Bye Bye May

May has come to an end. It was a month when the sun started burning as early as 7 o clock. If you couldnt get up at 5 then you could not dare to go out to jog. The whole of May this year was charecterised by the begining and end of kathiri veyil. You wished you could always be in the pool. Children were seen all over, pools, grounds, parks, theaters, ... enjoying their vacation. Its nice to see how parents ,these days, encourage children to engage in interesting activities during vacation.

The month also saw the arrival of sweet mangos in the market, their rates gradually falling down. There was the tour of Bangaladesh for cricket fans. ( i should mention how much my grand pa loves to watch cricket. it has always been a big obsession for him. There were days when he would cling on to a radio keenly listening to the commentry and discussing the progress of the match with the neighbour living on the otherside of the road. it would be a picture of amusement for anyone passing by. He always had a bitter word for indian fielding no matter how well they did. when watching cricket he would forget everything else.)

Personally, this month was a very different one for me. The process was slowly settling down in our company. I did not see any movies at all. It saw puppy's mrg. my 5000 rs extravaganza on dresses. Trip to sriperumbadur and turning down an offer from foxcon and upsetting father. My renewed interest in numbers and vocab and the subsequent fuelling of my cat prepn. Then there was the visit to raja's place, Tamil athai's place, Ambatur.

Drive to tirupati

This weekend was a memorable one for me ( for that matter anyother weekend has been)

Planning how to Spend weekends has in itself become an interesting challenge. I usually end up spending the weekend with my family taking my mom and dad and some relatives ( either sisters family or mami's family or whoever happens to come to our house) around to some movie and Restaurant or visiting some relatives place. spending some time swimming.

This weekend i was quite scratching my head, thinking abt how to spend it. most of saturday i had spent sleeping , then i went out to fix my bike. Then i thot i could fix the car as well. at this point i should mention that mom and dad had already gone to tirupati with grand parents and aunt.

Once i had fixed the car i asked the mechanic if the car was fit for a drive to tripati , he said yes. That was when i thot , y not and that wld be a gr8 idea.

left chennai with kittu anna at around 10pm. via madhavaram, puzhal, periyapalayam, pitchatur, tirupathi. Reached the foot of the hill at 130 am. it seems traffic is restricted uphills between 1am and 3am. reached tirumala at around 4 am. had a nice glimpse of the gopuram. got in touch with parents at around 6 am, went to the room where they were staying and had a nice sleep till 2 pm.

Then started off back home. via kalahasthi, tada, gummudipoondi, redhills, madhavaram. reached home at around 7 pm. I t was a satisfying journey. for the experience it gave me .

Ahana

Ahana is a book shop in velachery , near aquatic building. I was fst attracted by the caption "let ur soul sing" on the shop. I was actually driving back home after visiting Raja's place. ( I had gone to Raja's place to see where it was loctaed and to set my bike rolling on a few places that i had never been to and was ashamed for the same reason)

It was my fst trip to that part of velachery. On my earlier trip i had ridden on the road frm guindy to vijaynagar thru the gurunanak college and taken the left to tcs , to attend a interview. This is was my fst ride on the 100ft rd. , on that bridge, and look at suth'lnd there. I was quite taken aback by the buildings and factory outlets on the 100 ft rd., the race course and that was when i came across that caption on the shop. Even that loxn was unique, it reminded me of of a place in delhi. i could smell that it was some thing spl.

It did live upto my expn and even surpassed it. The book lay out was b'ful. The one who had planned the lay out of the shop (space) and the books simply had put in common sense and beauty into everything , i thot......... until i came across a book published by Ahana books. It was only then that i discovered Ahana catered specially to women development related issues. Now my reverence for the place changed. It was repeling to know that they had a dogma. My fst impressions were that of a place of common sense, beauty and broad-mindedness...... but somehow this orientation exclusively to women development repelled me.

However i was very happy to have dropped in at that place and bought a atlas, a hitchcock movie cd and franz kafka's 'metamorphosis' to savour my fst feelings and appreciation for the place. I should also add that i was very impressed by the paper bag they gave me. I have always had a grudge against plastic bags and felt very happy when i was given this paper bag, made out of old newspaper and a jute string ( for handle).

cat '007

Explanations on infinite series ( in ' he man who knew inf") has renewed my interest in numbers and logic. which inturn has led me to practise some qsns in cat4maba.com

looking for a brk while working with numbers i looked to words ... tried cross words and word power exercises in oxford thesauraus. which has renewed my love for words.

which has inturn led me into believing i am doing a good job preparing for cat.

hope to keep the good work going.

Shells i picked...

I found good time to devote to ramanujam's biography " The man who knew infinity" by r.kanigel. Thanks to my odd shift timing, it begins at 3 am and ends at 12 noon, i spend sometime in the evening reading.

The book is a well written one. The author expounds on evry details and brings every detail to life. I liked the way he described the way southindian meals is served on a plantain leaf.The Author has very clear intentions . His goal is to make a westerner appreciate the south indian way of life ; a modern indian to appreciate the conditions pre-independence; a non mathematecian to appreciate the nuances of maths.....

So very well written that i wanted to find out more abt kanigel. In the process i found out that find out that there is a faculty in MIT devoted to develop science writers and kanigel is a part of this faculty.

about science writing.... "Science writing means writing about science and technology forgeneral readers. It appears in ordinary newsstand magazines and newspapers, in popular books, on the walls of museums, on television or radio programs. It grapples with genes, fractals, synapses, and quarks, but always with grace and style. Its practitioners worry as much about how to tell the story of science as the science itself—and yet, in maddening paradox, as much about the science as its telling. Science writing tackles big ideas, important issues. It's ambitious, creative, hard to do—harder yet to do well...................The need for men and women who can lucidly interpret and explain science to the wider public has never been greater. Modern technological society leaves a widening gap between citizens and wielders of scientific expertise; graduates of our science writing program will help narrow that gap. The values and practices of science and technology pervade modern life; our graduates will probe and knowledgeably question them."
( quote frm http://web.mit.edu/sciwrite/about.html )"

The book has made me appreciate better how madras has evolved over the ages.. i could relate to some of the places that i have passed by earlier attaching more significance to them now that i know ramanujam had walked those places.. ( pycrofts rd, saiva mudali st., triplicane summer house... etc.)

Explanations on infinite series has renewed my interest in numbers and logic. which inturn has led me to practise some qsns in cat4maba.com .( oh! this now drags me on to the next post)

Catching up with writing......

It has been a long time since i wrote anything reflective... very bad.

let me try and make some amends.

Well life in e4e is slowly settling down. e4e itself is slowly settling down as a company that has just moved to chennai. The office site , 3rd flr in rayala tech park in kottivakam, has come up quite well. we r yet to get a functional cafeteria. Hence we depend on the Adyar bakery , across the road, and Hotchips, thiruvanmiyor, for our fuel.

You must be wondering y am i speaking abt cafeteria fst. Well there isnt much work that has come thru to us yet, the process itself is yet to grow wings. So we get a lot of leisure ( defined as oppurtunity and freedom, classical english. courtesy: The man who knew infinity, r.kanigel)

Initially i spent time trying to find out what sort of issues we got, the common nature and the solutions provided. Once i could not do any more of that i have , these days, resorted to building my word power and general problem solving ablity.

There is so much to write on... let me break them into different posts.