Madras

pic courtesy - Indian Backpacker

Happy New year! :D

2010. This is a big year for me. There are lots of things set to happen on many fronts. One of the 'happenings' is the India trip. I fly out to India next week. I am visiting Madras after seven years. 7 years. Long time. Over the past few days, memories from my childhood & early teenage, images of Coimbatore and Madras of 1990s have been swirling in my mind. A quiet excitement is bubbling within me. When I booked the flight tickets in May I told myself not to daydream about the India trip as the trip is far away. Now, with the D-day only a few days away, it is yet to sink in that I am actually going back home. The trip seems so surreal.

The 4 week trip is packed with events, rituals (for my late Grandma) and meetings with rellies/friends over many cups of filter coffee, lunches and dinners. I am really looking forward to it. However, I am also a bit nervous, a little anxious as to what to expect. 7 years may not be a very long time to be away from a place. However, with Madras, it seems like an eternity to me. "Lots of things have changed", they say. "Dei. This place is not as you knew it. Neeye vandhu paaru". Time changes many things. From the look of the place to the outlook of people. The question is to what extent I can identify & relate the present Madras to the Madras I knew from 1999. Once I do that, the extent of changes my friends were talking about will start to hit me.


Yea, whatever. As long Saravana Bhavan serves crispy Masala Dosai, the waves still foam up the shores of Elliots beach, North Mada Street is still as crowded as it used to be, Grand Snacks still makes kick-ass poli, we are able to play Street cricket without Visu Mama growling at us, and I do all the things that I planned to do, I am a happy chappie!

Madras, here I come :D

Stradbroke Island

Last weekend, I visited Stradbroke Island with my friends. Stradbroke Island (or Straddie, colloquially) is 40kms SE of Brisbane. Straddie is known for its rugged landscape and spectacular white sand beaches. There are numerous scenic walk tracks and picnic spots. However people visit Stradbroke Island for its main attraction - beaches.

We decided to reach Stradbroke Island by 9AM. We drove to Cleveland Bay to catch the 8AM ferry. The ferry ride takes ~45mins to reach Straddie. The weather god wasn't in his best mood at the start of the day. The skies were cloudy and there was the odd drizzle too. By afternoon, good-old Queensland weather was back! It was hot and humid. We didn't feel the 32 degrees heat though. We were in the water - swimming, body-boarding, surfing, playing beach cricket (with yours truly half destroying a kid's sandcastle with his signature cover drive)....yea. Awesome fun! :D

This was a one day trip. We had time only to visit two of the four popular beaches in Stradbroke Island.

Main Beach: The best beach at Straddie. There were strangely not many people in the beach that day. The big swells and strong waves were perfect for surfing and body boarding. We spent most of our time here.

Main Beach

Cylinder Beach: A very picturesque beach. This beach is relatively shallow hence the waves were small. Compared to main beach, there were lots of people around. Kids playing in the water/sand, people sunbathing, barbecuing etc. The music was on...the beers flowed freely. It was very lively. Cylinder beach must be the most family-friendly beach I've ever been to.

Cylinder beach

There were many lifeguards on patrol at Cylinder Beach. I had a chat with couple of them. I learnt that most lifeguards at Stradbroke Island are volunteers. The majority of them are school/uni students. They love the beach, the surf, and working as a lifeguard is way to be out there and help people. Good on you guys!

Lifeguard patrol

We spotted this famous guy (carrying the surf in the pic below) at Cylinder beach. He's one of Queensland's favourite sons. Recognise him?

Bheem boy

We did the scenic coastal track before we left the island. The ocean view from the lookout points and the headland were simply breathtaking. Here are some pics.

friend_1 admiring the view

Scenic walk

friend_1 & friend_2 taking in the view

Point Lookout

"Take me away" - at the edge of the cliff. Wattey view.

Overall, an awesome weekend! :D

God's Debris

My colleague forwarded the e-book of Scott Adam's God Debris with a note which read: "A mother of a thought experiment mate! Do read this one." He seldom 'praises' anything like this. When I finished reading God's Debris, I could understand why.

God's Debris stands out from the list of books I've read. It is a thought experiment. A delivery man goes to an address in San Francisco to deliver a package. He meets an old man in the house. The whole book is based on the conversation between them. The author states the old man literally knows everything. He has radical and non-traditional views on God, universe, evolution, science, humanity etc. His theories arise from 'sceptic's creed' - the simplest explanation is usually right. Philosophy and simplicity don't always go together. Philosophy is known for its complex sentences and incomprehensible words. I adore simplicity. Even though some of the old man's theories/views were flawed, I found the simplicity and clarity in his explanation very refreshing.

The crux of the old man's philosophy is that God is omnipotent and He knows everything. So what would actually challenge God? God knows answers to every question except one: What would happen if he ceases to exist. The old man say this is the one & only challenge that would interest God i.e. to destroy Himself. The result of this challenge is the reason for everything there is - all matter in this universe - that exists in its current form. Everything. Everything including us is the result of God's effort to maintain his omniscience. This notion also gives the book its title. We are God's Debris.

Using the above philosophy, the old man makes interesting correlations to many things. Natural phenomena like gravity he says is nothing more than simplified illusion created by human brain since it cannot comprehend the actual description of reality. Scientific terms such as infinity, electromagnetic field and words like dimension, horizon are conveniences created by scientists to mask holes in their understanding. I was tempted to know what he thought of zero. Let's say if God does not exist, we have nothing. Our fancy word for 'nothing' is zero. The old man may have explained that with yet another audacious theory that would've made Aryabhata turn in his grave. The engineer in me was mildly taken aback with his explanations. But I liked it. The book is a thought experiment and there was feast for thought. Even though most of explanations appeared logical, some seemed obvious, there was nagging feeling of something amiss. There is little bit of bull excreta in the old man's exquisite gourmet meal. The tricky bit is to differentiate between the two.

The old man bases explanation of the concept of probability. Every other question has an answer to why. Only probability is inexplicable. STAT101 taught us that probability works on the law of averages. The probability of heads or tails when tossing a coin is 1/2. That does not mean when we toss the coin, we are guaranteed to get head once and tail once. If we toss the coin 100 times, we are likely to get head 50 times and tails 50 times. Toss it 1000 times, we are very likely to get heads 500 times and tails 500 times. Probability tends to become eventuality in the average case. Life, too, is like that. It is a probability distribution. We can make efforts to maximize the expectation of an event, but we can never assure the outcome of any sporadic event. Probability, like God, is omnipotent and omnipresent. The old man refers to probability and normal distribution curves to explain creation. He weaves a transitive relation between creation, luck, probability and God. Based on this philosophy, he puts a interesting explanation that there is an equivalence relation between God and probability.

The old man discusses many topics - Relationships, intelligence, quantum physics, will power, extra sensory perception etc. Even if you don't agree or fully understand the old fella's views his explanations makes a compelling read. He bullies your thoughts and your grounded understanding. In the book's introduction, Scott Adams specifies his target audience as those people who enjoy having their brain spun around inside their skulls. Well, after reading the old man I begin to wonder what spun what in reality. Hmm.

Awesome read. Do check it out.

Thanks for this, Marcus :-)

Out and about

I've been playing around with my new SLR camera (Canon 450D) for the past one week taking pics of random things around the house. This weekend I visited some of the pretty locales in the city to take photos and apply whatever I've learnt from the camera manual and some digital photography sites.

Here are some pics.

The Story Bridge - one of my fav places in Brisbane

Story Bridge climb - gotta do this!

Friendship

Do you know the name of this flower? She looks like Sunflower's cousin. Beautiful isn't?

It had just rained. The sun finally broke free.

I remember looking at light trail photographs during those library periods at school. Light trail photography always fascinated me and I've wondered how such pics were taken. I managed to shoot light trails, took pics at different shutter speeds with varying results.

The museum

The Big wheel at night

City museum again

I love my new camera. So,



oops. missed the dot for the ' i ', here again...

None of these pics are post-processed. It's hot off the camera. I am still learning about digital post processing. Hope you like these pics! :-)

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Update (9th Dec 2009):

Few people have asked me how I did the 'I Love You' photo. That pic, obviously, is another attempt at light trail photography. The camera was perched on the tripod. I selected Manual mode (M), set an f-stop of 11 or 16 or could be even lower aperture and set an exposure of 10 seconds. The ISO was set to 100. I used a torch to write " I 'heart' you ". You can probably guess how I managed to place the dot above the ' i '. Cheers :)

The trauma of see-through shorts

I had a lazy weekend last week. After a three straight weeks of hectic work (incl weekends), I was letting my hair down. It was nice to relax and not to keep pace with the clock. Time sometimes runs too fast for me.

Thanks to the lazy weekend I didn't get any of the regular household stuff done (e.g. ironing clothes). At the dawn of Monday, I was hunched over the Ironing board wrestling with a business shirt which I had to excavate from the bottom of a big pile of washed, yet-to-be ironed clothes. The shirt I was ironing had a tag which read "wrinkle free". The shirt looked as if it had been rolled in a ball and been sat on by a Hippopotamus. I flattened the sleeves, straighted the collars, bssked bssked some water to subdue the material...and the brain did its thing as usual by going back to my school days when Kalai akka, our housemaid when I was in Madras (her name was Kalaiarasi), used to iron my school uniforms. I never had to worry about the clothes side of things. She took care of it. Akka, you are a legend!

So, the shirt was ironed. Pant was ironed. Someone was winning! I still had time to do couple more shirts so I don't have to endure this torment for the next two days. Just then, my flatmate popped in, his nickname is Tubs, and said in a stressed tone "O thank God. You are ironing. I am in a rush eh. Could you Iron this for me man, please?". "Of course. Give me.", I said, feeling happy that I could help someone in their Monday morning rush. Tubs gave me a black Adidas shorts to iron. Shorts are easy peesy compared to the beast of a shirt I ironed just now.

I laid the shorts on the ironing board. As I began to iron, I realised the Iron wasn't moving smoothly. "enna aachu?" (what's happening?), I thought, pressing the Iron a little harder. The Iron was stuck to the cloth. The blimming thing wouldn't move. I could sense a burning smell as well. I lifted the Iron, it had a black patch on the hot plate. Wisps of black smoke spiralled from its base. Sure enough, it had left a triangular shaped hole on the shorts. In a very short period of time, my brain went from horror, denial to plain blankness. So much for a Monday morning!

I walked towards Tubs's room holding up the shorts. I could look through it. It looked funny and I was almost about to laugh. I bumped into Nellie, my other flatmate. Nellie saw the shorts, laughed, and said "it's synthetic, Sriiii! you never iron them!".

"Oh. Is that right?"

I reached Tubs's room. Standing on the doorway holding the shorts aloft, I said "Man. I am really sorry. I burnt the arse out of your shorts". Tubs looked at the shorts in disbelief. He gave me a pained look. Oh the trauma of the burnt shorts.

As a guilt-stricken flatmate, I shouted him a few beers this weekend. It's the best therapy for this type of trauma.


Moral of the story:

1. Never, never iron synthetics.
2. Iron your own clothes. If you do burn/ruin them, atleast you'll have satisfaction that you killed it and not the other person.

Tagged

Tagged by Archana

Tag #1

1.What is your current obsession?

Photography. I am buying a DSLR camera soon. I've been doing a lot of reading lately on SLR cameras and digital photography in general.

2. What are you wearing today?

I am home and dressed for comfort. I'll leave it at that.

3. What’s the last thing you bought?

Lunch - Vegetable Frittata.

4. What are you listening to right now?

Crazy - Gnarls Barkley

5. Which language do you want to learn?

Sanskrit and French (to deal better with the Canadians)

6. Favourite quotes?

Be who you are and say what you feel, because those who mind don't matter and those who matter don't mind - Dr Seuss

I like pigs. Dogs look up to us. Cats look down on us. Pigs treat us as equals - W Churchill

7. What do you consider a fashion faux pas?

Socks with sandals. Shoes without socks.

8. What are you going to do after this?

Hmm. Dunno.

9. What inspires you?

Our ability to make a difference. In us and in others. No matter how small or big.

10. What do you do when you are feeling low or terribly depressed?

Take a long drive/walk. Disconnect from everything. Silence. Regain perspective.

11. What is the meaning of your name?

Sriram is the name of a Hindu God. The great Wiki says "Rama is referred to within Hinduism as Maryada Purushottama literally the Perfect Man or Lord of Self-Control or Lord of Virtue.". Cha. *grass itching* :D

12. What do you love most about yourself?

I can laugh at myself and take myself seriously at the same time.

13.Why did you do this tag?

I was tagged.

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Tag #2

Dig down your archives and list posts on five keywords:

Tchichiks of brizzy, beautiful Kondalilla...more posts like this after I buy my thing.

These people are special. I love them.

He is the pride of Kodambakkam. Words dance for him. We dance for his words.

Some posts on life in general. Other than that, I am just rambling away.

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I'd like to tag:

Witsy (where are you mate?!)
Dot (yea, where are you?)
Viji
Foreign Desi
Vijay Ganesh
Nirmal

Thanks for the tag, Archana :)

Sri Rambles

I've been away for a while. My apologies.

Thanks to those who mailed/txted "kannaa, no blog updates. what happened?", or commanded "dai...blog ezhudhu da!", or threatened "Update, or else!" in the last 2-3 weeks. It is, you know, nice to be missed :D With most of my commitments over for this year, I hope to post regularly from now on.

As of yesterday, its been one year since I started blogging. Time flies! I’ve enjoyed the journey. I like writing. It’s fun. Writing helps me in interpreting things better and enhances perspective. Having a blog has given me more reasons to write, to write more and to write better. Apart from the desire to write, the fact that people will read and comment on it adds a thrill to the whole process. It makes me come back again, and again...

Over the last one year, I’ve come across some excellent blogs and met people whom I don't think I would've connected with if not for blogging. Most of my blog friends are in India. I hope to meet you guys when I visit India early next year.

So, I thank you, dear reader, for visiting this blog and special thanks to those who always leave a comment :D Pretty much everything in this world runs on feedback. It’s a great feeling when someone has read my post and bothered to leave a comment.

Cheers!

This = rand(thots, 1)

• Watched Unnai Pol Oruvan last weekend. A great movie. Unlike the friends I went with, I haven't seen the original, A Wednesday. I think having not seen the original helped me to appreciate movie on its own context without the inevitable comparison. While watching UPO, it took me a while to see Kamal as a common man. As the movie progressed, Kamal - the character - grew in me. Except for dialogues (only at some instances), every aspect of the movie was almost perfect. And no, I didn't find MohanLal's accent irritating. I actually liked it.
  

• Kamal proves, yet again, he is one of the few people to take Tamil Cinema to the next level. I really admire the brilliance and versatility of the man - not only as an actor - but as a movie maker. He is one of the few persons who really understands the medium called cinema. Legend!
  

• A friend sent me this clip. Chakri Toleti, director of Unnai Pol Oruvan, is in it. Funny clip.

• Things have been busy in work front. The last month has been a huge learning curve and greatly rewarding. Along with other stuff I've got running in parallel, I am happy that I've accomplished what I set to do.
  

• Weddings. Kalyanams. Engagement parties. Nichiyatharthams...September was full on!

• Later this month, one of my best friends, is getting married in Auckland. At last, I am attending a TamBram wedding after god-knows-how-many years. I cant wait for Oct 23rd. Ganesaaa!

• I hate time zones. Why do all my good friends have to live in different timezones. Hmph!
  

• I was at IKEA this weekend. I don't know what's with that place, it's my second visit there and I am writing about it again. Two things: I saw the biggest bathtub I've ever seen in my life. It was a size of a small lake. Massive. I also saw a slam-proof toilet seat. I tilted the toilet lid, and watched it slowly and noiselessly descend and close with faint click. The saleswomen pitching for the product looked very pleased. I asked her "do you have one that lifts automatically when someone approaches?", and immediately added "...and lowers when they depart?". The saleswoman gave a blank look and said "ahhh. no. sorry." Men can sometimes forget to lift the seat. This can cause a degree of domestic disharmony. I am sure IKEA will fully expound on the sales potential of the automatic seat lifting toilet. I wonder what's next?
  

• NZ playing Australia today in Champions Trophy final now. Go the Black Caps! Underdogs vaazhgha!

• I have not had Rasam for more than three weeks now. I am craving for hot thakaali rasam with poricha appalam.

• This weekend is gonna be a cookfest.
  

• I am brushing up my MATLAB skills. It's been 3 years since I've worked on MATLAB/Simulink. Hence the title of the post.
  

It's a guy thing

The above video is running hot on TV at the moment. It's an ad on blokes. It celebrates typical blokey moments and achievements. The ad glorifies different kind of blokes there are, namely:

a. Blokes who punch above their weight
b. Blokes who peaked at high school
c. Blokes built like a brick house
d. Blokes who've had their arm in a cow
e. Men who wont eat their quiche
f. Men who should have read the instructions

and many others. Very funny!

After my experience with my friends last week, I feel the ad missed one group. Guys who are part of this group - you know who you are - will be gutted that such hard-done by blokes have not been recognised. I am talking about the blokes who've been invited (in some cases dragged along) to a September weekend wedding. You may chuckle and say what's the big deal? Why is this category important? Let me explain.

The month of September is special. If you are girl and living in the southern hemisphere, you may say September means it is the spring season. That means flowers. Freshness. All bloom. Romance is in the air. September brings with it new life and new beginnings. Basically, the month of Sep has all ingredients for a perfect wedding.

If you are guy, September is special too. Unlike Ms CuddlyWink's exhaustive list, it's only for a handful of things. The list reads: four weekends, NRL finals and AFL Grand finals. All finals spread out in those four glorious September weekends. HE would either in front of the idiot box or in the battleground (the stadium). There is nowhere else he would want to be. The place is Holy Grail.

Last weekend, it was NRL's preliminary finals night. Along with the-colour-of-my-blood-is-rugby mates, I was at our friend's wedding (groom) on the game night. The wedding was great. I was very happy for the couple and everyone had a great time. A true bloke doesn't miss his friend's wedding. Full stop. Gazza, a common friend, recollected with a serious face, looking down at his shuffling feet, that even last year he missed the NRL final. All because "there were so many bleeeeping weddings in September man. Bleep". Along with the wedding gift, Gazza had planned to give the groom (our mate) a wedgie for choosing this particular time for the wedding ceremony. He spared him because the groom secretly confessed that he had the same feelings too. Instead of a wedgie, the groom received a bear hug from Gazza. Aww...the brotherhood!

During the pre-ceremony drinks, people were standing around in clusters chatting away, it was hard to miss the constant undercurrent footy talk in the conversations. Anything about anything was somehow related to footy. We did try our earnest for a work around to get the live scores. The problem was we were in a church at a small town in the outskirts of the city. The church was on a hill (awesome views of the city!) and we had to drive through dense rain forest to get there. Expectedly, the church didn't have AM radio reception, it had a GSM connection that would load live updates in time for my sashtiapdhapoorthi*, and a 3G network which wasn't strong enough to load the web page. Guys were squirming on their seats. If there were no one was watching us, we would've all yelled in unison "pichukhooo" and sprinted towards the nearest place showing the live telecast.

...and that's actually what we did, but only after the wedding ceremony (no we didn't yell. jees.). We made our way into a local run-down pub showing the game. The regulars in the pub said we were the most well-dressed men to ever set foot in the pub's long history. We watched the last few minutes of the game. Gazza shed a few tears. It was...hmm...a special moment for him. His team won. Nothing melts a true Aussie bloke faster than to see his team in the spoils of victory.

Like any wedding, everyone was decked in their finery's. We looked sharp. The ladies were gorgeous. It's amazing the amount of prep ladies put into weddings. So much that one girl told me that wedding is all about the bride. Considering the state we were in, I couldn't disagree with her more. I was about to say something (not about the trivial matter of footy finals), then stopped. But then...

Weddings have their own rules. We all know rules can always be bent, if not broken. You see, we have a problem here. We have to attend the wedding but we are also deprived of the Rugby. Perhaps we can find a way to incorporate both football and wedding in an innovative way. Maybe the priest can probably do a score update during the ceremony like, "Do you Joe Bloggs, take Mary Jones, to be your lawfully wedded wife, to have and to hold, like a football which the New Zealand Warriors just landed over the try line to take the score to 16-14?"

Or, how about showing the live telecast (volume muted ofcourse) on a big LCD behind the bride at the reception. 100% attention guaranteed.

Or, how about this in a South Indian wedding. Imagine there is a ODI going LIVE between India and Australia. The sastrigal defies conventions and recites this informative Mangalayam Thanthuna nena

getti melam! getti melam!

(in ARR's tune for Mangalyam Thathuna nena)

Manglayam thanthuna nena

Australiaaa two eighty nine
Indha game-a nambha jeyikkhaa,
Tendulllkar adikanum sadham.

I am just saying...

:D

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* Sashtiapdhapoorthi - celebration of 60th birthday

Riverfire

Thanks DF

The annual Brisbane Festival started this week with last night's Riverfire. Riverfire is an extravagant firework display show from three major Brisbane bridges, a select few skyscrapers in the CBD and few boats on Brisbane River.

This is my first time at the show and I have to say the fireworks display were absolutely stunning. For 30 minutes, over 600,000 people (yes, you read it right) who thronged the banks of the Brisbane River were treated to some breathtaking display of fireworks. The night sky was lit up in plethora of colours. Some firework burst into patterns/symbols like smiley face, heart symbol, two hearts merging etc, some fireworks were choreographed to burst with beats of popular songs by AC/DC, Lenny Kravitz and A R Rahman's Jai Ho (Pussycat Dolls version). The timing of beats and bursts was almost perfect. Fantastic work!

The OMG-this-is-too-good moment was the show's finale - dump and burn by F-111 fighter jets. The fighter jets zoomed over the CBD, flying fast and low, with the bright yellow trail of burning jet fuel. The F-111s were flying low enough I could feel the heat of the burnt fuel and the ground shake. The noise was just unbelievable.

Below is the video I managed take from my good old Powershot as I watched the F-111s in an open-mouthed wonder.

Note to self for next year's Riverfire: Don't trust Tiffanys Bar table booking. Arrive early. Secure a vantage point. Get the bloody SLR and take pics!