Rajiv R's Blog

My new address

Sat, 26 May 2007 09:29:39 GMT

See you at my new address at http://rajivsramblings.wordpress.com/

The reasons I am leaving Yahoo are:

1. I cannot embed internet based photos properly

2. There is no autosave facility here. I lost many long blog entries here.

3. Multiple files cannot be embedded at the same time.

4. You cannot import/export between blogs

5. It doesn't have an editor and isn't open to browsers like Flock.

Kakana Kote

Thu, 24 May 2007 12:20:02 GMT

Vedu I am unable to mail you the details of Kakana Kote (as I don't have your mail id). Here is my response to your query:

Vedu - I'm interested when I see someone interested in a not so well known movie .....and more so when I share the interest. May I know the reason for looking for Kakana Kote.

In my case I was looking for the song 'Nesara Nodu' which I liked very much and I was searching for this song for a 5 years. Eventually I found it.
You can go to www.totalkannada.com and order for it. Do you live in Bangalore or close-by. If yes then I can mail you th physical address from where you can pick up the vcd.

Good bye Yahoo

Sun, 29 Apr 2007 04:59:03 GMT

I'm leaving. Never to come back here again. Will give you my new address soon.

The Matrix cult

Sat, 28 Apr 2007 09:34:45 GMT

Each time I touch upon anything of the movie trilogy Matrix - I get so drawn into it. I was looking up on the various books which appear in the movie. The three significant one are:

To prepare for his role in both Reloaded and Revolutions, Keanu Reeves was asked to read three books:
Simulacra and Simulation,
Out of Control: The New Biology of Machines, Social Systems, and the Economic World Evolutionary Psychology.

I could go on an on raving and ranting about the various aspects of the movie and it could be so endless. The other cult movies which I like a lot are:
The Lord of the Rings trilogy (one must read JRR Tolkein before going to the movies - and reading this epic is a mammoth task in itself).
The Star Wars especially part 3 and part 6 are emotionally loaded.
Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith
Star Wars Episode VI: Return of the Jedi

to some extent the Terminator series are also likeable.
The other parts are just add on parts. The above two are really the climax parts.

The scene given here is of agent Smith in Reloaded and the crows flying towards the camera with agent smith walking in the same direction - is fantastic.

Making of Matrix

Fri, 27 Apr 2007 13:28:01 GMT

Today I was seeing 'The Making of the Matrix' on my PC. The director makes a statement - "We wanted to make a movie which would be counted as 'the first one' of the new millenium" and I fully agree with him that the outcome was so fantastic that it truly represents a movie of the new millenium.

Divorce

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 18:18:42 GMT

One of my team members (a good one at that) is going thru a divorce. Apparently both are married for 2 years and both are working (fortunately without children). When I spoke to him ........ he was hesitating to open up (he's usually pretty frank). The problem is of incompatability (is what he said).

Divorce is usually painful - very painful. I saw my own sister go thru the throes of seperation, a good friend is divorced and has remarried, one of my very close relatives came pretty close to divorce. They fight, fight, fight and then go apart and then come again and fight again. Then come the relatives and try to put them together ...then they come together, if they have kids then for 'the sake of kids' (which is actually a very lousy reason) and then they fight, stop talking to each other and eventually seperate for good. The process of divorce is very painful especially the decision to seperate. But once its done ....things flow after that. The outcome of a divorce is not always bad (provided you know what to do after that). However as always divorces are not recommended and people should avoid them as much as possible. Its the last option - when everything else is exhausted.

Ganesha Pendant

Thu, 26 Apr 2007 16:06:36 GMT

Also - Covansys is getting bought out by Computer Science Corporation. This is a company which comes up often in the fakers resume. Ask them one or two in detail questions and they flounder.

http://infotech.indiatimes.com/articleshow/1960800.cms

Genius and prodigy

Wed, 25 Apr 2007 18:09:34 GMT

Well how do I want my daughter to turn out to be - a prodigy ....a genius ??? What? Well the answer is that I want her to be neither. I want her to be a normal, intelligent, well rounded individual. Check this video where this nine month kid is able to recognise so much that its alarming. To be frank .....somewhere there is a small desire that I'd want our daughter to be like this. But then again ...... our daughter is not some alien!!! she's a cute little human being . She smiles at every tom, dick and harry - simultaneously lifting up her arse. She has no sense of inhibition and is a free bird who smiles all the time, pukes when she wants, shits on what she wants, puts into her mouth what she wants - even her toes and her foot-sole. My my - her range is enormous. This is real freedom where you can do what you want and get away with it and the whole world at your service and adoring you for whatever you do.

While my mom showed me how good a toothless smile could it - it was my little one who validated that experience for the second time. Toothless smiles are much much more beautiful and wonderful then toothy smiles.

Anyways check out this video.

The bane of telemarketing calls

Tue, 24 Apr 2007 18:28:04 GMT

Since my days in Phoenix - around 9 years back (close to a decade - whoa!!! how fast time flies) I have been bothered by telemarketing calls. In the days of being a fresher - we used to wait for such calls - to practice our abusing skills!!! Then as we matured in the industry - we just politely cut them short and told them that we aren't interested. There are those persistent ones who would ask us - why weren't we interested - we might as well try their product - its free you know!!!

Then there are those calls - where they wouldn't even know who they were calling. When we ask them who do they want to speak to - they cheekily reply - they don't know - and that this is a random call. There are those who call up the office and try every extension in a sequence. The worst of them are the ones who don't know how to speak in English - and default to Tamil (this is more so in Chennai). When we reply in English - they try to pull up a colleague or make a valiant attempt to speak in half baked English. Some even cut the call when we start speaking in English.

While some don't know what they are supposed to speak - they just make those random calls. On closer interrogation they say that they will put the marketing person across to us. When we persist and ask them why they don't know that answer - they give some cheeky reply.

Amidst all this there is news of setting up a NDNC (National Do-Not-Call) directory with a fine of upto Rs.1000 - I doubt this will work in India as the question remains of how effectively the fines get levied and implemented. Anyway if such a thing were to happen - I certainly wouldn't register in the directory until its effectiveness is proved in India.

This just reminds me of the movie 'Traffic Signal' where one of the goons is constantly pestered by these telemarketing guys. He actually invites them over after reaching a point of exasperation. He later strips them to their jocks and gives them a sound beating. I'm sure this is what most of us feel and the director has just given vent to the frustration of many people who get annoyed by these unwanted calls. There is a similar scene in the movie 'Delhi Heights' which I incidentally saw over the weekend. There is this lady telemarketer who ends up getting a series of kisses from the frustrated customer - who forces her to hangup. Telemarketers can get abused anyway and I guess there isn't anything wrong about abusing them. Some might say that its a question of their livelihood. But I don't wanna get unwanted calls because someone's livelihood is at stake.

New depths of being a fake candidate

Sun, 22 Apr 2007 13:00:34 GMT

I can write a novel - "Fakers shown the door". Like one of those working weekends - I ended up in the Satyam CP Ramswamy branch - taking interviews. Out of 9 I interviewed - I selected 3 and the remaining 6 were fakers. Almost all fakers claim to be 'contract employees' of companies. The most quoted companies are TCS, CTS, IBM and Covansys. A few general knowledge questions about the companies where they were 'supposedly' working - will give away the truth. When confronted with the truth - some will own up - and some adamantly stick to the lie. One girl broke into a profuse sweat when I asked her wether the canteen in CTS - Thoraipakkam was in the front building or in the back building. After much thought and trying to avoid the answer - she said front building (whereas its located in the back) and she couldn't even tell me the acronym for that branch of CTS .....which is TCO (where I worked for 6 months before moving onto the Navalur branch of CTS). At a point she even tried to extract the answer from me. She didn't own up eventually.

Another candidate - is apparently working at a coffee vending machine operator at one of MNCs in Ambattur (a suburb of Chennai). He was polite enough to acknowledge sooner than later and walked off. Another candidate has a watch repair shop in Anantpur (Andhra) and had traveled all the way to Chennai to attend this interview. While he was hard pressed to speak in decent English - I actually bothered to ask him some basic technical questions (on which he badly floundered). This candidate had to be virtually ripped apart to get some facts out of his almost sewn mouth. This candidate finally apologized profusely for wasting my time and walked off.

The last and most audacious candidate was one who claimed to be working in Covansys as a contractor. When asked wether he bothered to make himself permanent in Covansys - he had the cheek to tell me that he was bored working in the same project and that's why he was looking for a change!!!!!! When I insisted that he should fill in his Covansys email id - he started saying that he wasn't willing to 'disclose' it. Even after much threatening he said that he wouldn't mind not taking the interview - but he would rather not tell his official email id (which apparently wasn't there at all).

There were some genuine candidate though - who were kinda okay at their work.

Otherwise the weekend has been pretty interesting. Yesterday I went to a cricket match between my project team and another project team. We won very well and later visited one of my team members house - had a good chat there and moved on. Today the team is meeting at Elliots Beach - Beasant Nagar to have the evening at the beach. As usual most of my team members would be coming in late - and I'm waiting here in my house - blogging and waiting for those guys to turn up. Apparently that beach is a 10 mins drive from my house. I had been to Odyssey before coming here and saw a book called "Multiple Facets of My Madurai" by Manohar Devadoss. I kept remembering my wife while reading it. Its a very interesting book. My wife spent 6 months doing her Post-grad diploma there. A corner of her heart always has that love for Madurai (as much as it has for Chennai - the city she married into!!!!!). I'm sure she would love reading the book - as there are very interesting sketches in it which she would enjoy.
The title page of the book

Its times like this which makes me feel that I made a bad decision by blogging on yahoo 360. See I cant even embed a picture from the photos.yahoo.com. Yahoo 360 has to improve a lot - real lot. Also - almost all bog editors don't support yahoo 360 at all. My yahoo album on photos.yahoo - is kinda useless if I'm not able to embed pictures form there.
Please see the title page and the other scene from my album itself:

http://new.photos.yahoo.com/darashikoh/album/576460762331206497