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Saturday
Oct072006

Every kid is different..

Our second child appears to be doing everything a few months earlier compared to our first one. I guess she has her elder sister to watch and learn. The older one didn't have that role model.

Baby is 11 months old and has started running, dancing ! and already watches Barney without batting an eyelid.

All thanks to her akka's (elder sister's) influence. She goes and finds the Barney toy everytime any of us sings the barney song !! See for yourself.



She really loves Barney! and daddy is starting to get irritated at the sight of the dino.. Too much Barney can be a bad thing..

Thursday
Oct052006

Untitled - a story

I have been thinking of writing a story for the last two weeks. Going to write it in bits and pieces.

Since this story is going to unfold along the lines of Tamizh Mega serials, and I have the added disadvantage of not naming a protagonist or their most critical relationship, there is no possibility of having a title like Lakshmi, Selvi or Manaivi, Chitti etc.

Feel free to comment.





Untitled

The four pistachio green Toyota Screamers zipped past a row of national monuments, to the security gates. Contary to their name, they were state of the art whisper quiet, hydrogen fuel cell vehicles. The two guards outside the green zone security gates were talking in hushed tones. They knew the importance of their guests. Once they verified the ID's of everyone in the vehicles, they closed the gates. For once, the convoy had managed to make it in, without any casualties.

Sacramento was not everyones cup of tea these days. A city that came to prominence as a sprawl after the tech boom in the earlier days of 2000, and made more recognizable by the governator, was now one of the most dangerous places on the planet. The only ways in and out of the city were guarded by the latest surveilance technology and missile defense systems.

"Do you really think, this would end today ?" asked Ronny Screwalla.
"I do not know. But everyone that needs to be present today, is alive and well. Now, that is a good start!" said Ibrahim Gwazos, the other security guard. They both fell silent, now that the people in the cars had gotten inside the building. The october afternoon had an eerie calmness about it.

Inside the dimly light courthouse, the Judge was preparing his final remarks. It had been a troubling three years, living in sequestered quarters, trying to keep his sanity through legal proceedings that involved a death a day on the average! He wiped his forehead one last time, and asked the defendents to acknowledge their presence. There was no jury. This was not one of those, run of the mill, Law and Order type Jury trials. In fact this was no ordinary trial. The world wouldn't witness the extraordinary events in this trial because it was off limits to the media or the public.

The defendents and their fidgeting legal council sat in silence. The honorable Howard Stern started reading his verdict. To the surprise of the twenty or so people in the courtroom, he started smiling. The situation warranted anything but a smile. Especially not one that suggested that the Judge was having some kind of sexual experience. Yet, the smile suggested just that! A few seconds later, the judge's eyes popped wide open and he went limp on his chair.

The security guards knew all too well what this meant. They started talking into their collars and went through their drill. Within minutes, the area had been secured and everyone in the room isolated in separate quarters within the courthouse. Ronny and Ibrahim had the same scared look on their faces. It was going to be another long day.

It did not take long for the SDF agents to determine what had happened. A remote controlled nitric oxide cannister had been activated, that too from the judge's gravel. Judge Stern had at least died happy. The gas had given him an erection first, before overdosing him and ending his life. They cleared the body and looked around. They just could not understand what was happening.

Chief Jenifer Lopez clicked the wheel on her secure federal issue I-fone and said "Mrs. President ?"
"Is it over ?" came the question from the other end.
"I am sorry Mrs. President. We have to find another venue for the trial. The judge has been assasinated!" said Lopez, sweating profusely.
The president was silent. She had expected to see this trial go through in a year. Three years had passed with no sign of closure. How did things come to this ? she wondered.

At the courthouse, the main accused was deep in thought. He was thinking the same thing.. How did things come to this ? How did things go so out of control, so fast ?

It had all started with the disappearence of Venkittu Narayanan..





to be continued..

Special Disclaimers :

1. This whole thing is fictional. Although real names of real people are used, there is no connection to them..Lets face it. I am not Tom Clancy. I am too lazy to come up with original names and have decided to use names of people who affect me at the time of writing in some way.

a. Was reading something about UTV and came across Ronny's name. Dont know if this is the same guy who ran a quiz show when I was a kid..
b. Ibrahim Gwazos, is the guy who sent me an email saying Mohammad Narayanan, who has declared that he is my long last brother in Nigeria has left me the sum of 10.8 Million dollars, and he needs my bank account number urgently so he can deposit the money!!!
c. Was going through an old entertainment magazine and saw a picture of Howard Stern. Used to listen to him when I was a fresh off the boat student. Have been ages since I listened to his show.
d. Narayanan Venkittu came in my dream last night..

The story will continue..

Tuesday
Oct032006

Intro to Pedigree

South Indian Brahmin boys, have a custom of declaring their lineage prior to their names, before prostrating themselves at the feet of elders to get blessings. For those of you who are not familiar with this custom, the guy(only guys do this) bows before the elder(s) and says
Abhivadhaye (Me, descendent of) ...
1. the names of three sages - this is out of a total of 21 different combinations(?)2. His Gothram (which in effect is his sect)
3. His Sutram (which is a subsect)
4. His Veda (the one he follows - which is one of the four Vedas)
5. then his name

and finally prostrates himself to get the elders blessing.

The idea here (if my grandpa is right), is that people avoid marrying from the same Gotram, in an effort to mix the gene pool! This of course automatically implies that the female takes the Gotram of her husband when she gets married and only paternal mixing is guranteed here! In spite of some questions, I was always impressed by this system, that has been handed down successfully over thousands of years.

Today, this system is going to take on a whole new meaning. How, you ask ?

Recently my cousin opened my eyes to a new concept,that software companies in India, have introduced, called a "honeymoon package" !!! Yes, you read it right. If an employee of the company gets married to another employee within the same IT/Software company, then both of them are put on the same project, especially if one of them happens to work outside India! Hence the name, Honeymoon package. This no wonder pisses off a bunch of hardworking singles, because all of a sudden they find out that some girl/guy from some unknown project is going abroad for the next year on the project they have been busting their a**@# on, just by marrying the right person ! Apparently, it doesnt stop here.

There are companies which encourage this "keeping the family within the company" concept, by giving the newly weds a brand new car or some other expensive thing as a wedding gift!!!

Granted, youth today are not in the habit of finding out the other persons sect, subsect etc. before plunging into marriage. But imagine the after effects of the Honeymoon package deal 50 years from now ..

I asked one of my friends, who actually works in an Indian software company that has said package, to think about it. He thought for a few minutes and said "God, imagine all that inbreeding!" (Ironic, since both the guy and his wife work in the same company!)

It just cracked me up. If all these software people within the company keep marrying and their kids end up doing the same, two three generations from now we will have a very localized genepool of software, IT professionals who might just be saying

Abhivadhaye...
1. the names of the two software companies their parents have worked on
2. the sector they work on (apparently all these IT guys are grouped into vertical sectors like finance, automotive, etc. etc)
3. The account they work for within that vertical sector
4. the language they write the code in (C, C++, Java etc. which is pretty much the Veda they follow)
5. His name

and get the blessing !!

Dont be surprised if this really happens. I may not be there 50 years from now, but if this post still survives and you say..

Abhivadhaye
Infosys, Cognizant
Finance sector
Fidelity Magellan
Jaaavaaaa
Srirama sharma (Sriram is my name)
Aham Asmibho (I prostrate thee for your blessing !)

I predicted this might happen.... in 2006!!

Sunday
Oct012006

Elmo visits the Doctor

Jr. has been watching Elmo visits the Doctor over and over again for the last 10 days. By now she knows every dialogue in that DVD.

She has also changed her stance from wanting to be a nurse, to wanting to become a doctor after watching this video. But her most difficult patient is none other than her own sister.

We have such a riot watching Jr. try to do a checkup on the baby. The baby is so aggressive that she grabs the stet or the pressure monitor or the doctors hair before the doctor can get anywhere near her. (Seriously, even the real doctors have not had it easy with our little one!).

Here is a picture of the scared doctor and her scary patient..



I keep getting visuals of a prison doctor checking on an extremely dangerous patient!!

Sunday
Oct012006

Laptop trouble.. yet again.

My office laptop is probably going to sue me for abuse. You have probably seen the post about the stickers on the front, about the trackball being chewed..

Well it doesnt stop there. Just a few minutes ago, I was about to take my laptop from the table and put it in my bag. I lift it and there is a sliding sound, one made by metal against metal coming from inside!

I check the CD drive, nothing is loose there. Then I slowly move my laptop around and I hear the same sliding sound as though some part is broken inside and is making its way into various sub compartments.

What with the recent pictures of laptops catching fire so easily, I promptly panicked, decided to get my screw driver and open it up. Just on a second thought I decided to do some more investigating before performing laptoposcopy. Managed to isolate the noise to the bottom of the keyboard. Only then I realized that there was something stuck just under the opening for the wireless slot !!

Fished the object out and it was a Quarter dollar!!



These days I leave the thing closed, so the little devil doesnt pull out the trackball and eat it.. Still she manages to do something to a closed laptop. If you have a T42 or any other computer with this slot on the side AND if you have a little devil in your house capable of such acts, beware !!!

Now my next concern is, was there only one quarter ? Where did she find it ? What if she has a secret stash of coins somewhere ? What if she eats them when I go the kitchen for a few minutes ? Should I buy a leash and put her on it ? Should I buy a home X-ray machine or a metal detector to save myself the future emergency room visits ? The mind wanders ...