It was an awesome Saturday compared to pretty much any of my other Saturdays I had lately which consists of 10 hours of sleep, 10 hours of Internet and 4 hours of cribbing that I had wasted the whole Saturday doing nothing. This one turned out very well even though it was planned just 8 hours before it started at a restaurant while struggling to read name of a Thai Dish ‘Pad Pak Nam Prik Pao’ and Ganesh deciding that it would name of his first born and just before enjoying the awesome Fried Ice Cream that Arun praised all our way to the restaurant.

The day was supposed to start by 6 AM with office as rendezvous. Well, as the ‘light’ sleeper of the group, I decided that I need more than one alarm to wake me up and kept a series of alarms from 4.30 AM to 5.30 AM. I was supposed to be accompanied by Mr. & Mrs. Ganesh to the office from my place and the lovely couple decided to reach my home only by 6AM, while I tried to wakeup every one else. Around 6 calls failed to wakeup Deepak while Satya and Sathish were awake and waiting for my signal to start for office. Yeah, all of us were sure about everyone else that they will be late to reach office. I had informed Satya and Sathish that meeting time has been postponed by 30 minutes.

6.45 AM in the morning, all of us were at IITM office parking lot. All of us, minus Satya, Deepak and Harish. Satya assumed office as “his cubicle” when we were waiting for him at parking lot. Harish assumed office as a traffic signal next to his apartment, when we were waiting for him at parking lot. Deepak didn’t assume anything but realized that he has to hurry as he over slept and his phone cheated him by not making enough sound to wake him up.

7.45 AM in the morning, all of us reached Fishermen’s cove and signed that the hotel is not responsible for any accidents or deaths or shark attacks or jelly fish stings that might happen in the Ocean. Oh, by the way, Sathish has no clue what we were going to do other than the fact that its some where in the sea and it has to deal with water. Well, The Rain God decided to show his blessings by raining a lot at the same time, but he failed to realize that we cannot go for the ride if the waves are turbulent which is created by rain. So, we decided to go have breakfast first and wait for Rain God to realize his boo-boo. After the awesome break fast, few of us decided to enjoy the beauty of the rain and others decided to test their pool skills at the table.
   
        

Time Frame Lost, in the morning, finally, The RG realized his boo-boo and decided to stop showering us with his blessings, and let the Sun God wish us to have fun by letting him shine all the way. All of us suited ourselves in life jackets, got on to the catamaran (Tamil kattumaram) with a motor. Few hundred feet in the ocean, the kattumaram stopped and all of us jumped into the ocean to float like … PJ coming ahead … all those divs floated by Selva GK. And there was one div which was floating shadily like it was being rendered in IE, and Selva GK, if he tries to alert its name, it would alert with a loud beep as … “Sathish”. Yes, the realization, Sathish is scared of water like all of us, but, he is scared of water even with a life jacket on him. 44 minutes passed by with each of us trying to convince him to leave all the rope and come away from the boat, and he was convinced finally and decided to move 5 feet away from the boat. Ding, its 45 minutes and our floating time is over and we have to head back to shore.

We started walking back on the beach and something happened, and Satya got himself hurt when a bad wooden piece went under the nail of his foot’s big toe. He went to paramedic for making sure that it comes off, and rest of us decided to give hit volley ball across the net for a while. 30 minutes passed and Satya didn’t return back from the paramedic. Swathi went to office to settle the bill in her style and we got to know that there were more than 25 pieces of wood under his toe. After lot of struggle, the paramedic Mr. Sibin managed to pull all/most of the pieces of out, and we started for Mahabalipuram to have lunch and Deepak went back to the city to prepare for watching “Enthiran”.

After lunch, and the fight with restaurant over shady buffet, and another fun drive towards Pondicherry, we decided to return back to the city and Arun dropped Harish at his place. 6.30 PM, we decided to stop at office while returning, and after some chit chat, Arun playing guitar, Ganesh playing Boom Box ;) while we blame Sathish for it. Satya wanted to visit doc to ensure safety for this big toe while we decided to ensure safety for both our feet, by shopping for shoes. Sathish, Ganesh and I bought a pair each while Arun and Swathi gave valuable feedback ;) And its 9PM already, and we decided to have kulfi at Freez Zone. After telling bye to Arun at his home, Sathish started his lengthy ride back home at 9.45PM, and I started for my place along with Mr. and Mrs. Ganesh and they started for their place from mine.

And I went to my bed thinking … Wow, what a day.

Day before yesterday, I went home in my car, which I wanted to do from a long time, drive home - which is around 150 km from the city where I work. One of my old friends joined me for that drive and everything went smooth. I reached there, spent time with my parents and the next day, it was the time for starting back to the city where I work.

I took my backpack, and another bag with laptop, went to my car kept both of them on the backseat of my car. My pants had only one pocket which already had my mobile and wallet and there was no more space in them. Without thinking through, I kept my car keys on my laptop bag. Then my mom called me to give me some stuff which I’m supposed to deliver to my cousin in the city. I closed the door of my car, went to my mom and … *TADA* I realized that my car has a remote lock, and it locks all the doors automatically, if the key is not in keyhole. I ran back to the car, only to find out that its locked already.

Then, my cousin and another friend called up few drivers and mechanics to find out whether they can pick the lock. Unfortunately or by good reason, it was tough to pick lock of my car and they failed badly. Then, the only other option in my mind was to get the spare key from Madras which is with my cousin.

Then, and there, he comes to the rescue. All I had to do was call him and ask him to get my spare key, which is with my cousin. He didn’t ask a second question, there was no second thought. Started as soon as I asked, collected the key, came back to my town. Dude, you are the best, I’m really proud and lucky to be your friend.

A shocking revealation. A good friend of mine was hiding some thing from us from long time and he revealed it finally in his blog post. This image will make it straight forward for you guys to understand what he was hiding from us.

Yes, I was as surprised as you guys are when I came to know this truth. But, I ‘was’ happy to know that he was doing something what he loved from his childhood. He followed his force and became what he wanted to become.

But, being a guy who sits next to him through out the day at work, I wanted to see his light saber skills. I was astonished by his skills when I saw them. Later I had to accept that he is far better in coding skills than his saber skills. Well, you need to know the shocking reason.

This is ME after the exhibition of his skills.

I request you all to sign this post as a petition for him to stop being a Jedi. Yoda, if  you are reading this post. Please, leave the Jedi council, ask him, you must.

Guess you understood what I’m going to tell. I should have written this a week before, but I thought - readers of this blog would anyway be knowing all the information. But, yesterday an old teammate of mine gave me a very big shock with a mail with subject “Fw: Beware!! Aids can spread like this too - Unbelievable!!!” To add to that shock, it was forwarded to him by another old teammate of mine.

Guess what is the mail about ??? Yeah, our same old pani puri story, but instead of pani puri, it was pineapple. If you don’t know the story, here is the line up

• Kid fell sick (General news)
• Parents take him to hospital (End of the day news)
• Docs diagnosed as AIDS (Shocking news !!!)
• None else in the family has AIDS (Happy news !!!)
• Kid tells that he had pineapple (Exclusive news to Docs !!!)
• Group from Mallya Hospital (Wow, they named hospital name too) finds pineapple guy (Reporter news from crime scene !!!)
• Pineapple guy don’t know that he’s got AIDS (Yet another shocking news)
• So - Don’t eat vada pav and pani puri !!! (WTF ???? News)

I didn’t believe this even when I was in my junior college and its hard to believe that software engineers, who are 25 years old, not only believe this but mail it to a bunch of their friends with in 10minutes and they end up in mailing this again.

I’ve changed little bit and I’m not as assertive as I was couple of years before. So, I didn’t mail him back with technical details of AIDS and tell him that it doesn’t propagate through this way like I did to one of my college friends (regarding Bill Gates giving money to who-ever-forward a mail) and I actually demanded many of my friend to mail everyone in the To-list or CC-list of the mail that whatever he has mailed is “wrong or inaccurate” and to let them know the validity of the content. Some of my friends actually liked that habit and many hated it. Anyway, I’m not going to do that again unless a very close friend end-up in forwarding faltoo information.

You know these, even then as information is wealth [Pun Intended]

• AIDS doesn’t spread through Pani Puri walla as long as you eat just pani puri from him
• As one Telugu movie tells, wear a helmet whenever you fight
• Don’t try Hollywood and don’t fight strangers
• A mint with a hole can be polo but Helmet with a hole can send you to Apollo
• As Balayya[¹] tells, Hand For Hand can be hit in movies but, blood for blood can sometimes shut your life
• HIV-positive need not mean that you are community-negative
• Mosquitoes have more deadly disease to spread, Malaria kills one in every thirty seconds[²]
• HIV is slow[³]. It takes nine to ten years to become AIDS. In those ten years, some bright scientist might find a cure. But, why take risk. Trust helmet.

Gave you enough information that you already know. But, be sure that you spread it to guys who don’t know. I’m going to mail my teamie, atleast for a noble cause. Pani puri is great.

[Taken with Canon Digital Rebel XTi on 30 Sep 2007, 12.20 AM]

I’ll give you all I got If that’s what you want I’ll give you what I got and more But just see me through and through That’s all you got to do But don’t you dare give dare give dare give me Artificial Love

[Taken from Bambi - Artificial Love]

I like flowers, especially flowers with water drops on them. When ever I see them, I couldn’t stop myself from capturing them. Almost all the snaps I take are special to me. I see them again and again. While taking them, I take so much time that my friends usually get frustrated by the time I take to take a single shot. As I try to give 100% of myself to that particular shot while framing it, some times, I get decent shots like the above one.

You need not observe the picture carefully to find that the flower is artificial, but if you have to see carefully to find that those drops are not water drops. I really don’t have anything to tell anything about the camera or the shot or the mode or the focal length used to take the shot. There is something different I sense from the picture.

It’s beautiful. But, it’s fake … just like that special “someone” you met in your life. Everyone of us would have met that “someone” atleast once in our lives. That “someone” could be the person whom you’ve loved sincerely or the person whom you would have considered as your best friend or even a person from your family. If you think that you haven’t, the truth could be you haven’t sensed it or you are just one lucky person in this world. But, when you come to know that you are not a lucky person, all you would be doing is tracing through the steps written in one of my previous posts.

Everyone of us would have had some minor to major crushes or even serious loves which failed. For “you” who is reading this right now and comparing the artificiality of this flower to the artificiality of love that your “Ex” showed you … I’ve one thing to tell you.

The flower is fake just like her love No big deal of blaming her now The drops are fake so were your tears Even a cyclone stops as the sky clears You moved on for the greater future That’s the same you would get for sure [Some random rhyme is never a crime]

I wrote this blog post without thinking. One random thought and a very random post. If it makes any meaning, good; otherwise sorry for wasting your time. In a nutshell, I wanted to tell you one thing - If you are a victim of artificial love, just move on. It’s everywhere.