning lab for teachers, parents, service-providers and visitors as well. You can also check out my personal website on Balalok over here . I still have green memories of the morning assembly that starts with "Sahana Vavathu ..." and concludes with ...

The Significance of June 21, 2010 This day (21st Day of June 2010) is a significant day for many. For geographers and scientists this marks and designates itself as Summer Solstice . For people in the Northern Hemisphere, it indicates the start of gruesome summer. Per this website, the summer solstice began at 7.28 AM Eastern Time in the North American continent. The June 21 2010 weekend was also observed as ' Father's Day '. Oh Well! Where am I heading to? I would say the most significant part of June 21, 2010 is for two souls who had assured each other to be shouldering and supporting one another throughout their life over here . It was this day when they got a formal opportunity authorized by the elders to meet and the process towards the nuptial binding was flagged off. This was the holy day in one of the yester =years that gave them an unique opportunity to exchange their hearts (or rather thieve each other's hearts) Let us wish them 'All the very best" f...

Cute Little Dog About a while back we did discuss about ' Sweet Three Roses '. In line towards the same whilst casually browsing something I got hold of another cute little dog which I just thought would have it published across here.

Everyone is unique. Let us stop comparing against one another Come June and schools open up for a new academic year. It is customary to see people comparing their wards against their neighbors troubling them and forcing them to be 'book-worms' foregoing sports and other extra-curricular activities. All work and no play makes Jack a dull boy is a common saying Such practice also lends a significant hand in mounting stress amongst the students reducing their overall productivity and self confidence. Besides this perspective we also usually see another type of comparison in our homes. We tend to compare against neighbors for anything and everything. Comparing for a nominal and moderate lifestyle is no fault. At the sametime racing in this track incurring unwanted debts is the one that is a main concern. I just was going through a few movie clips in YouTube and came across an old but gold one from Ethir Neechal starred by Sowcar Jankai and Sridhar. Watch it here in enjoying the mel...

Brahma Okkate Song The most melodious song composed by Saint Sri Annamacharya in praise of Lord Venkateswara (Tirumala - Tirupathi) is the 'Brahma Okkate' song. Sometime back I got hold of this song and lyrics. But the song was just having only a few lyrics and some one told me that most of the singers chose only a few stanzas of the song. With God's grace yesterday I got the full song from Tirumala Tirupathi website itself. As a service to the pilgrims and devotees I have prepared a video using this audio and lyrics. I have shared the same below. Please listen to it and get the blessings of the Lord.

  Congratulations my little cutie-pie . I know you would achieve this for your sure; the six sigma certification which you have been working hard for several months now.

Varadan comes to Virginia on His Garuda Seva It is Kanchipuram Brahmotsavam time this week and on 5/27 it was the world-famous Garuda Seva. Varadan's Garuda Seva had been more closer to my hearts in more ways than one. All important events like my Upanayanam, Wedding, College Life and Career Life gets started in a close vicinity to His Vaikasi Visakam Garuda Seva. This year just about a few hours after Gopura Vasal got completed at Kanchipuram a friend of mine immediately sent me the recorded video via email. It arrived at my emailbox at around 1.40 AM Eastern Time (that is around 11.10 AM) when Varadan would be starting back from Periya Kancheepuram to His chinna Kancheepuram. I have shared about the Garuda Seva in my Sri Vaishnava Network . It is not uncommon for Varadan to ensure His dear ones are always satisfied and blessed with His darshan. The very famous Thottachar Sevai at His Gopura Vasal is another salient and succinct example. It was because one of His devotees (Swami ...

The Definitive K9 and the LD firewall ... Whilst little being away from hometown a few people succumb to worldly pleasures and with the exposure to internet this might go a little unrestricted as well. And sometimes a handful of them from those circles tend to 'impress' everyone providing that they are versatile. I just thought of sharing two little entities that tick on my side which ensure that whatever be the distance from my Chellam or wherever I am, I say truthful to my conscience in all ways than one. The two things are: The LD firewall. K9 Web Protection in my system. I just thought I would prepare a small video as a thanks to K9 Web Protection and in a gesture of appreciation to them. K9 now also has a small dog bark. When you stumble upon a bad prohibited website, your computer speaker would be made to bark at you.

Keep up your inspiration and tread ahead! It is always possible and we do witness hostile behavior from many quarters in our everyday life. Towards furthering their selfish interests, some people discourage others in their positive moves in a fear that their gains would be challenged. The challenge here is that we would need to keep our objectives set clearly and tread ahead towards the same unperturbed by such ghastly mundane creatures. There might be incidents where we may need to de-weed them from the society and we would need to offer our services to clean the society of such evil with a smiling face. Just thought I would share this moral from Vettaikaran. Thanks to an unknown soul who had uploaded the final music of the film into CoolGoose public domain, I have created a quick tutorial video highlighting this moral to everyone.

A Moral from Vettaikkaran Movie Yesterday I was viewing a few quick trailers of Vettaikaran Movie and one interesting scene that demonstrates and conveys a very important and an inevitable moral to the mankind that I wanted to share with everyone. Whilst Vijay ('Police Ravi') is in college attending the class his classmate Uma would come late. For a very casual comment of Uma on the lecturer's callous attitude of shutting down the windows and turning the lecture hall as a sultry oven the lecturer spit angry words on her and she got very depressed. Our hero ('Vijay') reopened the windows and then appealed to the carpenters working downstairs to see if they can reschedule the work a couple of hours later. His friendly appeal worked and they dispersed. He then replies to the lecturer that though the workers are not educated as them they can understand the gentle language of love. But the lecturer took the very harsh tone of scolding his classmate as if she is turning ...

Time can turn at any time Today morning there was an interesting early morning quote email from Nirmala: When the Snake is alive, the Snake eats Ants. When the Snake is dead, Ants eat the Snake. Time can turn at any time. Don't neglect anyone in your life........ ... I just recalled about these from our Indian language equivalents and thought of sharing the same over here: We do have a saying in Hindi as: ' कभी गाडी नाव पर , कभी नाव गाडी पर We do have a saying in Tamil as: ஆனைக்கும் ஒரு காலம்; பூனைக்கும் ஒரு காலம் In Tamil, we do have another saying for 'Time can turn at any time' as "காத்து எப்போதும் ஒரே பக்கமா வீசாது"

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.