Srikanth's Blog

Blog moved to a new location

2010-09-01T12:55:00.003-04:00

Blog moved to a new location http://srikanthd.wordpress.com/

அச்சமுண்டு அச்சமுண்டு

2009-07-16T21:06:00.002-04:00

Achamundu Achamundu , my good friend Arun Vaidyanathan’s debut feature film is being released today (July 17th 2009) worldwide.

Arun's vision, technical knowhow and his understanding of film making often amazes me. Having worked with Arun in 6 of short films out of 7 he directed and produced, I can categorically state that his debut film Achamundu Achamundu will do justice to film making

When dominant movie makers of Tamil film industry fear breaking the long-established stereotyped formats, Arun has taken a bold step [அச்சமில்லை அச்சமில்லை ] in moving forward and making a Tamil film in par with world cinema. Way to Go.

Arun, you took the risk and followed your passion and dream, and! You made it buddy! My hearty wishes and congratulations!.

Srikanth

NEW TRACK RELEASE

2009-07-05T22:52:00.003-04:00

Jay Leno, I will miss you

2009-05-29T11:12:00.002-04:00

I am regular to the Tonight show with Jay leno for more than a decade. Watching Jay Leno really cheered me up every night especially after grueling day of work. He has jokes almost about everything and every other big name in America. At the same time Jay also has the super quality of being friends with them all. Every Musician, Movie star, Politician, sport personality, comedian and every other person who appears on this show respects this old long chin man in spite of his at times sensitive jokes. This shows how good the person Jay is off the camera. Even “our man” A. R. Rahman has played in his show.

After 17 years of hard work, today will be his last and final show. He is being replaced by Connon O'Brian.

In my opinion - no offense to Connon O'Brian, NBC shot itself on its foot. Connon has this childish comedy just like the over rated Saturday night life. I don’t think Conon has same Leno charisma that carried the show for 17 years.

Good that Jay [and Kevin and the team] will be back at the prime time [10.00pm] in fall 2009. 10.00pm Jay LENO
11.00pm John Stewart
11.30pm I get to watch the Colbert Report live.
11.35 Conan Sorry, I don’t think you are as good as Jay. Prove me wrong.

Just to conclude,
Economy is so bad even the well established and loved comedian Jay Leno has job issues. God bless you Mr. Leno, I will miss you!

NEW TRACK RELEASE

2009-05-12T09:42:00.009-04:00


Download Hindi Track Download Tamil Track

World is in need.

2009-04-13T09:48:00.002-04:00

The MAC versus PC advertisement, question from Microsoft to Apple is very simple, why should a sane person pay nose bleeding amounts to buy an Apple computer? The stability claim for Apple desktop OS is a fable. I would categorically say Microsoft XP matches or performs better. Apple few months ago introduced a new Notebook with 17th Inch screen and the usual lollypops for a price tag for $2800. Apple discussion boards were going gaga over it. Honestly HP, IBM, Dell, or Sony makes better, cheaper, stable, hip PCs/laptops for ¼ of the price. Apple’s $2800 price tag sounds like emperor’s new clothes. Would you pay $2800 just for browsing the internet using Safari and checking emails with a graphically good looking email client? Apple customers are in a deep sleep to realize that are paying $500 to $800 extra for the logo.

Apple has been trashing PC and its software for past 2 -3 years and no one really cared from the PC side, but now just 2 advertisements from Microsoft, the apple lovers are going nuts and all their defense systems is on high alert.
Apple as a company has no choice here. They will sideline this new cost saving advertisement from Microsoft because they definitely don’t have an answer. The cheapest part in apple is their logo embedded mouse pad which is three times costlier than the normal mouse pad used by normal mortals of planet earth, my question, does the mouse travel faster on a mouse pad with Apple logo? Why it is priced so high? PC has come a long way and evolved to a greater extent, there is no point in trashing it.

I had an opportunity to work on Apple Apps; there are apps for anything these days. There could be an app to stop your snore. The coding language used by Apple is Objective C and this language is similar to any other language known to developers however the language syntax is totally unconventional and obnoxious. There is a thin line between being different and being ridiculous e.g. Dennis Rodman and Apple Objective C.

Finally,
In support of Apple, they are great inventors; get this right, they were the first company to offer a viable working solution for the music industry. Music industry was in chaos before Apple started distribution via their ITUNES platform. There distribution mechanism is simply fantastic and it works well. Apple’s enemy is their price tag, until this factor is sincerely addressed by Apple, the normal human beings would continue to believe apple is a fruit found in the refrigerator or in a basket.

Apple and Microsoft should take the high road, drop these stupid commercials and focus on inventing concepts for the world. World is in need.

A fan’s tale

2009-04-06T13:16:00.003-04:00

Part 6: Another Opportunity

One more opportunity knocked my door, drive my cousin to Panchathan Inn recording studio. It was a late night recording at 11.00pm, the studio had undergone changes, and close to the studio entrance there was a new waiting room. I was asked to sit in that room. Whenever someone opened the door I was able to listen to the track in a very low volume. I heard orchestral hits, tight drum grooves and vocals with lot of reverb.

After 15 minutes or so, suddenly Mr. Viramuthu walked out from the studio. I stood up, he asked me to sit. He then took the seat next to me, my lucky star shines again and I am now sitting next to the Iconic lyric writer from Tamil Nadu. He then asked me in English “Are you Anu’S brother?” I nodded my head and then he asked are you from Delhi, for which I replied in a low voice, “தமிழ்ல பேசலாம் சார்” [I can talk in Tamil Sir], then I had some guts to talk and congratulated him for all the songs he penned right from late 70’s till now. With a grin he nodded his head and then went back inside. One more time an opportunity to hear the tight drum grooves and vocals with lot of reverb.

After about 30 minutes, door opens and no audio bleed this time and I see few walking out, I spot A.R. Rahman in the middle, and to my surprise he said "HI" "How Are You?" I said I am fine. He then started talking to Viramuthu and I still remember, ARR was saying to Viramuthu that he should be calling “Hariharnan” as he has been missing his calls. I was watching this all with amazement. You might wonder what is so amazing about it, true but for a 23 year old watching 2 giants of Tamil Cinema speak is nothing but amazement.

Then someone walks near ARR and whispers something, ARR goes inside. That “somebody” was Noel James working at the Studio and ARR’s long time buddy. Noel requested me to join him in the reception, he told me director would be here anytime and he might not like anyone being around. In the reception as though we were long time friends, Noel and I had a long discussion about music, keyboard etc. We spoke about Pink Floyd to Phil Collins to Whitney Houston and a lot about new keyboards. I still remember that evening conversation. We even started refereeing ARR as “our man” and I did get to know few little things about ARR’s work flow. At around 1.00am I had the presence of mind to get Noel’s phone number.

Tamil film music has tracks that are remembered just for its uniqueness. "முத்து குளிக்க வரீர்களா", "நின்னுக்கோரி வர்ணம்" are few examples. The song that was recorded that night was in the same league -> “Konjam Nilavu” Movie: "Thiruda Thiruda" directed by Mani Rathnam.

The song was all about A.R. Rahman’s rich music, Anupama’s dominant vocals and P.C. Sriram’s camera work. Later when the movie came out the rumor was that PC would use state of the art devices like akelaa cranes for the filming the song. Honestly I am yet to see a singer who could reproduce this song with perfection. The song format was western - verses and chorus. The chorus lines [male vocals] were done by Noel James. I was able to spot familiar sounds from Korg M1/O1W keyboards. Apart from the songs, the uncelebrated feature of the “Thiruda Thiruda” was Rahman’s Background music. The background score by Rahman was well above his all previous movies. For example the French horn theme sounds in Sivaji; Rahman had composed similar stuff way back for Thiruda Thiruda. This movie generated a lot of expectations in me and I was waiting eagerly for its Audio launch.

To conclude this part, following is a piece of advice, when you get to meet top people in any business or industry please! Do not miss the opportunity to talk; Make sure you use it to your potential. I still hate myself for being shy; I hate myself for fear of communication. My fears became factors that created a natural block for me to move forward. I was musically qualified and my sequencing and programming abilities were beyond most during that time, but my silent mode did not permit me to promote my skill set which in turn failed to create peers around me. Though I am happy where I am now, I still rue missing chances. The crude fact is I never got them again! At that time, I did not know that this was the last time I would meet “A.R. Rahman” in his studio.\

A fan’s tale

2009-03-24T10:46:00.002-04:00

Part 5: The Flood Gates

The pressure when composing for 2nd movie is 10 times more than the 1st. 1st For A.R. Rahman it was x 100 times difficult. Roja was successful not only in South but it was making it big on the national scene. Expectations tripled in matter of few months. [A.R. Rahman is the only composer till date to win a national award for his first movie.]

Though he was working on movies like Gentlemen and few others, Pudiya Mugam was his second official movie, it did not disappoint even a bit, the composer who some called “one movie wonder” continued to grow, the word new and refreshing expanded.
The song சம்போ சாம்போ (Sambo Sambo) is one of the best arrangements from Rahman till date. Wild bongos, accordion and guitar sequences in the song were simply mind blowing. More over the vocalists, 1st they were not popular or never heard off. These brand new voices added new flavors that were unknown during that time. I was able to hear various kinds of new vocal harmonies and adlibs. Basically the adlibs during that time were limited to “தக துகு தக துகு or “ஜீநாகு ஜீநாகு ஜிஞ்சினகு”.

It looked as though Rahman had opened the flood gates of new singers. In his second movie he had few new names introduced. I was stunned to hear the final version of July Matham vandhal. I would never forget the line “கோடி மக்கள் வேண்டுகோள்”. The final one Rahman approved was not the one what Anupama sang in the recording that I happen to see. The final approved take was simply incredible. An initial proof that Rahman gets best from his artists;

நேற்று இல்லாத மாற்றம் என்னது, I fell in love with Sujatha’s voice why a singer of such standards and caliber ignored by music directors? Nevertheless Tamil film music was destined to witness new voices and surprises.

I would go hang around with my friends during lunch breaks around fountain plaza for “obvious” “wink wink” reasons. On a usual very hot summer afternoon I heard a song in the tea shop that really made my ear pop out. Movie Gentlemen, released by Pyramid audio. The audio tape had printed lyrics and I was reading the lyrics loud at work with my usual sarcastic jab. ஒட்டகத்த கட்டிக்கோ was really funny read, but my boss G.C. Basker told me “dude you got to listen to this song”. I have never seen GCB being musically savvy. At that time I did not know that this song was set to my favorite raga, Dharmavathi, I am fascinated by songs like அம்மானை அழைத்துவரும், காதல் காதல் என்று பேச, மீண்டும் மீண்டும் வா they have been my favorites. On the first go, ஒட்டகத்த கட்டிக்கோ was added to my elite list. This is when I started to follow Rahman's music sincerly.

A fan’s tale

2009-03-19T13:19:00.004-04:00

Part 4: A Pause

I was anxiously waiting to get the audio tape of Pudhiya Mugam.
However, I am going pause for a moment to write about something that has been lingering in my head for past 20+ years.

Sub standard music tapes. Tamil film industry is notorious for poor distribution practices. I am against any audio piracy and my friends would vouch my claim. This habit did not form overnight, even way back even in the 80s when audio tapes were a luxury to a teenager, I use get original music tapes, LP records were totally out of my reach. Most of my pocket money was spent on music tapes.

Audio companies in Chennai never cared or knew the word “quality”. 1st in my list, a company called Echo. Many of the best and legendry Tamil classics were pathetically packed in a pink colored shell made from cheap plastic. The mastering process was just dumping music on to these poorly manufactured audio tapes. The little parts in the tape would wear out in few weeks and worst of all these tapes produced lot of white noise. Cost of a tape was Rs40 to Rs 50. The outer plastic case will break the moment the consumer open the case. If you ask the reseller he would blindly say “that’s how it came”. The consumer was totally ill treated by these music companies.

Sheer out of passion for music I would go and spend all my pocket money to get these substandard tapes. Music directors had no real say in the deal. Companies like INRECO, HMV, Lahari were in par with Echo. There was also audio companies like Pyramid that offered some good quality tapes, but was a rarity.

This greedy “taking consumer for granted” habit continues even today, “Surthilayam” that distributes Tamil movie aboard is doing everything it can to ruin the movie watching experience. In order to make more money, they bundle double movies on to a single DVD. However in order accommodate 2 movies on the DVD they kill the DTS or 5.1 sound tracks. In order to gain more space on the DVD, the sound channels are neutralized to mono and it is pushed to the 5.1 spectrum. You would get the same sound on all the 5 channels. As if this was not enough without any ethics they display a 5.1 logo or DTS on the label. Why? When someone pays $20 to get an original DVD, what not respect them? Why not provide the quality you promised on DVD inlay card? Tamil movie and music distribution is governed by non scientific distribution channels.

When situation was such, a Bombay based company called Magna sound published the songs from Pudhiya Mugam. Let alone the sound mix part, the overall manufacturing quality was few light year ahead from their Chennai counterparts. Tape Cost RS.35, it was worth the money, and the first track in the Tape said it all.

நேற்று இல்லாத மாற்றம் என்னது! (nEtRu illAtha mAtram ennAdhu)

A fan’s tale

2009-03-17T13:39:00.006-04:00

Part 3: Meeting My Idol

One "fine" evening, my cousin calls me and requests a bike ride to a recording studio. I was busy at work, but still I asked who the Music director was, she told it was “A.R. Rahman” I had no second thoughts, took the bait, I wanted to meet him at least once.

We walk into a cozy little studio, air conditioner blasting to its maximum and I was formally introduced to as "Srikanth" "Software Engineer", I gave my business card, we shook hands and my cousin asked him if I could watch the proceedings, he smiled and said “that’s fine”.

I was very nervous but curious than the usual, my eyes scanned the surroundings. There was an 8 track spool recorder and a big mixing console with many volume control knobs. There was a vocal room with an adjustable boom microphone. And couple of keyboards in the room, I remember vaguely seeing Korg M1 or 01/w. I was quite amazed by how A.R. Rahman worked, he was operating the 8 track recorder and mix-board and he was fast like a bee, just doing all with ease. In first place, I was very surprised. A music recording would have many people surrounding the music director and he would give the music etc. I have never ever seen a music director operate the console himself with just one singer around.

With little fear and lot of amazement I stood there in the corner. Suddenly he called me to sit next to him. I never expected that I would be sitting next to the new sensation A.R. Rahman, and right in front to me was his sound mixing console.

They started rehearsing the track, all of a sudden he spoke to me, "so what language you program in [in Tamil]" and once again surprise, I never expected that, it took me few seconds to hydrate my senses, and I stuttered and replied "before anything congratulations on your recent success of Roja". For which he gave a humble simile and asked me again, what language? I replied, Turbo C, Clipper etc. He asked me how C is different from C++, I gave some technical reply and my voice sounded very tense. Hence I guess to make me comfortable, he then told me that he has friend in Canada who just look like me and speaks like me. Ya! I guess it worked, I became little more comfortable and told I am from T.Nagar and work for company called PC India and I loved his songs in Roja and looking forward for more, I also had guts to mention, I have a small midi setup etc using Cakewalk and play live on stage... He smiled and told "keep them coming", he was all the time multi tasking.

The recording was about to begin, for the first time I heard the track in full, all the channels have been powered up, I was blown away by the opening guitar prelude; later I came know it was played by Guitar Prasanna. It was mind blowing. The overall sound was new to me. I was not excepting it at all, and then suddenly SPB sings a line, from there on I was totally out of the world. It took me a lot of time to come back to my senses. Music I was hearing was something else to what I am used to. The song was unbelievable. It had Spanish guitar, fretless Bass and most of all a new Tabla sound and placement. When I heard the Cousin’s vocals, I was stunned by the quality. I have heard her sing, but not at this level. Rahman was giving her a lot of directions in a friendly manner. He had an amazing quality, he was able to say anything without hurting the singer.

About 15 minutes into the recording, I was told that director would show up and he would not like me there, I was all set to walk out. Director Suresh Menon walks in; to everyone’s surprise he permits me to be stay in the studio.

"Thanks to Anupama", my lucky day I guess, sitting near A.R.Rahman (and Suresh Menon) recording a new track “July mAtham vanthAl” for the movie pudhiya mugam . That was Anupama’s debut track. I still cherish the fact that I was among the first few to have heard the new track from A.R. Rahman after Roja. Of course, I was boasting all about it in my work place.

“It was an experience of life time”. This is where I realized making music is all about having fun. I walked out of the recording studio with a lot of memories not knowing that I would meet him again one more time during recording of another track, the track that created history and is being remembered even today.

A fan’s tale

2009-03-11T09:39:00.007-04:00

Part 2: "New" & "Fresh", means what?

The following you are about to read is just my opinion, and my definition of “opinion” is very simple. OpiNION , if you check the word closely it has as “pi” (pi=22/7), world is yet to calculate this anomaly and the rest is “ONION”;

If you have observed like I do, songs that came during late 80s and early 90s had common sets of sounds in their instrumentation. Just to sample few,

1. Programmed drum pattern over live drum performance
2. A lot of keyboard flute over real flute
3. Violins playing counter to the lead
4. The most distinguished – chord punches on the bar using popular Yamaha DX7 bells sounds. Few keyboard players whom I know use to call it job security.

Besides, majority of the songs were sung by the same handful of singers. Fresh new voice seemed a rarity.

From a technical stand point, the structure of song and the melody progressions was very predictable. You might wonder, what the hell he means by it. I shall try and explain it see if you can grasp it;

Dissecting more, a song had a prelude, a very simple “Pallavi” that negotiates after 8 to 12 bars, this was followed few bars of very well or sometimes outstand background score [With the same set of sounds], followed by a “Saranam” that is mostly in Q&A format, meaning the first line will ascend and the second shall descend and, finally Saranam would end by pushing the same “Pallavi Sandam” to an higher octave which then returns to the Pallavi. [Read it again if you don’t get it]. Sixty to seventy percent of the songs were in this format. Examples are beyond the scope of this article, may be later if time permits.

Having said so much on the structure, sound and instrumentation, I also firmly believed that there were valid reasons for songs being in the format mentioned above -> Majority of Tamil music fans loved it. Also these songs are kind of easy to reproduce in light music shows. Why? The guitarist need not change his sound or amp model once he sets it for a song. Same sound model would work for 70% of the song.
To conclude my justifications, I had no choice to any alternate music. Hindi film music was pretty much ordinary during the period. I started to feel a repetitive pattern in songs of late 80s and 90s.

The day I heard the tracks from Roja, I felt something different, could this be the paradigm shift that I was looking in Tamil music? The usual sounds were missing. It sounded as though the AR Rahman had put meticulous effort to avoid violin counters, the usual Tablas pattern and violin sections.

Rather than hearing them as individual instruments, I heard them as sonic emotions. New sounds like fretless bass, reverberation over percussions were blend well. Best of all the usual stale DX chords punches vanished; instead pizzicato [plucking the violins] or a wide drone pad tone carried the chords. By this approach sound and the Chord harmony seemed expand and enhanced in the sound spectrum. It never distracted the melody.

In a nut shell, A.R. Rahman used the musical melody + harmony, and most of all, "sound spectrum" to convey the energy and emotion found in the lyrics to average human ears.

It is "somewhat" easy to play Highway Star(Deep Purple), a good guitarist will nail the notes and riff in no time, but that is just half the effort, getting the perfect guitar tone used in the by Deep Purple is another task, the guitar tone plays vital part in convening energy and mood. The point is ARR using the combination of notes, harmony, vocals and sound textures was able to convey the mood or “feel” much better than his predecessors.

This was the reason I was able to feel a lot of depth in songs like Pudhu vellai mazai . Moreover, check this, usually in an erotic number, vocalists will do their usual "mukal munagals" and the song would end up as banned by Radio Stations. "Rukumani Rukumani" was altogether a different package. Another feature I noted was - Free flow of melody. The melody lines had very minimal truncated notes. These notes had longer gliding lengths, and a lot vocal improvisation.

I discussed a lot with my friends, most did not agree with me, for days I had to confront people about my opinions on the repetitive pattern. All said and done, can A.R. Rahman be the best person to take Tamil film music to a new level”?

Next: When did my expectations for ARR expanded exponentially?

அர்த்தமுள்ள ஹிந்து மதம்

2009-03-10T11:24:00.004-04:00

Few days ago some of my friends sent me a link, Click here

Visitors to Hindu temple are welcomed by Lord Ganesh also called as Vinayaka, and in Tamil “Pillaiyar”, he is one of the best-known and most widely worshipped deities of Hinduism. Pillaiyar is widely revered as the "Remover of Obstacles" and "Lord of Beginnings" patron of arts and "sciences" , and the Angel of intellect and wisdom.

One of the most common sight in Hindu temples is worshippers performing an unusual squatting act in front of Lord Ganesh. Crossing their hands holding their ear lobes and they do a squatting routine. This is called "தோப்புக்கரணம்" [thoppuk kaRanam] in Tamil.

Hindus have been performing this act for centuries; today it has been proved that this squatting act is medically beneficial to the Brain. Holding the earlobes and squatting for five minutes create a lot of stimulation in the brain.
This is now called or given a fancy name “Super Brain Yoga” by doctors in the west. As per the CBS clip above, there seems to be enough medical proof that this exercise [தோப்புக்கரணம்] helps to improve brain activity in Children especially. The doctor in the clip has prescribed this method for Kids who have been slow in their academics and these kids have made very progress in academics just in weeks after doing this act for 5 minutes a day. Totally amazing

It matter of time, Nintendo WII would soon introduce a “தோப்புக்கரணம்” controller.

“Jambu” “Chaaiiish is Yovershhh”

2009-03-09T11:59:00.007-04:00

Last week AVM productions filed a complaint to Chennai police that someone broke into their royal movie junk yard and took away a lot of old movies. Similar complaints have been received from other movie producers in recent times. Chennai police are looking into it.

Here is a clue to catch the culprit. -> SunTV and KTV producers.

We have seen Mr. Bharath, Ejaman, Muratu kalai and many more of similar crap being repeated every alternative day. For past few months these 2 channels have been slaughtering us all in name of broadcasting. Same movies are shown alternatively on these 2 channels. Even the so called badly dubbed Hollywood crap is being repeated. Moreover, 95% of their programs spill over or do not follow any time sense. Do they really care to manage a TV station?

The Movie clip/trailers are obnoxious, irritating, and horrible. Every 10 minutes why are we forced to watch the pathetic hero and his set of punch dialogues or some half naked Bombay chick record dancing. Just to balance act of half nakedness, we are now forced to see a naked C.Sundar walking. Why? What did we do to you?

We get it, the Marans are into producing movies, but they just don’t seem to understand people pay lot money to watch their programming. We are paying close to about Rs 20,000 a year. They have taken us all for granted.

Yesterday when watching the facilitation show for A.R.Rahman, the entire show was just less than 40 minutes however their advertisement and commercial craze extended this program for close to 3 hours and it was so irritating I had to quit watching it.

DO YOU THINK SUN TV + KTV ARE WORTH $30 a month? They are getting worse than the Doordharshan of the 80s. Tamils in US have been patronizing them for about a decade now, why aren’t they respecting their patrons?

Will Mr. Maran or the so called SunTV branch office here in US answer us?

Finally, Another joke on the same channel

Prasanna the singer who is now the judge of singer/dancer show on Sun TV was seen wearing a big ray ban look like sun glass in a well lit indoor studio

Why do we need sunglasses in an indoor studio?
1) Madras eye. Hope he recovers quickly.
2) A Clandestine method for “Sight” Seeing.

For more reality punch effects say it like our beloved Late M.N.Nambiyar –"Jambu" "Chaaiiish is Yovershhh" [Choice is yours]

Good week Guys!

A fan’s tale

2009-03-05T13:00:00.002-05:00

Part I: Who?

Around 1992 I was a senior software engineer at PC India, Chennai. The work environment was vibrant. I was already a part time musician then, my keyboard playing abilities and of course my decent handsome looks, [ok! Ok settle down] attracted attention.

During lunch break, “Maria” our receptionist and few others mentioned about a song from the new movie “Roja” on TV, and were going gaga over it. I had no idea about this movie. It seems director Mani Rathnam was breaking away from his old acquaintances was introducing a new music composer.

On my way back home I got the audio cassette for Rs35.00 from an audio shop in fountain plaza. I had an Akai sound system, the songs did sound fresh and unique, and I recognized the song “china china asai” I was really surprised to hear “reggae”, just few months ago I heard the same words in a different format. I do not know how many know the history of “China China Asai”. Poet Viramuthu wrote this song for a special program on Doordharshan and music was composed by the genius composer MSV, sung by T.K. Kala [If I remember right]. Though MSV’s composition was the usual TV type, the words were fantastic. The same song was now presented in a different sound. Moreover, each and every song in the album surprised me. Kadal Rojave [in middle on side A &B], Pudhu Vellai mazai [Side B 1st song] and Tamiza Tamiza [Side B last song] had some something in them; this was later termed as “freshness”. I was also surprised by the new set of singers 1) Minmini, 2) Unni Menon 3)Sujatha, 4) HariHaran who are they? Where did they come from?

Somasundram grounds T.Nagar was the face book of our times, sitting on the "wall" we discussed Gavasker , Rajainee to Kamal et everything. Our main point of discussion was Roja. We were wondering why did Mani Rathnam (KB -Kavithalaiya ) take a big risk on their big movie, a new unknown composer with new set of singers? I checked with my friends in the music industry and there was already a buzz about this new composer, “Dileep” was popular among some of my friends and my cousin who worked in the advertisement industry.

There were many rumors and stories floating around. The famous one was “Being at the Right Place at the Right Time”. Those days there were no cell-phones. It seems Mani Rathnam often walks out to a private office to take phone calls. He gets calls every few minutes hence it would be very hard to get his attention. But when Rahman came for the discussion, it seems there was no single phone call for 30 or 40 minutes. Rahman was able to play all this tracks without any external disturbances.

How true the story was , who cared! it was a perfect juicy story for guys sitting on the wall to discuss.

Like every other Tamil public I did not know that this brand new music composer is destined to create history for India.

What did I find new in Roja songs? Next Thursday in detail!

Temperature is crazy

2009-03-04T09:57:00.003-05:00

A very cold weekend in DC with a lot of snow, the temperature is crazy and currently we are well below the dry ice levels.

I was watching a recording of the Sun TV singer show, singer [Trivia: How many film songs you have to record to get this title?] Prasanna is quite a personality. The verbal war between Vijay Anthony and him often gets obnoxious. The musical pair have been given the license to “eve tease” every other young contestant in the program. If a juvenile utters the similar language in a bus stand or a train stations he/she would be behind bars in no time for eve teasing. I am no behavioral police, I believe music is divine and judging in a competition is an honorable portfolio, please maintain the sanity of the portfolio. Do you believe that singers Karthik and Chinmayee were Sun TV finds, Mr. A.V. Ramanan Sir we miss you. Where did that quality vanish?

When clean Tamil is a rarity these days on TV, I had a glimpse of Rani Maharani host “Mamathi” (மமதி) , her powerful Tamil language diction and screen presence was quite awesome. If it sounds like a crush, let it be it. Every Video jockey out there on Tami channels must get trained by her.

Please pardon this sinner for the ittle technical talk.

Microsoft Cloud Computing buzz, “AZURE” joins the crowded cloud computing market that is already dominated by IBM [no real proof :)], Sun Microsystems, Google, Amazon etc. Microsoft might be a late entrant into this market, “thought late it would be the latest”. :)

AZURE could be a paradigm shift for Microsoft, contradicting their desktop OS philosophy.

.NET amazes me a lot than any other technology platform today. I have been working in the software industry right from the days of Turbo C in the early 90s till now and have seen/been through a lot of technologies. Microsoft .NET frame work is one technology that amazes me. Microsoft is pumping in lots of tools for the AZURE development, most of them are free. I have signed up for an account to evaluate the architectural perspective with AZURE and its service platforms. You can read more about AZURE here the job market is slow and this would be a good time to learn a new skill set.

Honestly , it was very easy for me

2009-02-26T11:49:00.007-05:00

Sometime around Oct 2008 time frame, out of the blues Dheepa Ramanujam, a film maker from Bay area contacted me. Thanks to the kind words of my good old buddy Vijay Kumar popularly known as VK, VK is a talented keyboard artist and performs in most shows in and around the west coast. We go back a long way.

Dheepa Ramanujam has staged many successful full-length plays with her group of artists since 2001. She has worked under the guidance of director K. Balachander and many other stalwarts of Tamil cinema. The tremendous response for her played titled "Thanimai" [Tamil] provided the encouragement to her to form a dedicated group to Tamil theatrical arts. Dheepa founded a production company called Krea with her husband Ramanujam.

When Dheepa told me the story of her short film “Sunset”, I had no hesitation to jump into the bandwagon. Working with Dheepa and her talented team of folks was a pleasure. Dheepa’s passion and dedication towards art simply amazes me. “Sunset” has already won few awards in Film festivals. Following Sunset, I had the pleasure to work on her next film titled “Good Bye”. It is in the final stages of post production.

There are many folks in and around DC metro with tons of talents, some of them are unnoticed. I am now working with one such film maker. "Babu Venkatesh"

Around Dec 2008, my good friend Iyappan and I were working on track in my studio. Iyapppan mentioned about Babu who wanted to do a short film. Babu was moving to India to work in the movie industry and he wanted this short film to be in his portfolio. Babu visited my studio, and outlined his plans, and asked me for serious help in making this happen.

Honestly it was very easy for me; I just had to connect these 2 film makers.

Result, fantastic short film called "Appa Vanthar".

Movie was written and directed by Babu and produced by Dheepa. Dheepa came up with a talented team in no time. Icing on the cake, movie was short on the popular "RED" camera. One person I like to mention here is a young sound designer from LA, "Kunal Rajan". He has a lot of energy and vision on sound design. He would be working on sound follies for this short movie. I am very happy to be the Music Director/Original Music Composer in this elite team.

Honestly, when lot of money is being lost for average home dwellers in this economy, these short films have kept me smiling. Yesterday we had a lot fun during recording, and we almost nailed the back ground score in full. We will be recording the tracks for next few days with vocals and other live instruments.

My best wishes to Babu for a successful carrier in Chennai.

Donkey drops at will - India VS New Zealand T20.

2009-02-25T09:36:00.007-05:00

I woke at 2.00am today to watch India VS New Zealand T20. I should have right royally completed the natural sleeping quota of 8 hours. Anyways,

New Zealand tour has always been a mystery to the Indians. In spite of the cricket grounds being smaller than my cubicle, the rock star Indian batting fire power resembled the popular Sivakasi produce dipped in water. The home team played their natural game and of course with some help from the umpire, won the game very easily. Indian Batting was quite hasty and it looked as though someone told them to play a T5 game.

But the credit goes to the Indian bowlers. Congratulations, the thoughtless Indian Bowling act signed today. Harbajan Singh looked as though he was upset about Sukwinder Singh being denied a visa to the Oscars. Harbajan took over what Anil Kumble was doing for years. Throwing large quantities of donkey drops at will, seeing the quantity thrown, the local New Zealand donkeys and mules “poked” Harbajan via face book. Bowlers were more or less without any idea or a plan, something similar to the current US congress;

Dhoni’s captaincy reminded Yuvan Shankar Raja’s modern music arrangement -"Harmonically" cut loose -> என்ன கொடுமை இது சரவணன்.

My pathetic performance award of day goes to Irfan pathan for his bowling. The ball was hit to locations where "no ball has gone before.". India sucked to its maximum, which in a way is good for the team, now team will think about bouncing back with some passion.

Reaching the top position is only one side of the effort, maintaining it is sheer "Horse Horns". [குதிரைக் கொம்பு]

Trouble shoot yourself

2009-02-24T10:15:00.005-05:00

Economy is in doldrums and I see every other financial guys and gals churning money by writing books on Economic survival. Hence as a service to the society I decided to write a book to save the world, and here is the sneak peek of my new book

"Trouble shoot [yourself] the BLACK BERRY STROM".
The Basics
1. Screen Orientation - Unit test case: The virtual keyboard never changes to landscape mode.
a. First step would be to jingle the storm for a quick up and down for 10 seconds. Prior experience could come handy. Technique is very important here. If done properly it should change. But if it does not change, read further.
b. Leave the black berry storm on your table, drive to a nearby struggling star bucks and boost their sales, get the “Mojo” and drive back to your office. 6 to 7 minutes gone hence it is time to check our subject. It should have changed.
c. If no, on the positive side you would have gained a little technical skill, try giving another CPR oops jingle, this time 20 seconds, if nothing happens, wait for another 10mins to 13 minutes, you are very close to resolving it - the record time is about17 Minutes. It will change. If your name is not Bill Maher, throw in a prayer or 2 to the almighty. You could see the light in next 15 minutes.
d. On a side note, record your actions with a web cam add some music and post it on YouTube. You will be an instant hit.

2. Disgusted with phone number search. When the page orientation is in Portrait mode, an obnoxious keyboard with twin click appears, meaning the letter “Q” and “W” appear on the same key.
a. Q & W are not used often so no worries, RIM might have thought that’s fine, Q is not used anywhere other than UK and China.
b. What about the killer keys “A” and “S”. 60% of my contacts starts with an A or a S. It takes me about 3 minutes to find contacts.
c. My Solution: Change to landscape mode if you are successful you would get the keyboard known to average human beings aka non Kamal fans. [But you might have to go back to basic point 1].
d. RIM and Verizon is now offering a certification course on Black Berry Storm search.

3. When making a call on Strom I find some people just say “helo helo” and hang up on me”
a. Do not worry, no one hates you, it is a simple touch screen issue. The poor screen does not know to differentiate between your fingers and you [chubby] cheeks [the soft side area of the face between the nose and ear]. The big 10x10 mute button gets clicked by your cheek or if you are Jay Leno it should be the chin. The caller on other end does not know about this; they don’t hear anything hence they hang up blaming their cell phone provider.
b. Solution: Exercise or starve yourself to reduce the muscle density on your face or keep the phone 10cms away from your ears. Bluetooth could help. But more money for Verizon, RIM, and of course china.

People, welcome to the “Who wants to be the Guinea Pig” show brought to you by Verizon [assume Anil Kapoor is reading it]

Define Height of frustration ….
a) US Economy
b) Watching Tamil movie Villu [வில்லு]
c) Watching Villu [வில்லு] on SunTV

Answer is D -> Using the Black Berry Strom.

Kindly someone tell me what to do with this gadget. I have been with Verizon for longtime; however they wanted me to be their Guinea pig. I was very happy with my LG chocolate. Someone from Verizon calls and offers me the so called touch screen sensation. I fell for it and chained myself to contracts. I am writing this blog disgusted.In fact I did go out of my office/home to check for the Verizon guys shown on TV.

Question to Verizon, Is this product a joke? Are your customers’ mere guinea pigs with lot of their time dedicated to “unit” test a pathetic product? I am paying a hell lot of money for a lemon. I did call the support team, Verizon wants to clear all my contacts, reboot, which is about 15minutes and if it still fails, take it to a service center etc, WT* - they better come to my office and fix it. Never ever fall for these phone devices.

What next BlackBerry Havana, the same storm now comes with a cigar holder and a lighter?

எல்லாப்புகழும் ரஹ்மான்னுக்கே!

2009-02-23T09:31:00.002-05:00

“My dream” came true today. “Jai Ho” is being played on various radio and TV shows this morning. Words cannot express my happiness when ARR’s name was announced. Oscar nomination is just the ticket to the base camp and not the summit. Winning is the summit and an Oscar double is mammoth accomplishment for an artist. The Indian music has been recognized by the most prestigious outfit in the West. Thanks to A.R. Rahman.

When I landed here in US, long time ago in mid 90s, no TV or Radio shows showed any Indian music stores in US did not carry any music from India. If at all I find one, it was an old classical music CDs. I often rue that “our” music has not been given the due respect by the west. I use to think one day we would have a song from India that would top charts around the world. After all the most popular song in US is “Hey Macarena” and it is not in English. When a Spanish song could carry energy, why not an Indian song? This is also one good reason for me to somehow find time to do music. I want to contribute to this cause as little as I can. Indian music is something remarkable. I cannot describe in words the amount of passion, energy it conveys across to the listener.

A.R.Rahman’s Music is all about the energy that he ports or conveys to my ears. For example the song “Janagana ma” from Yuva“ or “Newyork nagaram” coveys lot of energy, power and emotion. The melodic notes for the songs come from the heart.
Yesterday the Oscar show had many slow movements that kept people yawning. The movement the Dancers started “Oh saya” and “Jai ho”, the stage lit up with a lot of color. The music mixed in 5.1 Dolby Digital sound took us to a new zone filled with pumping energy. Whatever I am trying to explain here “has to be felt”.

Music is not mere entertainment; listening to music changes “behavioral chemicals” in our tensed human body. A.R.Rahman ‘s music in particular has rescued me from work pressures , tension, hate and other negativities that surrounds my life. Time and Time again, it has kept me in sync with reality. A.R.Rahman deserves all the accolades, let us celebrate it. He rightly put it in a nutshell

"you have a choice in life between Love and Hate, and choose love, it takes you to places"

. Congratulations Rahman.

On a lighter note, I sprained my ankle and calf (ok ok Cow) muscles, thanks to my impromptu dance when A.R.Rahman won the Oscar.

“Jai ho”

God bless Rahman.

2009-02-22T23:14:00.001-05:00

Congratulations!...to A.R.Rahman.
Words cannot describe my happiness tonight. My idol A.R.Rahman has won 2 Oscars. A very proud moment for every Tamilian, and every Chennai natives.

God bless A.R. Rahman.

2009-02-20T11:54:00.004-05:00

I was eagerly waiting all day for my man "A.R.Rahman" live on the Tonight Show with Jay Leno.

Jay’s first guest was Dennis Miller. Mr Miller’s name says it all as he was more “Tighter” “Fuller” “higher” than Paula Abdul on American Idol. Some of Dennis Miller jokes were plain dry like California economy [btw: the golden state is now on EBAY China] in fact the former US vice president’s written speech had more humor in it. If not for cursing words and bad language, Mr. Miller would face a job crisis. I was waiting for the agony to end. Then this was followed by the “heroine” of SD Millionaire, she made her usual speech.

Finally, the ARR Show – The commercial break just before his live performance was really longer than the usual. Jay introduced him well and pronounced his name AJ Roman, and then corrected himself quickly.

Camera pans for a close up shot of the composer, there I see the little guy from my native city Chennai, India. ARR presented a crisp 5 minutes show; He did the Jai Ho Track from Slum Dog Millionaire.

I do not exhibit my sentimental emotions. However this time I have no words to describe the feeling I had when I saw ARR on the tonight show. I was so happy, I felt as though someone from my own family has achieved such a great deal of success in their carrier.

I have been following A.R. Rahman as a person, a musician right from his debut. I just adore this guy as I learn a lot from him, it not only music, his social skills, humility etc…. ARR long time ago mentioned once in an interview that the search is important than the destination. He has come a long way.

Looking back at his journey, he jumped into the Tamil movie arena from nowhere. Majority of the Tamil music fans during 90s just did not believe in his music. He was painted as "One Movie Wonder" "Sound Engineer", “Jingle kid” , “Repetitive “or “Electronics Musician” from a majority section of Tamil film music listeners. However ARR went on to prove what he is destined for - powerful and soulful music. It is his destiny to ensure that Indian musicians get recognized all around the world. He is here to do more.

Hey! He now has a new title “Academy nominated Composer A.R.Rahman”

God bless A.R. Rahman

Talk of the town - A.R. Rahman,

2009-02-19T09:55:00.005-05:00

There is an article about AR on Today’s Washington Post.
I quote from the article

Rahman hopes all the attention will encourage other young Indians to choose music as a future. We really need that space for creativity in India right now,' he said. 'Most of all, I just want that to be recognized.”

It is high time that Indian popular music gets the deserved reorganization.
and it was a great day for all Indian musicians when AR was nominated for Oscar.
God bless him for all the inspiration he generated in me.

"Academy Nominated" music composer A.R. Rahman is also scheduled to appear on Tonight Show with Jay Leno. Watch out!

“buss buss”, meaning “push push”.

2009-02-10T10:58:00.003-05:00

Last night, while channel surfing I bumped into a program called Cobra’s of East on some HD channel. It was the usual husky voice explaining the Cobra and its deadly venom etc. Had it enough, I moved on, the next channel in the surf was KTV.

A 7 foot cobra was busy carrying red Bangles and spits the Bangles to Banu Priya, it took me 10 seconds to guess. Banu Priya is carrying and the snake gave her a baby shower. Our beloved தலை’s மச்சினச்சி then Baby Shamili joins the Cobra, Mr. Cobra then gets a flower for Banu Priya, he then goes on to place it on her head. The movie was Thaipoosam [தைபூசம்].

The Cobra in this movie performs various tasks; he records conversations between bad [Nazer and gang] guys who were scheming to kill someone. The snake clicks the record buttons [remember red one and the regular play button], and after recording he searches for the eject symbol and ejects the tape from the recorder. He then takes it to his master baby Shamili. During recording Cobra seems have seen a message card and he rushes to the type writer and punches “L I O N”. Baby Shamili using her swift brilliance finds it to be No 17. Snake and the kid calls the police, wo then saves the person living at No 17. Nazar and co plans to kill the child, while Banu Priya goes into labor. I was excepting Cobra to do a C- Section; instead the king cobra says “buss buss”, meaning “push push”.

Ramanarayanan Rocks - What an amazing thought process. I still remember the huge crowd for this move in Krishanaveni theater, T.Nagar Chennai. This movie made a lot of money. Hey why not!, when 20 grams human structures [Danush, sorry man no offense] would could whack 200000 tons of human flesh in no time, a snake can type, record, sing and dance. The Cobra had good prospects to be a sound engineer, data entry operator, flower man, However last time we heard from the Cobra star he went bankrupt by making a 3D படம் [Padam]

வர்டா......

கிளம்பிட்டான்யா கிளம்பிட்டான்

2009-02-09T13:11:00.002-05:00

Been taking it easy for few months, in reality I had very less time to contribute towards anything. Lots of wonderful things happened; A.R. Rahman made it happen for Indian music. I am looking forward for his live show during the Oscars.

How would you feel if a judge during a trail in a municipal court walks jumps out and starts arguing against the pubic prosecutor? I was watching SunTV “பயங்ங்ங்ங்-கரரர-கடி” singer show. Hope you did the obnoxious movements with your hand when you read பயங்ங்ங்ங்-கரரர-கடி Singer– if not before moving on to next paragraph, please do the needful.

One of the judges suddenly got up to show off her capacity to sing கொஞ்சும் நிலவு, poor contestants were made look ordinary. The scale was lowered by 2 keys at least from the original. Show host Erode [off late he is becoming E-Blade] Mahesh, I do respect him a lot for his language diction, he too went on and on with his hyped superlatives. The show is portrayed as a singing and dancing show, honestly neither is good. When all the other TV channels are providing quality music shows with all the money and power Sun TV shows are still in an identity crisis.

The rumor is that SunTV is saving lot money by just keeping their program telecast to around 5hrs. , rest has been dedicated to trailers from their own production company. My hearty Congratulations! To படிக்காதவன் the movie, it just over took திண்டுக்கல் சாரதி trailer (155,231) which had a trailer rating of 70 per hour, now we have seen படிக்காதவன் trailor about 155,232 times till date.

All said and done, படிக்காதவன் is yet to touch “காதலில் விழுந்தேன்” trailer record. KV has a trailer rating of 120 times per minute, that is 2 times per second . In spite of a vast promotion effort, movie was Pongal [I meant Pongal special], and during commercial breaks the trailer of the same movie was shown. What a freaking Media Giant!...way to go.

~கிளம்பிட்டான் யா கிளம்பிட்டான்

A.R.Rahman, my guru, I salute you ,

2009-01-12T15:20:00.001-05:00

Every Artist from the soil adore him,
Mighty human force of billion plus behind
When his name was called,
He walked to the podium with sheer humility,
That Slow calm walk explained it all,
A.R.Rahman, my Guru, I salute you ,
“The inspiration has to be passed on” told the great Steven Spielberg
yes, Rahman!
You have been my inspiration from the day I met you In your studio,
A.R.Rahman, my Guru, I salute you ,

Monday Talk

2008-10-06T10:34:00.001-04:00

The strategy defined for first 3 quarters failed badly; late in the 4th quarter a strategy (or a tactic) is arrived. The new “stratactictegy” would be to get physical, no, I am not taking about Sunday night NFL game between Jaguars and Steelers. I meant the current Republican presidential campaign. For next few weeks American public is in for an unprecedented Political Slander.

A proverb from my native language “Tamil” should be very apt here. Let me try a crude English translation, “If society splits, performing artists would be the beneficiaries”. Society is split as Democrats and Republicans [and 3rd kind is of course Lou Dobbs and other sundries] , beneficiary would be performing artists - John Stewart, Jay Leno, David Letterman and Saturday night live shows and many more. Do not miss their shows, it is quite awesome - Laugh Out Loud.

Did you notice, more than the word Economy we have been hearing the word “Maverick”. For benefit of Non-Mavericks, I would like to present the meaning of the world “Maverick” from Webster.com
Pronunciation: mav-rik
Function: noun
Etymology: Samuel A. Maverick †1870 American pioneer who did not brand his calves
Date: 1867
1: an unbranded range animal;
2: an independent individual who does not go along with a group or party

Wait a minute, an independent individual who does not go along with a group or party, but Senator McCain is supposed to run for the Republican Party and am just wondering on what basis they brand themselves to be Mavericks? They are affiliated to a party and its principles.
Dude! May be it is based on the 1st one in the list - NO STOP; I don’t want to be crude like Fox TV.

Yow! Non-Mavericks out there, the Maverick list grew by one, Republican VP candidate Sarah Palin added herself to the lists of Mavericks. Now non- Mavericks have to find someone as talented as her to offset the balance; Quick 1 cent suggestion - Big Moose from Archie comics? mm…Could be hunted

Good day.

[heart] Breaking news

2008-10-02T10:57:00.001-04:00

Republican presidential candidate shuts down his campaign. He ditched David Letterman and took a 22 hour drive to DC from New York City. This is what happens if you don’t have an EZPASS. It is about time for Senator McCain and his contingent to apply for an EZPASS. The contingent came through the regular toll gates and reached DC in record time. On seeing the traffic vows and agony faced by common mortals on New Jersey Turn Pike and on I95 the rumor is that Senator McCain is planning to add Scotty [from Star Trek] to his cabinet. So in few years we can see kiosks, using which you can beam yourself to DC.

The contingent did the usual photos ops and soon started to count the chickens before it really hatched. But poor Senator McCain, his own party men right royally ditched him. Soon Republicans and its related media accused the house Speaker, house Microphone, and house PA sound system etc for confusing, misleading already confused congress men. Speaker of the house managed to tell the truth but her bad luck is such that, the so called truth and confession came at the wrong time.

Mr. Pointer, Mr. Ring, Mr. Middle and Little pinky were called upon for duty to do the needful, since Mr. Thumb was way down was declared out of service, rest did their job to satisfaction. The Finger pointing continued, CNN was in the verge of a Guinness record for analyzing a record number of finger pointing stories.

During this mess, Congress managed to take a day off for the Jewish New year, the whole world was working their butts out to save their finances, 401k and what not, but our efficient Congress men wanted to celebrate the New Year.

Finally the [heart] breaking news is the 700 Billion is all set to be spent. Donkeys and Elephants would celebrate the success for next few days, would the 700 Billion offset the economy calamities? Time will tell until then, We the common folks have no other option other than to wait and watch.

Golu - the Navrathri festival

2008-10-01T09:01:00.001-04:00

Over the weekend my wife Jayashree and my daughter Sriya were very busy setting up the Golu. Festivals like Golu are life saver mints in our super busy nut cracking work schedule. Golu is all about meeting friends and family, in my case some of my friends wished me happy New Year [for 2008]. We have hardly met this year.

Here are some pictures from our Golu,

Ps: a cricket ground is a standard fixture in our Golu, it is a fixed match I guesss :), and I have provided an aerial view and note the little details, eg: Hoarding etc. :)

Good day!.

Monday Talk

2008-09-29T10:44:00.002-04:00

Krish Srikkanth is the new chief of selectors for BCCI. Imo, Srikkanth would be the right person for the job why? Srikkanth is known for his daring comments and he would not hesitate to trash incompetency on its face. He has done it quite well when he was a commentator and a TV anchor. Broadcasters would be on their edge whenever Chikka took the Mic. Sometimes he does goes overboard on his blunt comments. Last time Srikkanth stood up to clean the BCCI system he lost his job as captain in spite of drawing the series against/in Pakistan. We need to wait and see how he deals the wretched BCCI power struggle. Let us hope for best; best wishes to Srikkanth! He has given is first speech – stating that it is all about mental strength. It is matter of time for BCCI to send a subpoena to Chikka for his comments. Clock starts now. I guess from now on, the Selectors are being paid to do their job, hence they are accountable.

Have you heard of "Guilt-Auroraborealis", a brown circle that appears behind your head when you don’t exercise “GuiltAuroraborealis” will often talk to you and remind about health issues and problems, this happens even when you drink plain water [H2O]. It warns you about your health condition whenever you are busy gobbling Gobi Manchurian at parties. It warns about your health during office pizza parties. There is way out to get rid of this “GuiltAuroraborealis” Regular exercise! Excuse me! What? Exercise – “Srikanth” it is really you? - Yes, yet another proof that Kalki avatar is round the corner. I have been working out on a tight exercise regime. Getting regular exercise into our daily schedule is one heck of a commitment, trust me it is not easy. However there are ways you can make this work for you, once you get into a regular schedule for about a month, your body will drive you and force you to workout.

Here is what I did to get my exercise into a regular schedule. Select a time, in my case - as soon as get home from work. My Elliptical has a slot for my my NoteBook PC [I am pc :)] , idea is to read while exercise. I took this to the next level, thanks to wireless broadband - I choose my favorite TV shows, mostly from the comedy channel or Vijay TV, start watching it while exercising, time will fly. You would have worked out more than 30 minutes before you realize. 30 minutes should do for most; 45-60 minutes would be perfect. So think about it, check with your family doc before getting to a regime.

Finally, the package is here, the package is here, I’ve been waiting for it for about a week now. I got the package from Tiger Direct, a new Bluetooth head phones. My Notebook is now connected via Bluetooth to this head phone. No daggling wires any more!..

Good Day!

MyTalk Radio TGIF

2008-09-26T13:22:00.002-04:00

I am a great cook, a wonderful speaker and a super sportsperson, why? I have neighbors who are very good at these activities. Do your neighbors influence your knowledge on a subject?
Yes according to Sarah Palin on CBS., more over I learnt Russian Supreme leader Putin can fly planes. Here is a cost cutting capital idea, Foreign Service Institute should send Foreign Service Officer Trainees to various border towns of US, and executives of the towns can train them. People living in the borders automatically get trained in International relationships. Duh!.

The US presidential race is total fun to watch on various cable channels. CNN which is now in HD [Higly dramatic] is having a ball; one quick request, please send the makeup personals for training once again. High definition TV exposes about 5 to 10 layers of makeup material on most guest and anchors. Some of them bear a resemblance to Kamal characters in Dasaavatharam. Just a note on Dasaavatharam , few months ago I went to watch Dasaavatharam in our local theater and I found more number of Kamal’s on the screen than the audience count.

Lately for about a year I have been using Apple Mac and IPhone,I got them to learn the architecture, and to test the power of the OS. I have been developing IPHONE components etc, Apple opened up 3rd parties to develop application for IPHONE and made a huge gaga over it, however if a 3rd party developer is smart enough to develop products that would restrict the usage of their native products like ITunes etc, Apple issues a patch and closes down the development environment. Apple is so greedy that they do not permit iPhone users to upload their own ringtones [In my case “my own compositions”]. They want to make a buck on each ring tone. I agree copyrights of ring tone etc, however if the ring tone is free or self composed, I should have the freedom to choose what I want, all other phone companies permit it. Few months ago some brilliant developer found a hack/method to upload their own ring tones onto the IPhone, - puff - it just took matter of days for APPLE to the send a patch that prevented users from loading their own ring tones.

The Latest Cheap Apple tactics -- Read more

From a comment post in that site : Microsoft should NOT be allowing installation of programs such as "Mozilla Firefox" or "Google Chrome", just because they duplicate features of "Internet Explorer”,

oh! No, if Microsoft does the same it is monopoly.

I guess God had a very good reason to prevent humans from not going anywhere near the Apple

[The above Statement is Copy Righted :)]

MyTalk Radio Thursday

2008-09-25T10:34:00.003-04:00

I never miss the “NeeyA NAna” Talk show conducted by Gopi on Vijay TV. Gopi is an amazingly talented TV host and I hope I get to meet him one day. In the latest edition, the discussion was about government helping sport personalities, after the discussion in the general I felt more support is needed for other sports; let me throw in an idea, how about forcing BCCI to share a portion of money just to help other sports in India? They are making enough to support the Northern Hemisphere. It is about time for BCCI to adopt other sports and improve them.

Australian Cricket team now in India, the series is being hyped and Pointing wants to improve his batting average in India. Symonds behavior reached an extent even his country men were unable to tolerate and digest his attitude, good that he was sacked. However Har “bad boy” Bajan Singh is now looking for some other Australian player to test his Zoological skills. I think Cricket Australia’s stocks are not doing well, Greg “roll the ball my brother” Chappell will be present in the Aussie dressing room. He was last seen on EBAY Australia and now he gets to watch his countrymen change cloths -once again. He is supposed to do a comparative study on Indian and Aussie dressing habits and will be doing a presentation to the ICC. [International clothing committee] The game will be on Zee Sports and it is going to cost me money, will the FEDs bails me out? Why not?

The US Economy is in real doldrums, just a week ago the Republican Presidential candidate Senator John McCain assured that American economy is deeply rooted and double strong as Star Bucks Venti Americano, but yesterday the deep root (beer?) took a boot and he has suspended his campaign to save the economy. (Fire in the mountain [Capitol Hill] run run run run) Wall Street CEOs have GDPs more than some countries today, now a package to save and protect them from their past mistakes.

My question is simple common sense - How can an economy that was deep rooted a week ago suddenly change course towards financial dooms day scenario? Anyone with "statutory" common sense would understand that such crisis cannot happen overnight, the truth is it’s been brewing for a long time,
Government has been busy buying large quantities of diapers and other products to cover or patch the leak,

finally this week they discovered No diaper can prevent diarrhea or using my native analogy, a XXL sized pumpkin cannot be hidden inside a Chipotle’s Burrito bowl I hope the politician’s gets it right before they order more food for thought. Medically Diarrhea [Thanks Sanjay Gupta on CNN] is not fatal anymore, one good reason why we are still eating in Wendy’s or TACO Bell, but when it comes to financial industry, this condition would lead to total dehydration in the economy and I guess ordinary mortals has no other choice to wait and see if the so called package would hydrate the economy. - Trusts me -- Prayer helps.

Finally,
I am selling more CDs than many Wall Street Banks :)

My Talk Radio - Friday

2008-09-12T10:24:00.001-04:00

A powerful Hurricane is bound for the Texas coast, hope people are moved to safety. IKE’s winds could be felt as far as Maryland; IKE is expected to make a land fall in our neighborhood gas stations in about 48-60 hours. An expert at CNN situation room has confirmed the news.

Houston, Houston we have a Situation here, - Producers of CNN situation room program are getting obsessed day by day with giant TV screens displays and touch screens and what not! , it is just matter of time they convert the floor to a TV screen, soon the anchor will walk from one city another city when the news context changes, and jump and swirl to produce gusty winds on the screen. CNN Situation Room–where there are more TV displays than Best Buy or Circuit city combined. Watching this on High Definition is a Complete Colorful Nightmare [CNN] 

We had a unique recording over the weekend in my studio; we had about 20-25 kids recording voices over for Ramayan play. Kids enjoyed the studio environment and were total fun to with work with. The idea is to produce an audio CD with voiceovers, special effects, music etc, kids would then act live on stage with CD being played in the background.

Cricket! Ganguly was not considered for the selection; Rahul Dravid still has his place intact. Sachin should be back from injury. The last time Sachin played to his potential was against Australia which India won.

Breaking news from CNN situation room South East Asia Edition - Lord Maha Vishnu‘s cabinet meeting is going on in an undisclosed place near Milky way. The discussion is about a demon that is rising in power, Common human beings find it very difficult to cope up with and control the demon and its egoistic slipshod approach over the years. BCCI watch it, your end is nearing.

My Talk Radio

2008-09-11T10:48:00.001-04:00

I got up this morning expecting the world to end, it did not hence I felt I should resume my blog, over the weekend I met few of my good "old" friends and they gave me a pep talk and boosted my ego. Hence I guess I have to try and find time to write blogs.

A bunch of scientists joined together and spent about £5bn for an experiment to re-create the big bang Theory, technically the World is supposed to have ended today. Damn nothing happened, world is still spinning and I have go to work and face my boss again. 5 Billion pounds down the drains to prove something that no one really cares about. Do you know there is a company that is been proving the Big Bang theory for lesser cost (1.8 billion) - TACO bell.

David Letterman show, Letterman is a liberal; liberals are generally concerned about Global warming etc. David Letterman once mentioned that “We are dead meat,” and blamed the administrators for not dealing the global warming issues. Have you noted this, 9 out 10 guests invited to the Letter man show complain about the room temperature (air-condition) in the studio. It is simply cold and well below polar bear standards. I was just wondering how much of global warming gases those air conditioners would emit, his studio could be one of the main reason for the arctic meltdown. I guess Mr. David Letterman has not heard the saying “practice before preaching”.

Football season started last week with minimal bang and nothing special happened other than resurrected Brett Favre is now playing for NJ nets and super star Tom brandy was injured. Patriots pain continues, they lost their most important game of the season last year, however I would put the blame on Costco, who closed early on the day. Hope they have Sams Club membership this year; Sams have better DV tapes and never closes its doors for its customers. I know Patriots fan are going to hate me for this statement.

It is matter of time - the front end of computer application would simply be a web browser hosted in a device hence Google joined the browser war. I did use Chrome, did not find anything amusing.

CS: thanks for calling bla bla bla

User: this is regarding the web based online bill payment application, my left column over laps with the right column and middle column moved deep down right, It was working well yesterday.

CS: okay no problem thanks for patience, what browser you are using?

User: I just installed Chrome.

CS: blink!.

Manager: damn! Support cost just went up again, my web developers now have one more Div tag to worry about,

Adios.

I am Back.

2008-03-18T17:20:00.001-04:00

People, I am resuming my blog, reason - my written English degraded to a new low level, and before it goes close to Indian Hockey I thought I should do something about it. Man! What is happening there? “Chak De India” failed to qualify for Beijing Olympics. Indian cricketers made us all proud after losing early stages of world cup, let us hope Indian hockey revives itself soon.

Sun TV after detaching itself from the Kazagams took another spiritual dive. Free and $25.00 paying Sun TV viewers are set for the epic Ramayana. I happened to watch the first episode. Dasaratha’s introduction, he exposes his feelings for not having a son. He then goes on to perform the Yaga and his queens are all set to deliver babies. To my surprise Ramanavami was celebrated in Episode one. Honestly I expected a month of Prenatal Doctor visits and a week or two of Lamaze’s classes etc. Director disappointed me.

Indian Cricket team is set to tee off with South Africa. Team model's like Yuvarj Singh will score a lot of runs on Flat tracks. Then this is followed by IPL, lavish Chennai team has good players. My friend owns couple of Fruit stalls around Wallaja road area, he was very unhappy about IPL, the news that BCCI using its money clout has forcefully closed all the Fruit stalls near MAC for obvious reasons.

Good Day.

2008-02-28T19:25:00.001-05:00

The word fountain pen made sense when he wrote, be it fiction or non-fiction, film screen play, film dialogue, technical, non technical, religion or atheism, music - anything and everything freely flowed through his pen. If not for him, Tamil language would have ended for me as paper one and paper two.

Sujatha is no more. The Tamil literary world has lost one of its best sons.

What Next?

2008-01-10T11:59:00.001-05:00

The India/ Australia cricket party is still in jeopardy. Ponting does not want to back down while ICC also stated that it will not back down. I like to hear Mr. Speed’s opinion on the one sided hasty tribunal that happened under the leadership of Mike Procter after the Sydney test. BCCI says they will pull out the triangular one. I am just worried about the money I paid to watch cricket.

Just to recollect the past this is not the first time that Mike Procter found himself into a mess. He was the match referee during the Pakistan ball tampering saga, where he failed to fulfill his responsibility and permitted Umpire Hair on his collision course. Remember ICC sacked Mr. Hair which establishes the fact Proctor did not do his job correctly. Do you know that Mike Procter is a Wrong Legged bowler? That seems to be the case in his “match refereeing” portfolio.

As a cricket fan I am just wondering whom to believe here, respected players Sachin Tendulkar and Anil Kumble have categorically stated that Harbajan has not uttered such words, and Ponting and his men sewing the story other way. History says Australian cricket team has used much stronger language during cricket games and Steve Waugh made it official by calling it “mental disintegration”. All said and done the tour is on, and Perth test will be a historical one, much will spoken about this test than the Sydney saga.

More than the “wrongly” accused Harbajan Singh it is the press, the commentators and others have uttered term “Monkey” million plus times now.

What next should I sue the Chinese astrologer who told me that I was born in the year of monkey?

ICC Guarantee to cricket fans

2008-01-09T10:26:00.000-05:00

It is disheartening to note that English press and other Cricket affiliations slamming ICC for sacking Steve Buckner. I am wondering how in the world they ignored Steve Buckner’s atrocities over a long period of time and more over 90% of his umpiring carnage were directed at the Sub Continent cricketers. I guess British media suffers an acute short term memory loss.

I can spend rest of the article quoting numerous occasions where Mr. Buckner umpiring standards were below par, Sachin Tendulkar and Indians being his top victims. With such records against the Indians, forgetting the past, Mr. Buckner was given another opportunity to stand in the prestigious Gavaskar Border trophy. Mr. Buckner instead of using the occasion to redeem his so called umpiring experience and pride, continued to be a pathetic exhibit, and ruined the great game of TEST cricket in Sydney for the player and fans.

What guarantee does ICC offer for a cricket fan ensuring a fair game?

I am a cricket fan sitting in a country where the term “Cricket” is more popular for an insect than a sport. I am a patron of this game right from 1970s. Today, I am paying a lot of money and more over sacrificing my sleep and health to watch a great game of cricket. But what do I get in return? Once again! What is the guarantee that I have from ICC or BCCI or CA for a fair game? Why time and time again fans have to cope up with umpiring/official incompetence?

Did British media or any other media thought about this for a second?

I think British media should remember that it was not 1 or 2 decisions; it was 9 poor decisions [this distinction was shared by Mr. Benson [UK] who also deserves a sack] that went against the Indians. I guess what would Nasser Hussein’s reaction would be if his team had got 9 bad decisions against the Australians, I am sure he would literally remove his pants and piss on the ground.

I consider just one or two bad calls would be potent enough to turn the match and the entire series upside down when playing against Australia and here we have something close to a Dirty Dozen. What else you want to the Indian players to do? Supply a box of Diapers to the cry baby “Finger Pointing” oops Ponting? Or Sing a lullaby to Mr. Buckner so that he can continue his nap while working?

A volcano had been brewing for a long time among every cricket loving Indian soul against Buckner reason being “Steve Buckner has raised his middle finger on very many occasions against India” And today Mr. Steve Buckner would take the blame for its eruption. He deserves to be chucked out and sent home without any pension. I would also put an enquiry on him and ensure that he was not paid for this value added services.

And remember Yes Indians generate 70% of the money needed for ICC officials to travel in first class, and yes BCCI will use the clout, do you think the Australian board or the English board would not like to have such powers? I think British media should cut the crap on giving an innocent face to Buckner, instead spend your energy by asking ICC – What guarantee does ICC offer to the cricket fans for a fair game? If your bandwidth has more time in hand, use it to repair your pathetic cricket team and your “jack of all arts but winner of none” Soccer team.

Ponting leads bunch of whiner and liars;

2008-01-07T10:49:00.000-05:00

If Cricket Australia cares of its reputation for the game, I think Ponting should be sacked. It was the ugliest, potentially violent or an ill-mannered performance by an Australian side. Indians should say enough is enough and should fly back home, may be enjoy a vacation in Bali.

This is not the first time Australians are doing things to a visiting team. They are notorious in every home series, in the past every 50-50 chances somehow seems to favor the Australians. This time, in order to equal the world record Ponting and his men sunk the game to a new disgusting level possible. Check the clips, picture
speaks more than words.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=reNqR0YemZg&feature=related

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=z125uLHDlUU

Harbajan’s Bunny was furious and was fuming at the reporters when the reporters questioned his integrity. Picture perfect replays are available to prove that Ponting had grounded the ball and appealed for a catch. Ponting after all edged a ball to Dhoni and stood there for umpire’s decision; such a person claims that he integrity? Duh! Ricky Pointing is a "dishonest" captain.

Harbajan vs. Symonds: Harbajan sacked based on the testimonial by 2 honest Australians. The honest blokes are Michel Clarke and Hayden. Michel Clarke stood there waiting for the umpire’s decision when he edged the ball and he was caught red handed. I have never seen a cricketer waiting for an umpiring decision when he had been caught in slips. The best act of dishonesty came when Clarke claimed that he took a catch when he had grounded the ball. And remember Clarke is the vice captain prospect for the team.

I still remember the day Hayden walked up to Dravid and uttered some nasty words. More over Sachin Tendulkar testimony was never taken into consideration, if at all there was someone with integrity present on the field when the incident happened, it was Sachin Tendulkar. Umpires did not hear, no replay clips, Sachin did not hear, I feel Symonds accusation is very dubious.

Another joke, McGrath joins the party has supported Ponting actions and has said Indians are over reacting. He is scheduled to fly to India to play for IPL, and Indians would be paying him a lot for getting him here. If BCCI has any shame left in them they should not permit any Australians to play in IPL, who needs them?

The Double tongue Slater: Slater appears on the Indian Commentators panel with an innocent face but takes special effort to trash Indians on the Channel 9 commentary. There was huge verbal dual between Tony Grieg and Slater. World knows how Slater behaved in India. For which he conviently attributed his personal issues in life. WTF?

For Once BCCI seems to stand behind its players.

But, if BCCI decides to get on with the series, it should go on with following conditions.
1. Nullify the Sydney test
2. Umpires should be changed for Perth
3. Withdraw allegation against Harbajan, Symonds should apologize.

Australian media speculate a huge sum of money would be demanded from BCCI cancels tour, - who cares, 1st don’t pay them 2nd –BCCI can schedule India Pakistan Sri Lanka Tournament, hey! we will have enough to pay anyone.

I am sick of Ponting and his men who have also tainted their own past achievements in cricket. A bunch of whiner and liars;

38th and on.....

2008-01-04T11:17:00.000-05:00

I have been watching Sachin Tendulkar play for long long time now, in various cities, stadiums and coutries, and after he reached the eluding triple figure mark yesterday, I would say the reception he got from the Sydney fans would be the best till date. Even Mumbai would have not adored and applauded their home town son the way Sydney fans did. Why not, Sachin can pretty much score a triple figure when he plays at SCG again, he averages 300+ at ~~Sydney~~ Sachin cricket ground. Almost the entire stadium gave an standing ovation, - boys, girls, dads, moms everyone watching the game felt happy to watch Tendulkar score his 38th.

Ganguly’s confidence is very high hence his foot work was near perfect. He was playing some of his best shots and I expected him to score a 100 much before Tendulkar. He fell for casual shot, nevertheless it was a great innings from the Bengal southpaw.

Another aspect of Indian innings was that Tendul pushed the tail-enders to face, which gave them the confidence to score runs. Sachin seems to have understood the SCG pitch perfectly and went on to provide a lot of input to the batsmen at the other end. He never tried to protect them, he just let them play. Harbajan plundered Aussie attack and while Ishanth felt comfortable and went on to make 23 until Bret Lee stepped in to stop the show. I guess batting potential finally clicked yesterday, the so called Top 4 – Sachin, VVS, Gangully,Dravid scored more than 50.

The over rate was quite pathetic by Ricky Ponting. I remember Ganguly being accused by the whole of Aussie press for slow over rate. There was a minor verbal tussle between Symonds and Harbajan. Press speculates racial abuses etc [Symonds is known for playing the race cards]. I really don’t think Harbajan would use racial slurs etc. My guess is that he would have told "we made the score with 11 players playing once" or something similar, Hayden was also seen making comments at Harbajan. Ricky and his men get frantic when their plan fails to work. It was evident yesterday.

Yuvraj had no clue while Dhoni’s poor technique on bouncing track was exposed however both these young guns are Indian’s future; hence I think we should not write them off right away. Both have the potential to steal the show from Tendul and VVS by playing a great knock and win the game for India.

I think if India gets Australia for less than 250 tomorrow, India will win this game. Let me keep my fingers crossed.

Ps: Indians need to thank Buckner for no ruining Tendul’s party.

A long way to go....

2008-01-03T12:36:00.000-05:00

Indian batting has good signs for a comeback, so does Australia. Remarkable stroke play by VVS, his timing was “Nagesh” perfect, it was pleasure to watch him play but on the other end Rahul “Fevicol” Dravid tested everyone’s patience. Jaffer had no clue about what struck him – Bret Lee pulled the plug. To be fair to Jaffer, Brett Lee was over stepping and umpire seems to have missed it, Duh!

During the Morning session, Symonds added one more inning to this account, he was stumped by Dhoni and Steve Bucky was reluctant to refer it to the 3rd umpire. Feed from channel 9 in USA does not have any commercial breaks during over changes and I guess we get a live feed directly from the SCG. The microphones are generally on during such breaks, and I heard Ian Chappell screaming over the decision. Tony Greg and Ian chapel were sympathizing for the Indians. When the last wicket fell Symonds was 4 for 164, a record here - first player to play the next Test even before it commenced.

The Authentically Annoying Dravid - I agree it is Test cricket and bound to be slow, but Dravid took it to a new level - “Testing Cricket”, he was constantly booed by the Indian contingent and applauded by Australian counterparts. . He was out on a no ball making it the most unlucky test match for India. Ponting adopted a new strategy when Dravid was “blocking”. He sent most of players to rest, just 5 were fielding and if at all the ball went past the square leg Steve Bucky, (oldest player to debut for Australia) would not hesitate to show his fielding abilities. I was wondering if Australian bowlers really needed the ball. Rumor is that, in order to keep the game going and save the new ball, Channel 9 had graphically placed the ball on the screen during post production. Australia put India back on Track by claiming Dravid’s wicket.

Tendul and Dada are on, they looked comfortable, but a long way to go, Nevertheless even if Aussies win the game it will be a tainted one.

Umpire Steve Buckner Stinks

2008-01-02T14:03:00.000-05:00

Australia might be a great team or the best professional outfit and what not! , I really don’t care. Every game has an element of sportsmanship and the so called best team in the world is expected to honor the spirit of the game and set an example. Time and Time again Australian Cricket team fails to do so. This is not the first time for Australians to get umpiring favors during home series. This has happened in the past and will continue to happen in the future. Even the technology is being twisted. Third umpire was also part this conspiracy. Australia wants to set a record for consecutive wins and what not.

Adding insult to the injury – was the elite commentator panel on channel 9. I am sick and tired of the Australian commentators carrying on about the “great come back”. One Mr. Ian “Gajini” Healy was so pathetic to push it aside and was gloating about Australian dominance. The dude completely forgot that Ponting and Symonds decision changed the game completely to their benefit. Any team would find it impossible to get their top order batsmen out twice. The commentary team failed to provide the balance and seem to suffer from partial amnesia. Symonds shamelessly raised his bat to acknowledge his century, he was 2 for 100. I guess we cannot say anything more about him as he will paint this popular racial color on any such comments.

Australian captain Ponting made it a point to talk to the press about Murali Karthik failing to walk; and squarely blamed him for the draw. He made a big noise and chipped in a bucket load of Aussie bull to Murali Karthik. But yesterday after edging the ball to the wicketkeeper, Mr “Perfect” Ponting stood there firm. He went on to make 50 runs, though it was the 1st inning, my man Rickey played his second innings along. Finally, when Umpire ruled him out LBW, in spite of an inside edge, Ricky walked out with a long face for the decision, LOL.

Like players being fined for dissent, it is time to penalize umpires for poor decision. If every pair of eyes and ears on the ground including the batsmen could make an unanimous decision - How “Bucky” could have missed it? Steve Buckner knew that it was out and just for the heck of it to be popular he did not give the decision.Buckner is notorious for such poor decisions. Indians have been the victims for his horrendous umpiring. I really do not know how Indian cricket board in first place accepted Steve Buckner to be included in the umpire Panel. It is not the first time Steve Buckner screws India. Umpire Steve Buckner Stinks and he should be punished.

Mostly India will lose this game, thanks to 11+3 Umpires – aka Australian squad.

and mostly the batting would fail....

2007-12-31T10:43:00.000-05:00

I don’t have hope for India, the bowling is weak, and getting 20 Australian wickets would be “horse horn” and mostly the batting would fail.

Above is from my blog that wrote a week or so ago, and did not have time to publish it. I wish I had.

Like every other Australian tour, Indian team disappoints its fans. Team think tank suffers from short term memory loss. The fate is so cruel; Dinesh Karthik with half a dozen half centuries in 2007 and few of them matching saving innings is now made to carry water. He failed during the home serious played a “cow dung” surface and was replaced by a star player who scored a lot runs on the same surface. I agree Karthik fell cheaply on 4 occasions during Pakistan series but when the selectors picked a player based on the dreaded YNF [You never know factor] I think Karthik and Jaffer ‘s opening pair should be given some more time for revival. At the end of the day, pay load was transferred to Dravid who did nothing other than to bring India down. Dravid has to cut his “serving his team” crap and demand his favorite batting position. He cannot and should not open. It only happens in India cricket team, the team batting line up tinkered to accommodate Yuvraj Singh, his recent form in other “forms” made people forget his previous test cricketing appearances. His attitude on the field is always questionable and it was evident during the first Test. Other than Ganguly, VVS and of course Tendulkar no batsmen had clue or the caliber to negotiate the accurate Aussie attack. Tendulkar made it look so easy but failed to carry the innings. But it is 2007, moving on to 2008, Team India is still dependent on the so called seniors and story of young blood & first blood is yet a local phenomenon.

I was listening to Tamil songs on various FM stations [AHHA FM, Oli fm etc], I happened to bump into song, later found it was from a movie called “kAdalil vizunthen” Music by Vijay Anthony. I have seen him on Sun TV a lot on music shows and honestly, Vijay Anthony sounded a promising musician. But he disappoints and bluntly “copies” Rihana's Unfaithful – "bar by bar" in a song titled “Unakkena nAn”. [From kAdalil vizunthen]. The reason I remember Rihana’s song is for its un-tuned Tablas, the beat pattern would sound odd from the main melody. Every aspect of this track has been copied including the sound model, instrumentation and the melody. I did not check the lyrics. Hope it is original.

I hope Vijay Anthony has given proper credits to the original song writer and composer; If not "You too Vijay?"

WISH YOU A VERY HAPPY NEW YEAR!...

The fun starts at Kotla

2007-11-21T10:43:00.000-05:00

Mr. “Roll the ball my brother” is on news again, beloved EX- Indian cricket team coach, who is notorious for showing middle and other fingers to spectators says that he knew it well before hand that India will lose in the early stages of the world cup. Duh! I wish he had told this useful message before the incident. Here is a guy who managed to gobble costly golf games and other richness provided by BCCI and went on to enjoy them all to its maximum but failed in his job, as soon as the media questioned him for his impotent coaching abilities and teams performance, he quits his job and now goes on trashing about his former employer, but it did not stop there, He also blamed Indian spectators as “Racial” and it seems he was victim of it, what a load of crap? An Australian branding an Indian - Racial;

Here is one more incident about Australian “double tongue”, I hope everyone remembers Ricky Pointing’s free advice to Murli Karthik during the final one day game which India won. Murli Karthik was a beneficiary of a bad decision by the umpire, he was ruled "not out" during a crucial juncture of the game that did help to win the game. Later during press conference MK was magnanimous to confess that he was out. Ponting at once pounced on it and threw in a truck load of advice about sportsmanship and other crap, wished that Murli had walked out. In the recently concluded one sided test match against SL, Sangakkara was denied his third double-century when he tried to hook Stuart Clark and the ball flew off his shoulder to Ricky Ponting at slip. Rudi Koertzen agreed with the Australians that there was some bat involved but Sangakkara, and the replays knew that was not the case. Ricky Ponting could have recalled him. It is already a dead one sided match, what happened to the so called “sportsmanship” crap that he expected from Murli Karthik? I suppose the advices are only to others. I hope Cricket Australia gifts Ponting a mirror for Xmas.

Sri Lankans were flattened by Australian bull dozers, by this I wish Mahila’s yaps are now under control. At times his lectures too much and shows nothing in action. Any Trash Talking has to be supported by good performance, if not - Silence is golden. This applies to Srisanth too. He managed to get 3 wickets in the final one day, but his initial spell was pathetic. He is injured and will be sitting out for the test.

India is all set to take on Pakistan, 1st TEST - The fun starts at Kotla in about 48hours.

Conundrums:
1. Yuvraj Singh, top scored with 279 runs, (+3 wickets), a class act, but has NO room in the test side.
2. Harbajan Singh, concluded one day series - (O:40 R:178 W:4 Best:2/65 Avg:44.50 ER: 4.45) , The above performance looks mediocre when compared to his previous appearance for India. West Indies series [2005-2006] where he played 2 tests – his stats - 0:71.3, R: 264 W: 11; 5/13 Avg: 24.00 - 5 WICKETS twice. But he was promptly dropped for [next] series against England

A point to note here:During the same West Indies test series, Anil Kumble played all the four test matches and was asked to bowl (around) three times than Harbajan [thanks to the captain Dravid]. Kumble managed to pick twice the number of wickets than Harbajan giving a gowdown full of runs.

Indian team selection process - a Conundrum

and Finally,
"Tendulkar";
(I did not quote his name even once today, just to keep up to my tradition I made sure I quoted him at least once)

Have a great thanks giving weekend.

ps: last week suntv aired Star, just thought you would be interested to read my
Old Review

I smelling “fish" do you?

2007-11-07T11:42:00.000-05:00

Sachin’s decision not to accept captaincy makes me think that he is preparing us for the inevitable –Indian team after Tendulkar. I feel his decision is clearly in this direction. And we can expect him to call it is day very soon.

On pondering more [what else to do?], I smell “fish”; there is something wrong with selection committee and its chairman Mr. Dilip “Vengsarkar. 1st an Indian cricketing icon takes a tough decision, a decision that would jeopardize his entire carrier , Dravid steps down from captaincy. Now, another Indian icon says “no thanks” when the same portfolio was offered to him.

CNN-IBN adds that Sachin Tendulkar has mentioned "that the selection policies are not just, and the seniors have not been treated properly", this clearly shows Tendul is not happy how Dravid was treated. Here is my conspiracy theory: when we go by numbers it is absolutely impossible for the selection committee to drop Tendulkar. He is the top run getter in all recent series. The only method they could get him his load him with captaincy burden and then there would be better chance for Tendul to fail against Australia, finally send him home unceremoniously. , just my theory don’t go too much into it.

Here is my deal, clean the Indian cricket selection process. First, to become a selector one should have good qualifications and good cricketing history . VB Chandrasekar from Tamil Nadu calls himself an ex-selector. His performance which is mediocre clearly questions his qualifications for being a selector. People who have made considerable contributions to Indian cricket prefer to stay away from this selection politics. Eg. Syed Kirmani or Srikkanth etc.

In the corporate world when a company produces something, the “buyer” or the purchase manager should be well qualified and most of all should not be corrupt or have any kind of favoritism. He or she should be well qualified to pick raw material so that the final product is of some quality. More than the selection process being transparent, I wish BCCI is more transparent when picking selectors.

On selection process of players, a new player selection should have published documents supporting the selection. Currently the selectors have eyewash called as press meet in which they evade questions if grinded. I am still baffled by Virendar Sehwag selection. There is no evidence anywhere to prove that he is playing well, other a picture taken when he was talking to the selection committee chairmen and the board president. How about this idea? We don’t mind a foreign coach then, we don’t mind to have foreign Physiotherapist, now why not a foreign selection committee?

As if this was not enough, self proclaimed experts like Sanjay "who changes colors quicker than a chameleon" Manjerakar picks Anil Kumble to carry the mantle. Yep, just 2 weeks ago he wanted youngsters to be given more responsibility in order to improve Indian cricket, but today he wants a veteran who is all set to with draw money from PF or 401K plans. The plight of Indian cricket is quite pathetic. Adding to the confusion they have something called “the rotation policy. What is this rotation policy? Ans: bunch of stupid decisions that keeps changing until the head rotates.

A Week ago world was blaming seniors for not giving room for the juniors, but when seniors make fair decisions in this direction - they are questioned for it. WTF

Weekend

2007-10-29T16:34:00.000-04:00

Weekend, I attended the Open Rasika music concert. Show was hosted by Sun TV Fame Vijay Sarathy.

I do have my inhibitions when it comes to celebrities; however it just took a second or so for my preconceived opinions to fall apart. The moment I started to talk with Vijay Sarathy, I realized that I was wrong, I thought about my blog where I have spoofed about him. He was down to earth and spoke to me like good old friend. In simple words, he was just like you and me partying. It was a pleasure meeting Mr.Vijay Sarathy S/O Late Actor Capt. Sasi Kumar. When I went to say hi to him he greeted me by name and surprised me. He talked about my PADAL album and told me that Shankar Nagarajan [H1Bees Inc and OPEN ] had given the CD to him the day before. He had no problems in spotting my milk dripping face[seri seri]. He also congratulated me on the album.

Open organization - when it comes to organization skills Open member are the best. 800+ tickets were sold out in a matter of a week. And besides they were able to raise lot of money for their charity. Open volunteers made sure artists, musicians and [VIP Visitors like me [alambal alambal ] got everything we wanted [dinner, Snacks etc]. We had lot of fun Back stage.

The light music show started on time and was a general mixture of new and songs from 80s, few in the collection were dusty as they were picked from the attic. My vote to the best song goes to "Athangara marame", tight and picture perfect, second place goes to the tough cookie “Minsara kanna” from Padaiappa. Awesome!

Onto next, you might want to turn on the A/c or a fan before you read the rest of the topic - Cricket.

I really do not know what Mr. Vengsarkar and his cronies are up to? Vengsarkar & co, notorious for dropping pearls of wisdom on poor form & performance yadayada selects Virendar Sehwag while a consistent player like Badrinath is dropped. Just few years ago, Ganguly was unceremoniously yanked from the team, Dravid took over the mess created by the selectors and now Dravid gets the same treatment. As if this was not enough, Kiran “f..everyone thrice or ” More , categorically stated that Ganguly had no chance for a comeback etc, but Ganguly fought his way through, Today the same “More” guy is complaining against Vengsarkar. All said and done, the bunch of losers have unceremoniously dropped another Icon of Indian cricket and shame on you Mr. More, you started this nonsense.

When you open the windows operating system the top left corner will always have an Icon called “My Computer”, if you are a windows user you would know the importance of this icon. Dravid is more or less like the “My Computer” icon for the Indian team. It comes to rescue during system crisis. Dilip “the self proclaimed Cricket” Sarkar of India has commented that Dravid is an one Dimensional [CNN-IBN] and to justify his claim he picks one Mr. Virendar Sehwag, whose scores when lined up resembles 1-800-376-763 [1800-DropMe]. I guess Viru has the blessing of some top BCCI officials, there is no chance for him to qualify on merit.

In general the senior cricketers issue is getting really nasty. Imo, until we get proper numbers against them I would not consider Sachin, Ganguly and Dravid as liabilities. Calling a Person with 10k+ runs as one dimensional etc cannot be tolerated. I see a clear cut personal vendetta. I am sure Dravid has few dirty reasons for stepping down from captaincy and it is high time for him let it out.

Basically players regardless of seniors or not have no support among themselves and they don’t dare to rub the board on the wrong side. K. Srikanth did it and he was promptly fired. This fear among cricketers helps the board. BCCI uses restrictions and Gag orders on players to cover their mess. The Cricket boards in India are corrupted to the core. There is a lot of push and pull; here is a proof that system is corrupted. I did not make this up, I quote from Cricinfo.org. Arjun Yadav first came across as a promising batsman coming through the age groups, but eight years since his first-class debut, the promise is yet to transform. Strong performances in age-group cricket had earned him a place in the Indian Under-19 team for the World Cup in 1999-2000, but he did not play a single match in India's victory there. Since then he has been a fairly regular fixture in the Hyderabad team, and has been picked for zonal and India A squads. Over seven seasons of first-class cricket, he has managed an average of 28.51. He has scored just 2 centuries.
did I forget - his middle name “Shivlal”.

Indian Cricket should be run by paid professionals so that they can be held accountable on failure. The stupid “honorary” hog wash has to go; if the team fails, fire the morons who picked the team and then penalize the players. Kiran More & co selected teams but the poor captain gets sacked. How to make the selectors accountable? Why there are so many players from West Zone? Can a selector be part of any cricket academy? Who audits conflict of interests? It is about time for a transparent selection system in India. Current board is run by shameless people destined to kill Indian cricket once for all.

Cheers!.

ps: I wish the so called seniors - Sachin, Ganguly, and Dravid openly talk about such practices and let the cat out of bag. As of today more than their batting average this will do a lot of good to Indian cricket future.

ps2:S. Badrinath: 54 matches and averages about 56.94 with 12 centuries and 17 hundreds, poor Badri was never considered.

aNne na 5th pass, neenga 10th Fail

2007-10-22T10:44:00.000-04:00

Hope you remember the comedy episode featuring Gowndamani and Senthil. Let me remind you, Gowndamani will claim that he is 10th failed student while Senthil will keep debunking him by stating that he is 5th passed.

Ricky Ponting: We trashed you in F50,
Dhoni –it no fluke that we are the T20 champions [ aNne na 5th pass, neenga
10th fail anne]

This is exactly how I felt when I heard Dhoni talk during the T20 award ceremony. Dhoni forgot the fact that he was also the captain for the F50 side that was beaten left, right and center. The victory march and over flowing money made no sense. Harbajan was paid Rs. 1, 00,000 for what? For his pathetic bowling and behavior all through the series, he should be fined 1,00,000 instead. Murli Karthik , Sreesanth and Pathan were top wicket takers, in fact Yuvraj got more wickets than the so called top spinner from India,. Harbajan Singh – o:54 m:1 r:261 w:3 - 2/43-was his best and averaged 87.00, meaning he 87 runs per wicket. If this is not costly, I do know to define costly. If you want to drop and get fresh legs, bones and brains, he should be the first candidate.

Batting numbers: Yuvraj totals 192, thanks to the 121, rest of the games he made 72 runs, his average [32.00] is just 0.25 above Ganguly [31.75]. Dhoni, the Indian team captain follows with gap of about hundred runs from the top score. Uttappa played 6 games and averaged 33.x. Gautam Gambir played 3 Games and averaged 8.5 while Dravid played 5 games and averaged less than 11 runs per inning. Finally the top scorer - Guess who? One Mr. Tendulkar scored about 278 Runs with an average of around 40. A single T20 win seems to change people’s view quite drastically, what the heck? Indians are going to play to their Arch rivals, and then fly to Australia;

All mighty Vengsarkar is all set to fire people and he could sneak in is prodigy bowler – the one and only Ajith Agarkar who was seen in the dugout during T20 game. I am really worried that he might get the ticket to Australia where he has a history of generously cooking omelets for the entire team.

The rumor is that hot metal rods in various sizes have been placed in ovens and Kilns all around Australia. These rods will enhance the process called “Pumpesthanu”, a form of “Physocis” therapy designed by Dr. Saranavan, a world renowned Phscartrist and Dr. Bradley’s only student. This therapy is expected to be tested on Men in blue during the Aussie Summer.
Beware Team.

The T20 UtopiaMyopia

2007-10-15T11:47:00.000-04:00

What happened to the T20 utopia? Can’t the celebrities from the T20 winning line up score 6 runs per over? What else should the openers do? Irfan has realized his past mistakes and values his selection. He did his job perfectly.

When Dravid walked in the morning I spotted a change in his dress code, he had replaced the number on his back with new logo that looked like a Red Bulls Eye Target symbol. Dravid made life easy for Vengsarkar and his cronies. Like a bird on a political leader statue, Dravid kept dropping sitters. No doubt Dravid is an excellent player and IMO, technically the best from the Indian soil till date. The problem is he needs time for his technique to kick in. In today’s cricket settling time is considered as a taxable luxury. More than team India, Dravid cannot afford it anymore. Dravid should slowly let go the grip on one day games and I feel Dravid should be rested and given time to recoup for the test matches where he is still an invaluable asset.

Sreesanth, I had hopes for this guy, he looked good and has some mojo to do well. However for past few matches my opinion seems to change drastically. I guess it is time for Sreesanth to change his profession. A good carrier for him is ensured in spray painting. He sprays the new ball in every geographical direction possible. At times the software that keeps tracks of the ball losses its direction and get confused and displays another cricket pitch on the left side. Sreesanth also dropped a catch when Symonds was on 2.

Bowling takes the blame while some inexperienced captaincy popped up from Dhoni. When Murali Karthik and Harbajan were bowling well, Dhoni changed and gave the ball to Yuvaraj. Yuvraj from the word go broke coconuts, using them Simmons squeezed out as much of chutney possible. Then Dhoni took Yuvraj out and gave the ball to Tendul who was bowling well but Dhoni changed and gave the ball to Zaheer, Zaheer added more to the chutney pot. The last 5 overs tilted the game towards Australia.

A note on Harbajan, he is an overestimated Spinner and there are others sitting on the bench or on the national cricket circuit better than him. He is been ineffective and a disappointment every other series. If spinner fails on an Indian tracks, where in the world he is going to shine? The Middle order trouble continues for India, Sachin and Ganguly provided the team with gritty platform but an avaricious Yuvraj failed while Uttappa trying to regain this place played few good “cricketing” [Thanks Rameeze Raja] shots, but it is the Australian composure that took the game away from India.

And for Indian fans, let us console by selecting our feeling(s) on cheering for a team that lost the game from very good winning position?
(A)Atrocious
(B) I am sick and tired
(C) (a 4 letter word) Cricket
(D) All of the above and a full page of your own reasoning + bad words from Indian languages generously sprinkled.

Duck De India

2007-10-11T12:43:00.000-04:00

Being the cricket world champ is one part of the achievement but maintaining the status is much bigger a deal, this demands a lot of will and commitment. Australians are super powers of cricket and damn! “they know to maintain the status.”

Yesterday, Australians codified how to win the game while hopeless (Duck De) India meticulously engraved - How to lose the game hands, legs and other body parts down.

It was quite a pathetic start. What worse can happen? No I am not talking about L.Siva or Arul lals commentary. The 2 of the top 3 security net was back in the pavilion for Zero. Work Experience for the top three sums to about 1000 games but in first over India lost 60% of the experience. 10/3 in the first few coupled with fantastic bowling - Indians gave up then and there. Tendulkar was the only player from India who negotiated the pinpoint Australian attack. He played quite remarkably. His drives were classics and quite a delight to watch. Only persons without any kind of cricketing knowledge would raise their voice against Tendulkar. Irfan chipped in few runs while the last wicket partnership tried to restore some pride. The ball that got Tendulkar was a real beauty from Brett Lee.

Yesterday’s game also exposed who plays better swing bowling. The spell of Lee and Johnson proved that much celebrated Yuvraj, Dhoni and Uthappa do not have the technique and temperament to play quality fast bowling. Siddharth of Cricinfo.org mentions Uttappa was out for poor LBW decision, IMO, it was plumb - Uttappa was moving like a crab sideways right across the line and was caught like a deer at the headlight. I really doubt his technical ability to deal fast bowling under swinging conditions.

What was the reason for the loss? Poor planning Or Poor batting or Poor bowling or poor selection committee members or people like Nirjan Shah running the show? I am wondering with such a pathetic inexperienced team how in the world Vengsarkar can make stupid statements about dropping senior players. His warning to the senior players was quite stupid and arrogant. One does not become a senior player over night, a long tenure of effort and commitment gets you the title. That needs to be respected not insulted.

At least now stop the yell and scream over youth, put the T20 world cup on EBAY and start focusing on the Australian tour, if not we are in for more shocks and think about this - next month Team India will be floating on the Australian blue lagoon – result could be brutal than yesterdays.

Ps: Please check this excellent article by Anand Vasu on CricInfo ; Very well written.

Game Day , Ind vs Aus.

2007-10-05T13:36:00.000-04:00

The same old story continues, Harbajan, it does not matter how much he contains, he has to pick wickets. Until then he is ineffective. Yuvarj and Tendul over used, while Sreesanth celebrated Holi in October, he was spraying the ball in every possible direction. Batting wise, Gautam Gambu , one more talented player whose talent can only be spotted by Ravi Shastri and Vengsarkar. The powerful Ninja opps Niranjan Shaw , one among top BCCI chamchas mentioned to the press that Gangully was not rested, he was dropped. The only mistake Gangully did was being the top run getter in recent times. Yuvraj played quite well, however in my opinion he slowed down a lot when he was nearing 100. Once upon a time, long ago Indian team had a powerful natural slugger called M.S. Dhoni. Currently on team India’s behalf a missing report has been filed.

Drop the (senior) trio is the new slogan; it is only the senior contribution that won many 50/50 games for India in recent times has been comfortably forgotten. Just because a so called young team won 20/20 (game of sheer chance) writing off the seniors is foolishness, a systematic transition plan would do good for the future.

During my Chennai trip, I watched lot of Cricket on TV. Experience of watching cricket on TV in India is simply Awful and terrible experience. Whenever a batsman scores a four or a six or a 50 an annoying cartoon appears from nowhere and dances to badly composed music. As if this is not enough, more the bowler the broadcaster will be waiting eagerly for the final ball of an over. The telecast is cut when the final ball leaves the bowlers hand. We go to commercials, mostly the first ball in the following over gets yanked. Poor Harsha Bogle and Sunny will be discussing very seriously on cricket etc, suddenly the Air Tel Theme music will be played over their voice with Air Slide. Totally Disgusting! , this becomes worse if it is through DD, Commentators alternate languages; joke is that they do the commentary from the studio.

Yesterday I was watched the game on ZEE Sports, the new Indian sport channel in the US. Zee sports placed their own loud promotions in between every over and made a mess of it. The volumes levels of live telecast was about -2000db while the commercials were set to +2000db, waking up everyone living in my zip code. At 2.00am a moronic voice would suddenly scream and threaten you - Subscribe to ZEE sports call 1800-I-SHALL-IRRITATE-YOU till then. Zee and dish network Dudes don’t get it all, the only folks watching this badly made plug is the “Subscribers”. I wish Zee sports reduce such pathetic self-promotions during live Cricket broadcast. It is more annoying than the help cartoon that popup in MS office products.

EAS Prasanna commenting on Indian bowling has predicted complete shutdown. Indian team looks all set to go back to its popular “We will always suck” mode. 6-0 is on cards.

Game Day , Ind vs Aus.

2007-10-02T12:21:00.000-04:00

1st One day saved by rain, but Varuna failed to save India in Kochi. The match started 30 minutes behind schedule. A jam packed stadium filled with picturesque Kerala color. Zaheer khan and the volatile home town boy Sreesanth gave the start.
Ravi “recorded message” Shastri would quote “What doctor had ordered” Australia lost 2 quick wickets, acting captain Gilly gone for a Duck. Indian Fans waving flags and holding banners that contained recipes for Cooking Kangaroo Curry. That was it for next 20+ overs things were slow and Aussie regained their grounds.

The cocky Symonds, Uncle Hayden and little Clarke launched their popular mental disintegration using verbal abuses. On the Indian side, Sreesanth and Harbajan made generous contributions to the verbal abuse fund. All this happened knowing that that Match referee Broad is not so broad minded. Broad often suffers from Dyschromatopsia , the new ICC building fund is all set to be funded using the abuse fund collection, principle donors would be Harbajan and Sreesanth. Symonds would escape unhurt, he was equally guilty.

At around 30 over mark Indian bowling was like Tamil movies, - a joke -. There was no plan or approach. Powar with his red glass looked like “kandaaaaaaaaasamy” was totally ineffective. Harbajan rather than taking wickets, was aiming at containing runs. Moreover he did not bowl dosras, thanks to Chris Broad, who was watching him closely via a special camera hidden inside umpire’s hat. Broad has already reported twice about Harbajan’s action. The rule is if White men don’t get the spin, it is termed chucking. Indians once gain let Australia score about 300+.

Gautam Gambeer did not trouble anyone, Uttappa joined Tendul and blasted some runs, Aussies baited Tendul perfectly and got him out. Uttappa suddenly remembered that this was not 20/20, he got out. Instead of Rahul the Ex-Captain,Yuvaraj “Sixer” Singh walked in, it is to be noted that BCCI paid Yuvraj one crore extra for his 6 sixes, is this not encouraging individualism? Yuvraj played careless and over confident strokes. Australians had a plan for him too and he was taken out in no time. Dravid and Dhoni tried to revive by using various methods ranging from CPR to Defibrillator but Indian top order went into a complete Cardiopulmonary Resuscitation.

Dhoni stayed till the end and added a half century to his statistics. A powerful straight drive by Dhoni landed directly on Sreesanth head [non-striker], a powerful blow , poor Sreesanth - hope he is ok, may be his tantrums gets fixed so that he can focus more on his bowling. Sreesanth reminds me of Randy Moss.

Aussies are one up; their bowling was disciplined to the core and their spinners were better than Indian spinners. One good example was Australians bowlers bowled without a deep fine leg. The fine leg area was wide open and very minimal runs were scored in that area. No room for donkey drops. Dhoni also removed the deep fine leg, but at once, Kandaswaaaamy [Powar] and Sreesanth broke a sack of coconuts and gave about 20 runs [per ball]

T20 champions were day dreaming. I expected the T20 world cup synergy to carryover but gosh! I guess I forgot the fact that “Australia is a better team” - No arguments.

Good day,

ps:Kadasaaaaaaaaamy: A new movie in making - Vikram in zillion getup.One of the getup had a crazy headlight like red color eye mask [close to what Romesgh Powar wears.]

Cricket Talk

2007-09-28T11:22:00.000-04:00

I feel this would be the right time to resume my Cricket Talk. Indian team has redeemed my loyalty by winning the Twenty20 world cup.

Dravid quits from captaincy, in my opinion it is a blessing in disguise, or even call it a Boon. Do not get me wrong here; Dravid is a great batsman but he is a very poor captain. According to Sanjay Manjrekar on Cricinfo talk, “an Indian team captain has no power, and the entire selection committee and the board members influence the final eleven”. More over the Indian team captain is often put under tremendous pressure by the press. Unable to face the music Dravid resigned. With such politically mooted board and without the top 4, this T20 world cup victory is something to cherish. This format is so cruel that we cannot predict the winner. Though the depth in Australian lineup is phenomenal, I feel Australia cannot dominate in T20 like they do in other 2 formats. If Australia fails in few more T20 games, it would be matter of time for Cricket Australia to complain against T20 format. I feel no team would dominate T20.

A lot of celebration is still happening in India while the Team under the new captain is all set to face off the real World champ, Australia. Symonds mentioned yesterday that Indian celebration is going over the limits, who are you to set the limit Mate? … Trash talking is used by Aussie to pump them up. During T20 semi final I heard Hayden talk to Uttappa. Uttappa was playing few defensive strokes, and Hayden (sarcastically) congratulated him for playing great defense, Uttappa replied “if you say so I am honored”. It is always fun watching the Australians compete.

The (New) Indian Captain Dhoni walks in with lot of expectations. In my opinion, his wicket keeping is well below par. 50/50 is more of a mind game and needs a cool cat CEO. I wish the board gives him a lot of time to settle without worrying about win or loss. Till now I was worried that who will replace the top 3, Dravid, Sachin and Ganguly. Frankly, the recent T20 exposed our bench Talents. I was surprised by Rohit Sharma, Pathan Brothers. RP Singh’s remarkable improvement, finally Zahir khan now has some support. I pray that Agarkar is never selected again. Sreesanth is a good bowler but comes with a truck load of attitude, which can be good and bad. He should concentrate more on his bowling consistency.

The new bunch should be groomed to take over from the seniors. Instead of chasing the top guys, BCCI should create a transition plan [you are welcome to laugh; the word plan is an unknown to BCCI]. The senior players should slowly groom the juniors and make the transition smooth. Sachin, Dravid and Ganguly are in form and been scoring runs in one day format. They are invaluable assets, so is the Intel P4 chip, there is a point in time to change to dual cores [All rounder] and we are at this point. The next few series will decide the future course for Indian cricket.

Ps: During my trip to India I was following various cricket talk shows. Ex-cricketers were riding horses inside a big fat pot. I heard Ajay Jadeja comment about Indian Team fielding. According to him Indian fielding is at the lowest even average fielder like "Dinesh Kartik" looks great on the field. After all Dinesh Karthik took the best catch of T20, while Jadadeja was banished from cricket for fixing matches. Krish Srikkanth on CNN-IBN bad mouthed the new ICL to a great extent and bluntly quoted it was as money making tactics, question to him – does BCCI work for charity? And the next day BCCI floated their league similar to ICL. Poor Crushed opps Krish Srikkanth changed his stance once again and stated – ICL or BCCI – everything is good for the players and the game.

Wings of Evolution Documentary

2007-09-26T11:43:00.000-04:00

I had the pleasure of composing music for the documentary - “Wings of Evolution” directed by Ramesh Mourthy & Raghu Jeganathan. This documentary premiers at the prestigious South Asian film festival on Oct 6th 2007 , at 2.30 at the Rubin Museum of Art, 150 W17th and 7th Ave New York City.

You can check more about the documentary and its producers Access Horizon films here. The sound track was recorded and Mixed at Studio1234, USA. This is the second project my new studio has undertaken. You can catch the trailer here in this YouTube Clip.

Trip Tick! #4

2007-09-18T10:16:00.000-04:00

One among my top 5 activities in Chennai was exploring restaurants. My regular list includes the legendry woodlands drive-in, Saravana Bhavan, Rathna Cafe and few more new ones like Mamalla near Mahabalipuram. My top 3 star restaurants are GRT Golden days, Radisson near the Airport and Le Meridian. I also tried the famous road side fast foods popularly called [கை ஏந்தி பவன்]. Over the years my craving for such food seems to have not diminished even a bit.

Over all I felt an improvement in the food quality, meaning, I did not get the stomach bug. The choices seem to have multiplied with wider range of cuisines. In the mid range category I felt the Saravana Bhavan found near Sathyam was very good, while the (Great) Kebob factory [TGKF] inside the Radisson [Meenambakkam] was mind blowing.

TGKF features a rich selection of 150+ succulent kebobs. Their menu offers choices for vegetarians [and the Meat eaters]. An unlimited buffet filled with various kinds of Kebobs served to your table in a round robin league fashion. Every item is described well and circulated around the table. You can have as much as you can. Don’t miss the deserts and remember that you will be full much before the deserts. Remember to leave some room for them as they are totally out of the world.

I would rate this as the best vegetarian food I have had in Chennai till date. Each plate costs around Rupees 600+taxes [$17], the dollar rupee conversion comes in handy. You need to make advance reservation and be there on time, the India stretchable time [IST] fails to work.

Tip to eat more: a full day of fasting is suggested or just an hour before the dinner, drink a bottle of plain Soda + Lime + salt juice. This would be a good appetizer.

More..

Trip Tick! #3

2007-09-12T14:08:00.000-04:00

"Digitalil padam pOdum Sathyam": Online booking. You might wonder what is so great about it, online booking have been around for quite some time. Wait, Chennai [Sathyam] takes it to a new level, apart from letting you to select your seat etc; you can also order various kinds of snacks while booking your tickets. The snacks are severed 2 minutes before the interval - right at your seat. Novel idea!

The Sathyam Theater “experience” was incredible. More than the sound, I was impressed by the picture clarity on the big screen. It was very close to Blue Ray or HD Disks – astonishing quality. I have not seen such clarity anywhere else around the world. Besides, Sathyam had an excellent ambience, perfectly balanced digital sound, and the seats were totally comfortable with lot of legroom. It was worth the price I paid - about Rs125+snacks. I watched Sivaji on or around 75th day, Monday evening show - believe it or not, it was houseful. Sivaji –“Athiraddi; I thoroughly enjoyed the movie and I generously contributed to the loud screaming and whistling.

After the movie, I went on a negotiation spree with auto drivers. Most of them demanded an amount close to what super star charged AVM for Sivaji. Finally a good human accepted 1/2 of the cost and drove me back home.

A cousin of mine told me a funny experience during Sivaji release. He and his friend were travelling near Udhyam Theater during rush hour. Traffic was stalled near Ashok Pillar while few were busy distributing some kind of free drink to onlookers and motorists. May be few good citizens are helping, our friends also had a cup. They could have kept quiet and moved on, but decided to enquire the occasion for the free drink, ya! Those 2 Dudes just drank a portion of hot milk that came from Sivaji cutout “abishegam” function.

Ps:
Twenty20 world cup is on, what is wrong with these people? Annoying dance and music after each ball or boundary – the seriousness of the game seems lost; Ajith “Meritless” Agarkar back in the squad. Instead of Aggi I suggest a ball throwing machine; "it" would do a better job. For 20/20 I think India can go with 10 batsmen, a bowling machine and a maintenance engineer combo [maintenance engineer for the ball machine]. An introduction video for batsmen is being shown with their name and their favorite shot, but bowlers don’t seem to have any such video introductions. May be they can say favorite ball - in swinger, slower one, But in case of Aggi – he has long list - short ball, over pitch, full toss, wide outside the off stump, very wide outside the leg stump and many more. On ESPN I heard Ravi Shastri say his recorded message – Agarkar is a talented all-Rounder. WTF!

More…

Trip Tick! #2

2007-09-11T15:09:00.000-04:00

Many new places to visit in and around Chennai; I guess a 3 week vacation would not be ample. Numerous shopping malls have sprung up throughout the city. I visited few of them, and Chennai city center was one of the best. A typical western style mall with shopping, entertainment, food court, kids play area all under one roof. Even malls had a very well organized underground car park. Chennai City center mall was filled with “young” boys and gals of modern Chennai.Some of them were busy talking, checking and typing SMS messages while few guys were standing in the line to get a costly pizza slice for their girl friends.My T. Shirt had a slogan, "Sarcasm - Just one of my many talents". I justified the slogan by throwing few sinister smiles at these culturally confused youngsters. Thank god during my college times we just had Ramana or Aboorva fast foods. Food court in Chennai City center had typical south Indian food to western pizza outlets. Great food!.

Someone told me that such shopping complexes in Chennai are built without proper permits. I heard the same story for almost all the “multi-storied” shopping centers. I wondered why put a hold on development? What is the problem in making the permit available? My regular auto driver made a valid point. The infrastructure is not yet adequate, it seems these shopping complexes does not plan for proper sewer, water etc, they just use the public lines and over load them.

Cable TV, the set top box culture was still around in Chennai. I surfed various TV channels and I felt that Vijay TV had better program line up when compared to other TVs. They had better variety. However most TV channels had record dance programs in various forms. So called small screen actors and actresses have taken up dancing, for pre-recorded film music. Seriously it not worth watching for even 2 minutes as the dance movements were too vulgar, Yuk. I also felt channels like DD pOdigai had good programs with lot of cultural values.

There was a program called "NEEYA NANA" [You or Me] on Vijay TV –a debate program. The topic was "The current middle Class in Chennai is selfish and self centered, they don’t care for others.", Two groups argued and one group went on to claim that people are using Credit card for style and show, what the heck? I don’t know how it would be a show, I remember my friends teasing me for wearing cooling glass in Chennai when I was in college. Where else a cooling glass will serve better? In Seattle?

1st using credit card creates a paper trail and we can make sure out expenses are accounted, and 2. We need not carry cash, which often attracts pickpockets; if credit card is stolen we can call and put a hold on it. We are better protected than losing money. This group was headed by a writer called ஞாநி [gani], [this looks like a self-centered name to me]. As the debate progressed with his argument abilities he trashed a girl on the other team and felt proud on the TV. He asked the girl if she would be willing to take up a certain job if good money was offered. What the heck? I don’t know what is wrong with such self proclaimed writers who simply pass time by riding a horse inside a fat pot. I changed the channel and never bothered to check the program again.

More….

Trip Tick! #1

2007-09-10T16:20:00.000-04:00

I was anxiously sitting in my seat, kids in the front seat were busy watching the in-flight entertainment, giggling at Mr. Bean’s tantrums; in my case the word Bean reminded me the yummy "Beans pArupusali (பாருப்பூசலி)" my mom cooks. As though the captain read my mind, he announced "flight attendants prepare for landing", moments later I felt the 777 decent towards the earth, my ears completely blocked but still managed to capture little babies scream, and nervously I peeped through the window, a familiar sight - St. Thomas Mount on Horizon, Chennai! Here I come.

Chennai airport has been upgraded and looks great. The luggage pickup was well organized, No need to run around carousels to find the luggage. Clear signs are posted about your flight in every carousel and luggage arrives only at the posted carousel. The whole airport was well lit and secured. You can book prepaid cabs, No shady deals, you can also book train tickets to anywhere in India. I saw a Southern Railway counter, a sweet and flower stall and few duty free shops at the airport. As I drove out of the Airport, I saw a board – “Anna International Terminal ISO 9000 certified”, I guess IS0 certification has some meaning to it.

First thing that I noticed in Chennai was, the entire city was covered with “something”- if you have guessed it smog “beep”– NO; the real beauty of the Chennai has been over shadowed by tons and tons of advertisement hoardings. Believe it or not, Entire city is now covered by hoardings of various sizes and messages. Even new buildings with well designed architecture were covered by giant size banners of trendy looking models posing for computer designed Sarees, Jewelry stores and their Gold dripping ornaments, newly built shopping malls, variety of Indian and international cars, Cell phones, Tele serial banners, movie banners, moreover annoying huge political posters with their beloved leaders posing for brightly printed glorifying Tamil words lifted from the million year old Tamil literature. Even the front gates of residential houses and colonies had hoardings with a fine print: “Do not park in the front of the gate”; when asked about this outbreak, no one really cared, it seems hoardings fetch lucrative amounts. Eswara!, [someone would offer money to suffix this with the word “Silks”]

Traffic was as usual at its best – or worst. An over bridge is being built right in front of the airport. It took me about an hour to travel from Airport to T. Nagar; thanks to the early morning time; the over bridge construction at Guindy “kathipara” junction is a day and night mare, I was told that it takes couple hours to cross this place. The flyovers are expected to be completed in few years, until then - royal mess for the motorists. Two vital elements prevent accidents in Chennai – 1. Extraordinary Reflex and 2.Sheer Luck;

People generally don’t seem to care for traffic rules or safety. Government buses, trucks, 2 wheelers and of course the yellow bumble bee of Chennai - auto rickshaws are notorious for such mindless driving. No one stopped for Red Lights, unless there was a cop waving at them. In my opinion, the driving culture found in Chennai would rank the worst in the world. People just move their vehicle if they see open space on the road, regardless of right or left side. They don’t seem to care for oncoming traffic, if there is “space” just move in, soon this would shut down the whole road causing serious traffic jams. Traffic police cannot do anything if people don’t behave like human beings. Make sure the main gates and doors are locked, else Auto drivers could use it as a detour route and would not hesitate to trespass into your house and go on to the next street.

All said and done - my home town would be the best place for me to spend my well earned vacation. Development in Chennai is quite remarkable. ..

More…

Short Film - ONE SOUL

2007-08-22T01:50:00.000-04:00

One Soul “There are those who believe that, the soul is love and that true love is simply the sharing of the soul. The protagonist of this short film 'One Soul', David believes that the bonds of love are stronger than the chains of death.”

I had the opportunity to score music for Arun Vaidyanathan’s new short titled “One Soul”. Based on the screen play the theme music was divided into 3 themes.

I also did the sound design and engineering. On the sound design arena watch out for the “hybrid chants” and other unique sounds designed for this movie. The sound tracks and effects were recorded and mixed in my new state of art recording facility. The entire production crew has done a remarkable job. It is an honor for me to be part of this team.

You can watch the movie at www.triggerstreet.com, a website owned by Academy award winner Kevin Spacey. If you are around New York or New Jersey Area the movie is being screened on 22nd August 2007, please check the website http://www.onesoulthemovie.com/ for details.

Also at this point of time, my hearty congratulation and my best wishes to Arun for stepping into feature film direction.

My studio had serious upgrades and more gear additions. I would be working more (short) film music scoring and sound design. I also scored music for a documentary by Raghu Jeganathan, titled "Siragugal" and another short in English by Karthik Param titled "Remember to Forget" - watch out for its releases dates. If you are a (short) film maker and looking for professional quality music for a very nominal charge, please contact me directly at srikanth@Srikanthd.com.

Cheers.

Assumption, the spoilsport of livelihood

2007-07-03T10:34:00.000-04:00

As the whole world is wondering where in the hell this guy vanished? [Assumption, the spoilsport of livelihood], I thought I should scribble something to make sure people remember me.

For a change, I changed my course to enhance my career. It seems the celestial stars that controls me favors career growth. Yes trust me I came to know this via a Sun TV program; I managed to understand the prediction from the astrological reader in spite of her making 10,000 pronunciation blunders per second. I am just wondering – is Tamil language really dead on the TV? I am not joking just watch the astro prediction program on Sun TV that airs every Saturday. The fact is such that it is very tough for any astrologer living or dead to predict the number of pathetic language mistakes the reader is going to make during the show, people! It is Awful; even play back singer Sukiwinder Singh has better Tamil diction.

How many of you are video game addicts, I am not, using a soap box sized remote control I hate sitting in front of TV to punch a robot or devise a strategy to finish a mission, in general increase stress.
But of late I got hooked on something called Nintendo Wii, this is altogether a different experience. Video game aficionadas generally evolve to couch potatoes oops pumpkins or something similar. But Wii controller is something more physical, it gets its input based on physical movements. Hence playing on the Wii does generate some sort of physical exercise, player is forced to keep moving around, making your blood flow normal which in turn relives your mind from stress. I am just loving it, and been playing games like Tennis, Bowling on this for some time now, it is all family fun. Try it out you will know what it is all about. Playing Boxing after watching any heroism filled new Tamil movie, it does help.

I happened to watch the movie Chennai 600028; I am slow in watching movies. Honestly I liked the movie; it was very different but seemed to lacked the depth found other sports related movies. I have played gully cricket and was able to relate to the script right away. The Tamil commentary dude was too funny, movie was good late summer evening entertainer. All the best to the director – Prabhu (s/o Gangai Amaran)

Only thing that I could not stand or sit was --- YA! - The music. The music director had no clue about the musical pitch. The only pitch found in the movie was the ones shown during cricket matches. The song sung by the producer SPB that had some bounce on the pitch all other tracks are well made craps. One of the ½ cooked hip hop number sung in the bar was a blunt rehash of “செந்தமிழ் தேன் மொழியாள்”in a faster meter --- என்னக்கொடும SIR இது!

Ps: ள் - this sound does not exists in Tamil any more, it over, it was officially laid to rest in all the sound tracks.

Good day!...

கல்கியின் அலையோசை

2007-04-25T11:40:00.000-04:00

Sivaji கலைமன்றம் is now on tour staging “கல்கியின் அலையோசை” (Kalki’s Alai Osai - Tamil play) , Dramatization by Sridhar, USA. They have staged 2 successful shows that had good attendance and appreciation. Their next show would be held in SSV temple [DC], Greenbelt, MD. Please check temple website for timings, and do encourage the artist.

It was a pleasure for me to compose music and be part of this hard working team. Moreover, the current issue of Kalki (கல்கி) Tamil magazine has reviewed the play and given a “thumbs up”. The theme scores that I composed for this play has also been mentioned and appreciated in the write up. Thanks to Sridhar, for the opportunity. I composed 17 themes for the play, and 12-15 were used. Besides my scores, sound tracks from pre independence era time were also used accordingly. You can download the tracks here.

Intro - Curtain Raiser

Alai Osai Theme - Aggression

Jana Gana Mana - Indian National Anthem

Sophisticated பூ

2007-04-23T10:40:00.000-04:00

Over the weekend I saw another movie by Gautam Menon, by now it is an old movie for many, in my case I wait for the original DVD. வேட்டையாடு விளையாடு. I like the movie for the production value , casting etc. So instead of Kudos, the critic side in me is in action now. The script had few major flaws, the glaring one was, after burning a house in Brooklyn area, kills a cop, the so called killer duo escapes from JFK, as if this was not enough, they fly to India [Just wondering who was their travel Agents to get tickets so quickly?]. also they manage to escapes from Bombay Airport using the Disguise technique often found in an old CID (Jai)Shankar movie . This whole episode looked as though these guys travelled from Gumidi poondi Junction to Basin Bridge Junction. It is a 24hour flight. Yaya I hear Kamal was in coma, etc. still the escape episode was no way different from a Danush or Vijay hitting 200 people in single punch! அது கோயம்பேடு பூ, இது இன்னும் sophisticated imported பூ. After this, Once in Bombay, I expected the director to use some intelligence in getting those killers, as announced by Kamal in his staff meeting, “I have plan etc” கடைசியில் ஒரு மை....ம் இல்லை. Climax is the same old solo fight heroism, yayada yayada You too Gautam? At the end of the movie it felt like the whole story can be told in 1.5 hours with a logical climax.

The team lead by Kamal and Gautam is a rare combination that has potential to take Tamil movies to the next new level however like most Tamil movies this also had a disastrous 4th Quarter.

Good Day!

ps:World cup semi finals, my prediction, New Zealand will beat Sri Lanka and South Africa will beat mighty Australia.:) [I do hear your loud laugh!]

Late Movie review. - பச்சைக்கிளி முத்துச்சரம்

2007-04-19T10:57:00.000-04:00

Finally! I had some free time to watch the raved movie பச்சைக்கிளி முத்துச்சரம், note, further reading would give away the plot in detail.

Describing it in simple words it is a story about a charming female con-Artist. Honestly believe it or not, after absorbing Jothika’s character play, I guessed the plot in about 15-30 minutes. I should also state that my accurate guess did not disinterest me even a bit. Before I go further, my hearty congratulations to Director Gautam Menon, Indian movie industry needs directors like him. And the casts, congratulations to Sarath Kumar [Sir, it is about time to drop punches and punch dialogues and do justification to your abundant acting talent], Jothika [என்றென்றும் புன்னகை] and Harris for his background music, thanks for thinking music as a score rather than a “bozobozo” sore. One of the theme melody from this movie has been used by Gauthami in her “Anbudan” TV program.

Here are my thoughts, I loved the initial pace set in the first half; the screen play was generally tight, but at times repetitive, the critic in us would be blunt and say monotonous. Gautam Menon’s screen play did not waste time to establish facts in his script - that Sarath was just another middle class hardworking husband travels by electric Train, with a nice little family, a kid, a wife who runs the family and finances , please remember this last fact.

Prudent Gautam exposes less than single role of film to knit the arena or the play ground in which he would soon move his coins and start his mind play with the audience. I pray to the movie gods that future Tamil movies open in this fashion (instead of a hero glorifying 6/8 dance number in the city center). The scene in which Sarth flirts with the receptionists, reminded me the classic Money Penny/007 conversations. The middle class dad Sarath has a kid who is diagnosed as diabetic, his loving wife goes into a depression, and her attention to Sarth reduces. She gives up “pleasure and happiness” and broods over her child’s prognosis. Natural for a mother, but in turn Sarath’s feels that his life is mechanical than before. Conditions at home works against him, he gets curious over another girl [Jo], another married “train” traveler, few eye exchanges [அண்ணலும் நோக்கினாண் அவளும் நோக்கினாள் ], they bump into a conversation, conversation becomes conversations [அண்ணலின் Nokia அவளின் Nokia இணைத்தது AirTel [(c) statement :))],

The newly born “Rail sneham” is watered, enriched and it blooms, in this process Sarth talks about his family, his financial position and vice versa. The chemicals react quickly for Jo, she pushes her new mate in the wrong direction, forces him to the take her out on dates, Chapter titled: “an invitation to infidelity”. Finally sidelining his dilemma, Sarath the naturally clam and truthful person falls for her, a remote sea side motel on Chennai’s popular ECR road is handpicked, and the shady motel room is all set for the rendezvous.

The pair aligns in the room slowly as we wait for something-something to happen, suddenly from nowhere a gun man breaks into the room, Sarath is attacked brutally, he gets mugged, robbed, and gets horribly beaten in trying to protect the girl. The attacker, who must be the lost twin brother of காக்க காக்க [kAkka kAkka ]villain, just kidding, Director Gautam lends his once again, the villain voice is perfect, filled with tons of censor muted but very popular Tamil bad words that I learnt in my MCCHS days. The gun man rapes the girl and vanishes. The wounded duo is now all set to be blackmailed. As expected the bad guy shows up , threatens, blackmails and slowly drains Sarath's wealth and family health. Note, Jo is unhurt by all this; she actually pushes Sarath; Director has a ball here; using Jo’s innocent smile and looks he plays with your emotions. Sarath is now a pauper, his wealth is drained completely. Remember the finance fact I asked you to remember, Sarath wife who supposedly manages and runs the home finance ministry, has no clue about this money drain? Let me bail Gautam, May be her depression has moved the focus from the finance.

Unable to bear the load and pressure, a tormented Sarath decides to get the water out of the coconut, [just a new one to avoid the cliché cat out of the bag statement]; he breaks the news to his wife. The moment she hears the story, leaving her ailing son in dire straits she vanishes into Tambaram air, may be a logical slip for the director. An already depressed caring mom would not abandon him for any reason. Sarath and his son search everywhere. During the searching the episode, the whole story takes a big sharp spin. Sarath finds out that Jo is an accomplice to a scheming gang operation, Sarath witness Jo and the bad guy together scheming another person in similar fashion; he realizes that he has been scammed, tricked. [Interval] [To be continued...]

it hurts

2007-04-17T10:46:00.000-04:00

World cup Cricket! The Semi final Ark is all set to board the final 4. Aussies are going great guns, but still we cannot absolutely state that they would win the cup for the 3rd time in a row. The next 2 teams in league are very strong on a given day and have the potential to beat the Aussies. The 4th, South Africa is still limping to get boarding pass for the semi final ark, English might play spoil sport however given the English team and their ever non- playing made of breakable plastic captain, boarding pass to the semi final ark is a very tough ask. After today’s game, rest of the games does not really matter anymore.

Bangladesh lost to Ireland, which prompted ICC to allocate a spot in the ICC one day calendar. One more pressure for the Indians, they need to make sure they are ranked above Ireland. Ponting took a pot shot at India and Pakistan and glorified Ireland is better team and they are doing for cricket! Yes the same little [5. no inches] Ponting who mentioned a while ago that Minnows should never play cricket at this level. Nevertheless, Indian team and the selector [who got away easily] of such a team should bury their head deep inside the mud, now they lost all their pride to a team that got thrashed by a real minnow! Time will tell what Ireland brings into the ICC one day arena.

Finally, What do you do when you are jobs less? - Latest trend in India suggests activities like– Strike, picketing, burn effigies, shout slogans, Donkey marches, public policing on any issues, whatever it is, a load of TV cameras will show up and you can be on TV. The latest person to honored by this Picketing line - Richard Gere, reason: the old man smooched Shipla Sheety in a public function. I am just wondering will the same folks show up in a record dance festivals often shown on Sun and moon TVs?. The time wasted by these hooligans is worse than the amount of time I spend writing this blog. It is very surprising when one side of the country works its ass out to improve the economy while few parts of country take up Minuscule matters in their hands in name of public policing. Has anyone in the picketing line contributed 1% of their time towards AIDS awareness in India? Yesterday some of this activists spoke that in Indian culture we don’t such acts yadayada..Yes, we do donkey marches, burning effigies for worthless reasons, etc etc in the name of culture. News media for heaven sake please don’t call these morons as Social workers, it hurts genuine social workers.

Power play

2007-04-11T09:32:00.000-04:00

Power play, Indian team gave a new meaning to the letter P on the score board –P= Poor Play, Yesterday the world cup hosts WI took it to a new level - P=Pathetic Play , while South Africa ensured P =Professional Play.

West Indies played pathetically professional cricket and have been eliminated from the world cup. Their world cup record is now inferior to India. Lara captaincy was right royally poor. I am still trying to understand his game strategy, to me, it looked much more complex than Inzi ‘s English. Lara with all his experience managed and pushed the final power play to the slog overs [44-49].

Power play at 44=Pounds of Raw free meat for the hounds. In general during slog Boucher Butchers and Gibbs Whips any bowling attack, now given the power play situation it was an open ticket, raw meat, WWF, “Kubam kabeem” “Kamba kumbe” result, US Coast guard near Florida pan handle filed a report on sighting few tiny white UFOs from south Atlantic bay. Runs were scored faster than a book cricket match. Is Lara a good captain? I doubt it.

EBAY Australia reported that Ian Chappel [aka Elder Brother to the notorious Roll ‘n’ Ball Brothers] was seen lurking around during wee Australian hours. The web tracker statistics says that he was browsing and searching or shopping for a gift. Some speculated it was for Lara, I guess it must be a similar magic mirror that he gave Tendul few weeks ago.

The story of “Hosts never win the world Cup” continues. Only one West Indian bowler who was in full “swing” was Michele “Scolding” oops Holding. He words were much shaper and clear. I also felt sorry for the poor old man of West Indian Cricket, Tony Cozier. I have been his fan right from his Channel 9 days. This well balanced passionate cricket commentator from Barbados had no hesitation in putting up the facts. Yesterday after the match he was really furious, agonized and his words said it all. He simply blasted the WI cricket board. I think he went through the same emotions Indians faced few weeks back. Now the home team is gone, the stands would be empty with a valid reason. World cup seems long.

Can Bangladesh beat England? More than Bangladeshi performance, it depends on the number of drinks English players gobbled over night.

Good day.

News!

2007-04-09T10:52:00.000-04:00

The latest economic news on wire, there is sudden surge for certified pre-owned Jack asses [Donkeys] export to South Africa, says spokes person from DAI [Dobhi Association of India]. Wire news quotes that this surge was attributed to South African cricket team’s pathetic loss to Bangladesh on Saturday. A fleet of Donkeys trained during the recent Indian cricket team debacle are set to travel to the African country. DAI’s media manager also added that “the current batch knows exactly how to react on such occajon”. He also quoted that DAI sales figures have tripled this quarter, and he thanks the Indian cricket fans for this sales surge. We need to wait to see if South African fans react the same way as the Indian fans.

Some media reports speculated few problems in the export. BCCI’s spokes person - assistant to assistant’s deputy lift operator Partap Rana [of building B] has quoted that DAI has to seek permission from BCCI for such exports. He quotes “BCCI has played a great part in training these beasts of burden”. A well known insider of DAI leaked to the press via SMS that “BCCI wants 50% of what each donkey makes. We are watching this situation very closely.

Moving on, Australia trashed the “drunken monks” from England, it is time for the English captain to pick his favorite “injury” and vacation spot. His recent scores are so pathetic that even Sanjay manju will add them without a calculator. DAI sales team is now working hard to send some of their samples to UK. The sales VP quoted that one named “Kalyani Punch” will work for best for Fintoff, as he has been already been caught for too much “kalyani” in his system.

Good day.

Weekly Roundup

2007-04-06T10:03:00.000-04:00

A food processor never cares what it is processing, its function is to meticulously and of course mercilessly chop anything and everything put into it, put in your finger or 22 carrots or beetroots regardless, its task is to chop, grind and whip! Australian cricket team functions in this fashion. A fresh bag of lettuce aka Bangladeshi was crushed, chopped and their poor technique was exposed. Their surrender to the Napoleons of cricket aka Australia was rather an afternoon quickie. The hyped home team suffered another setback; they bagged the pathetic award of the week, thanks to their fielding. And more over the game was lost to Jayasuriya’s brilliance. Sri Lankans look very good; their yapping captain finally got some runs for them. Sangakara was remarkable behind the wickets. Apart from that, there as a formality that South African had to complete. The world cup has lost its steam. Not that India and Pakistan are out, the number of games, frequent weather problems, crowd no show up, thanks to huge price and ICC not letting the local culture prevail; The final four is almost decided, mostly Sri Lanka, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, if the English team is banned from the overnight booze loading service, may be they have a remote chance. Bangladesh and Ireland though they play with passion, eagerness yadayada!, quality of their cricket is very much below par. India and Pakistan lost to such teams is another comedy in its own. For now World cup 2007 = cold old coffee.

Moving on, one of my all time favorite Tamil movie was on TV, “Kase than kadavulada” a comical riot and spontaneous “Thenga” has no match when it comes to the tantrums and dialogue delivery. He has his own style. “Muthuraman” joins him and says it all [well we know why actor Karthick is also good in comedy], while Srikanth, Murthy, Manoroma and many more joins the fun, a very funny movie. I don’t know how many noticed this, when Thenga walks in as the swamiji, like a Sanskrit mantra he calls out the name of this co stars on the screen, “SRIKANTHARAMA MaNORAME VENNIRADA SURULSURUL”, The words “prashatama”, “athe athe” is quite popular even today. Movie also has nostalgic numbers , Music Superman Vichu rocks “andru vantha intha mayaakkam” , “mela pesungal”, “jambulingame”, fantastic boutique of songs from which we can learn how to compose true Sandam and Melody. ! I thoroughly enjoyed the movie;

The Gautami talk show: Last week end Satyaraj’s was interviewed, uninteresting. This is because Satyaraj has been appearing in almost all the Sun TV programs like comedy time, fun time, hero time, zero time, villain time, namitha time, Kalimark soda time, korukupetai silks time, good time and your bad time. Now, having made the trip to Gautami’s talk show, the only program left for him to appear is the Sun TV news. Just wondering for how many more years we would be talking about “thagudu thagudu” . Many in the East coast do not get to see this program, it airs almost on Monday. This show can be moved to an earlier slot instead of the stupid excoriating skit featuring 2 grandmothers and the lackluster crap hosted by Manivannan. I have stopped watching this “asatha povadhu yaru”. The 2 pests aka judges are total waste of time as don’t come well prepared; the show lacks ideas and direction. To laugh for Chitty Babu’s dry jokes you need an army to tickle you. At times he goes on with his double meaning jokes. And the hostess of the show, people why does she scream as though she is in the middle of a horror movie? The participants defending and ranting about Sun TV, program producers makes me feel “Dad is not hiding in the Rice Barn” Gosh! Dudes, we get it, nobody really cares if you have been hijacked for Vijay TV or Ajith TV, just move on instead of weekly dose of a@@ kissing.

Finally, check this clip here, my friends at DigiMax studio have done a spoof.,

ps: Stay away from - The Botanical Romance - starring Mr. Allergies and Your favorite Claritin De.
Have a great weekend

Convenient Cricket Weather

2007-03-30T11:14:00.000-04:00

When Ricky Ponting brutally quoted “South Africans are chokers”, Smith, the South African captain was right royally annoyed, however yesterday his team came close to prove Ponting’s theory. South Africa won by 1 wicket, thanks to lady luck. Malinga wiped the tail with some accurate bowling, while Murali also had good spell picking up very important wickets. Malinga’s hairdo still looks like as though he had a fight with his hair dresser halfway and the hair dresser walked away. At the end of the day, Sri Lanka lost the game, thanks to pitiable batting display especially in the final 10 of the innings. I wish the Lankan captain bats and stands up to his yap. Else they would soon take the path of their neighbor. Ponting also rubbed 10 spoons of salt and 2 table spoons of chili powder on few deep wounds - I quote from his interview on CNN-IBN - “India and Pakistan are not fit to be the super eights”. I have never respected Ponting opinion in the past, however this time I am forced to agree. I have started to believe that he is speaking from position of power. It is for the teams to proving him wrong. WI was as pathetic as before and surrendered quickly to the Aussies. I have not seen a world cup with empty stands even when the home team is playing. Where are the cricket loving Caribbean fans gone?

Have a great weekend of cricket, Ausrtalia taking on Bangala!....Best of luck or Best of Duck - Time will tell.

Breaking the shop coconut for path Ganesha

2007-03-27T15:08:00.000-04:00

ICC has pulled out all clips relating to the world cup cricket from YouTube. Many have poured their views and anger and termed it to be a poor decision for cricket, whatever, Bottom line people fail to see here is broadcasters have paid ICC a large sum for the telecast, and there is no legal reason for YouTube or anyone to put the clip free of cost. What loss a clip could bring? You may ask, - tell me what popularity a poor quality compressed clip can bring? When you genuinely think about copy rights and global media rights, only thing ICC could have done better is devised a plan much ahead of time before running into this mess. I was reading Mr. Andrew Millers article on this issue, I clip oops quote the last paragraph here, “Cricket has acquired a dangerous obsession with money," wrote Cricinfo's editor, Sambit Bal, on Thursday, "to the extent where it is not a question of a game needing the money to survive or grow but making as much as possible at any cost." At this precise moment, cricket does not need money to survive or grow. It needs publicity. Publicity of on-field exploits rather than off-field outrages. It's time to loosen up and let the spectacle be enjoyed by all who wish it well.”
- Andrew Miller is UK editor of Cricinfo © Cricinfo,

What does the © mean above? Can you clarify Mr. Miller?

Do you know the Story of “Breaking the shop coconut for path Ganesha” Yes you will be blessed for the good deeds, but what about the poor coconut seller who has paid for the coconut in first place? Poor guy does even not get the chutney.

Ps: Just go and find the number of regular NFL season games clips on YouTube.

Magic that produces cricketers and Mangoes

2007-03-26T11:05:00.000-04:00

What a week, had to work over the weekend, we are in the process of migrating data to a new environment. Each database took about 3-5 hours to migrate; hence during the lead time, I was watching Australia and South Africa play their “last” 1st round game. , seriously both teams were class apart.

As expected Bangladesh moved forward to play in the super 8th round, I am genuinely pleased; I was happy see Habibul Basher smile, poor guy has spent a lot time standing there with a sad face during after match presentations. He knows the pain, which in turn increase the value of this promotion and the team would cherish this for long period of time. More than the team, kudos to the Cricket officials in Bangladesh; they put down their heads to get it right, it worked and it is now the harvest time! Congratulations to Bangladeshi team, their fans! And their Amazing coach.

Playing teams like Australia, South Africa in the next round would be a tough ask for the young Bangladeshi team. Having said this, I feel Bangladesh team has nothing to lose from here on because the entire Bangladeshi cricket board and their team members have proved that they have a working “spine”, a body part that is not found in the team from the same sub continent that I “used” to support.

now over to the Magic that produced Mangoes:
After Tsunami hit the southern shores of India, officials aka RIP van winkles woke up and installed warning systems etc. Likewise, the cricketing structure in India should undergo serious changes at least now, when people like Barry Richards commented about India cricket and its management, his opinions were trashed by most including yours faithfully. Today unable to face the reality, I am hiding, my face is deeply buried into the ground like an ostrich. I have also been the culprit in this blindly devotion.

People going on riots on burning stuff, etc, IMO a ridiculous act and such acts seems to happen in places that are already a liability to the Indian economy. Just wondering about the economic contributions from the states like Jharkhand, Bihar, etc? Now the whole issue will be discussed by the elected officials and they would waste more time and money.

BCCI churns or makes money equaling a Caribbean country’s GDP or matches Director Shankar’s next movie budget. But the joke is 99% of the so called BCCI Officials are honorary aka amateur, voluntary! [What a load of crap?] These people cannot communicate in Hindi or in English or any other language. In the TV channels I was watching, each and every BCCI official struggles to speak 2 sentences fluently in any language.

People working in fortune 500 companies [that has almost the same turn over as BCCI] knows the importance of communication. Unless you talk clearly you are nowhere in the race, but as far BCCI – [A Bunch of Crap Controlling Indian cricket] officials’ rules are different. I think more than cleaning the team, the task in hand is to clean the system. The cancer in the system should be identified, exposed and radiated. This is the result of unqualified people running the show.

Also for the players, instead of instant layoff strategy that will just earn sympathy, the first step would be to issue a notice to the senior players that they would be phased out in due course. The new team should be build around them slowly reducing the importance to the seniors. Moreover, most countries in the world have a subsystem to their national team. This subsystem develops bench strength. But as far as BCCI selection is concerned, a player has various other means to get in, performance never matters.

Bottom line, management professional should manage the circus called Indian cricket. All said and done nothing will happen, perhaps as an ex-fan, until the system is cleaned we can only do this - I request everyone to say the following mantra 10 times before and after every meal.
I will not watch Indian cricket, or support the Indian cricket management and its cricketers

Ps: I have some more venting to go, next would be about the million dollar coach and his experimentation BS; for the money he was paid he was supposed to build a strong team, but scrupulously built a சாமியார் மடம் [sAmiyar madam] instead and now tries to elude the people and the press.

Good day!

Reality Check! is true

2007-03-23T16:44:00.000-04:00

For now on for next 365 days I will never ever discuss or support any Indian cricketer or watch Indian cricket.

If possible to put the above button in your blog.

The Only One Pill is...

2007-03-22T13:03:00.000-04:00

This morning I read a very powerful article by Sambit Bal, 80% of article made lot of sense, while there were few lose parts that I don’t concur with him [Who cares! For my opinion is another separate discussion]. Blaming BCCI is accepted, I agree 100%, but they are not the only culprit. ICC and every other ICC member have been enjoying this flow of funds from Indian companies. BCCI is a well known replacement word for “disorganization” however in my opinion it is not correct to victimize Indian Cricket alone for this fiasco. I feel ICC is as greedy as BCCI when it comes to money. ICC has to enforce better rules and the member board like BCCI definitely needs a THOROUGH cleansing mela.

It starts right from the team selection, selection should be more transparent and in black and white clearly on paper. Indian team selection has always been under fire, for example a player like Viru was given many free coupons with no expiry date to regain his form. Basically in my software world, we don’t dare testing a product in a running production environment, once a product is on the production box, it has to be good, if not it has to go back to testing or staging. We cannot keep patching! The production box; Likewise players like Viru are sitting there trying to patch and reinvent themselves but in the process they have slowed down the entire machine. This should never happen. In Indian team selection history may be after Agarkar, no other player has got so many free rides, this includes the former captain Ganguly. In the past Players like Krish Srikkanth were mercilessly axed citing just few failures.

The team selection procedures should adopt an automatic rotation policy. If a player fails for more than “n” games, the “n” is decided based on their experience but less than 10, they will be out of the squad regardless, their reentry into the team should be based on their domestic performance [Staging]. This applies to the captain also, if he fails to win more than n number of series, say 5, he should be replaced. An open ticket given to players like Ajith Agarkar should be forfeited. Agarkar has been in the team for many years now and everyone knows he is a poor bowler but he manages to find his place. Imo, Agarkar is not even fit to play for any minnows.

Back to the article discussion, I quote from Sambit Bal [Cricinfo] ,Read the following lines and conclude yourself - “The reality is that India reaching the World Cup final would be an overachievement. Australia and South Africa possess superior teams, New Zealand have more balance and depth and Sri Lanka are the most improved team in world cricket. India have proven, but ageing, batsmen, a bowling attack that's susceptible to pressure and poor fielders”,

”But you can't call yourself a true fan if the sight of 17-year old Tamim Iqbal charging down pitch to belt Indian quick bowlers brought you no thrill.”

Sir, how is this worse from you simply writing off a team that came second in the last world cup?

Further quoting him, “But it might not be such a bad thing for cricket if they were to be knocked out in the first round. Cricket needs a reality check. It has an unhealthy, and unsustainable, business model that relies primarily on an increasingly delusional and one-dimensional fan-base. The bubble has to burst for a semblance of sanity to be restored. We must learn to once again enjoy cricket as a game." My question - Why Indian cricketers are alone scarified while the WHOLE of ICC enjoyed the benefit and if punished it should be every board that got paid;

World glorified Bangladesh for their win, and even the captain of Bermuda was saying “we can surprise”. However as expected the results are different today. I am surprised by columnists who have written off the Indian team and go on speculating that Indian team’s progress is due to the money involved. This is totally absurd and takes away everything from Indian cricket. After all in spite of good ICC rankings South Africa did not make it to super 6 in the last world cup but this time they are ready to believe that south Africa could win the cup but India the runners up in the last world cup does not get any respect in the deal because Indian companies are pumping money, Come on!,

Tomorrow Indian will face Sri Lankana; it is a must win game for India. I don’t want to write off India completely here based on their performance against Bangladesh, I am hoping that Indians will come good with improved performance. Dravids and the Sachins have to come to the party to prove themselves once again, no other choice. Victory is the only pill that will shut critics.

Go India.

ஜாக்கிறத! [in Thenga srini style]

2007-03-20T13:37:00.000-04:00

After the despicable performance against Bangladesh, team India took the game seriously and whacked Bermuda to stay in the race. However there are many more hills nd oceans to cross before we make it to Super 8, time will tell if team India would be moved to a Super 8 motel or to the super 8 league. Bowling is India’s weakest link, the way Agarkar bowls – Yuk! I really don’t how he will perform against Australia or South Africa. In the first game Dravid kept giving him the ball, I really don’t know why he did not try part timers, even the game against Bermuda; he got Sachin very late to bowl. Whatever! To move forward and make the Super 8 interesting we have to play carefully against Sri Lanka [ஜாக்கிறத!] but if Indians are out, who will watch this game?

Over the weekend as if Indian loss was not enough to bear, I watched a Tamil - ஆழ்வார்/ஆல்வார்/ஆள்வார் - Alwar. This movie provides us a truck load messages for life. It seems Ajith Kumar picked this script after thorough analysis, அதுவே! இந்த கதியா! - தாங்கலடா சாமி. Think what if our hero Alwar’s mom had told him “நீ பழம் மாதிரி இருக்கடா கண்ணா!” Ajith would then show up as மாம்பழம், பலப்பழம், மாதுலம்பழம் getup and kick the villains in pondy bazaar fruit market. ஒரு நல்ல comedy subject has been wasted by dressing him up like Rama, Krishna and Govinda.

Do you know Milk from அபிஷேகம் wakes up a man who was beaten to death by a million gundas using some crazy looking WMDs? Do you know that if police chases you, just keep running for 20 reels and suddenly wear a Re 1 incredible hulk mask, police will not remember you.

I recommend Ajith to consider wearing bullet proof sun, moon, and night glasses for next 2 years – ஒமாச்சி கண்ணா குத்தும் ஜாக்கிறத!. Hindu gods are now dragged to aid modern movie violence. One more Agarkar movie by Ajith [Agarkar - Is the new definition for the word mediocre, pathetic, தாங்கலடா சாமி, etc,]

Breaking news on the wire: England skipper Michael Vaughan has suffered a fresh injury scare ahead of Saturday's Group C match against Kenya after tripping over a pot-hole. Time to get THIS warning sign back;

Real Breaking news: Few Giant size coconut trees feel down near the commentary box yesterday, thanks to Rajith Fernando, L.Siva and co, அறு அறுனு அறுத்து தள்ளாராங்க!...

Good day!

GREAT INDIAN COME BACK - HOME ??

2007-03-18T10:47:00.000-04:00

An Over cautious Dravid and his men lost and salt on the wound they lost to Bangladesh. It all started when Dravid made 2 wrong choices. When there was a doubt about the pitch condition, and if you doubt that it might help bowlers, I would better make my already weak bowlers to try under such condition. I was kind of shocked when Dravid said he is going to bat.

As if this was not enough, Dravid picks Viru to open. His recent scoring spree competes with his cell phone number. No other player in Indian cricketing history has been given so many chances. The shot played by Viru makes me wonder about his ability. It was clearly a ball coming, very close, he could let it go, max it would beat him, however he went to play a cut short. Seriously even at the school level, our coach would warn us against cutting a ball that comes in; Indian coach contract should not be extended for this reason alone. Cutting my anger short, I would sum up as over all the performance of Indian batting was a big letdown; the batting was so pathetic I have no bad words left in my vocabulary to describe it. , I felt like calling ICC to change P [power play] to POOR play when India batted.

If you had watched the interview after the toss, Bangaladeshi captain had a clear plan while our man Dravid didn’t seem to have any. He gave some vague answer and told our batting is very good hence we will bat. Completely ignoring the ground conditions; height of insult came from L.Siva, in a sarcastic tone he asked the Bangladeshi captain if they can score 250 in this track, and captain gave a very good plan what they will do if India make high score. Bangaladesh looked well prepared and their cricket board has put forth honest effort to raise their cricketing standards. Captaincy was also very good and bowling was very tight, their Batting was very good and well planned. They must be thanking Agarkars and Zaheers for leaving their brain in the first class cloak room in the Trinidad airport.

Bowling changes by Dravid was pathetic;, . Another agony was India dropped easy catches; Dravid was also one of the culprits. In a world cup game if you drop 5 catches I think you should declared a loser then and there. Over all Dravid’s captaincy was out of sync. Sachin seemed too animated about Dravid’s moves while Gangully was just standing there wondering what was happening.

Indians losing to Bangladesh will cause some economic changes in the world cup. Many Indian companies have vested interested for India to do well, however now the game is wide open;, Indian companies would be really confused to waste money further.

Like most Indian fans, I am upset for this careless performance. Indians have their heads pinned down completely; from here on they need to win both their games and more over, like the New York giants making it to play off India need a favorable “other” team conditions.

Next few games will determine – if it is GREAT INDIAN COME BACK - HOME or not. If Indians don’t make it, my advance condolences to my friends who have spent their savings to go for the super 8 games; if this happens I think I would give up cricket for the year.

அந்த காலத்துல நான் collegeல பாடிக்கும் போது.... [Oh! those g(old)en days when I went to college]

2007-03-15T09:59:00.000-04:00

Aussies completed the formality over Scotland, while Kenya moved forward to beat “IndoPakIndies AustriCan” KA Canada. Nothing to write about these games, except for Kenya , a tough customer ,South Africans know is better.

'We've handled pressure better than Australia' – Smith, South African captain was upset for being called as the Chokers, ya how many times Indians have been called and branded Lord of the Locals etc?, People like Barry Richards has always criticized the Indian Team, few things have been tattooed , John McEnroe is a trouble maker, like wise Aussies are Bad Boys of cricket, while South Africans are chokers and Indians are just the Local Lords. Did South Africa make it to the super 6 the last time? Anyway, technically South Africans are number 1 in the ICC one day ranking. So let me give the dudes the respect they deserve for being #1. Next week would be very crucial week and world cup really being then.

I was reading an article in the Hindu by Nirmal Shekar, a popular and a veteran journalist. With due respects to him, in my humble opinion, sometimes I find some of his views very biased or heavy headed or at times they are from deep down the sea. Whenever the author writes in this fashion, I use to think that he does this sitting in a submarine somewhere deep down Indian ocean. The above mentioned article, I felt he goes too over board with his “views”, there were only 2 point that were worth and made some sense, rest were mostly …………. You might want to open the article in another window. [Click here]

#1: true, I agree with him partially. However this is part of the game.

#2: is it wrong for citizens to celebrate using the national flag? Celebrating ones country Flags is something to be proud about. I don’t know why Mr. நாட்டாமை [Natamai] oops Nirmal wants to put an end to it. Flag does create passion and unity. And cricket is one thing that unites India.

#3: Just like Mr. Nirmal doing his job, the commentators are doing their job. Using glorifying words are part of commentating. Contradicting himself, he goes on to compare to Sir Viv Richards. Get this right, the generation today would not know much about Viv Richards and it is not their mistake., Viv Richards played some of the best cricket you and I know, no question about it, I am from the same generation that adored Viv Richards, however just like you and me have the right to celebrate hero’s of (y)our time, the current generation have the right to celebrate heroes of their time. They have the right to adore Tenduls and Dhonis, Who are you to tell this generation what they should do? How are you different from the commentators that you just accused in this point?

#4: I really do not know what you are getting to, Cricket is the favorite sport of India, Watch cricket is a well developed and evolved habit, even my late grandma followed this game with scores and stats., this is similar to reading the Hindu every day in the morning with a cup of hot coffee, yes we do get emotional about it, and we are Humans! There is no harm in having emotions about something that you love.

#5: It is your press community that creates rumors, please tell your colleague sitting next to you in the submarine about this, and not to the people who reads those. An inter office memo would do the needful.

#6: Winning a championship is an achievement for any team or an individual. The joy is same for Dravid or your pet “quote” Roger Federar. Winning does not occur by luck.If you have tried it you would know better. Your periscope needs a serious over oiling and cleaning. Your 1983 quote was totally absurd. It was an achievement for the generation however Most in the current generation would have been sperm or embryo when this happened, if India wins the world, it would be the best win for the current generation of fans. Please stop this அந்த காலத்துல நான் collegeல பாடிக்கும் போது…business.

#7 – one good point, submarine might have come up to get some fresh air.

#8: I quote directly from the article “It never did matter to me that Shane Warne wasn't Indian; nor did it matter to me that Pete Sampras and Roger Federer were unlikely to get goose-bumps when the Jana, Gana, Mana is sung. Tendulkar apart, these are the men who have given me the greatest sports-watching pleasure in recent times.” So! What – Dude, you go and watch tennis, why bother cricket fans with ½ boiled eggs?

#9 “This is probably going to be the most boring World Cup in history for some time to come” - wow! Dude! now you have an alternative carrier right in your hand,” Astrology”. Please take it up and send your prediction to the “star” and other fishes found under the sea.

#10 finally sir, this one contradicts most of your points, you first said don’t give to the credit to players and glorify them, and then you say as fans don’t get over excited but finally you drop pearls with this “Let us resolve not to over-estimate our own powers of inspiration. If the Indian team does win the World Cup, many of us will want to take a little bit of credit as the team's supporters. But, believe me, we make very little difference. This Cup, as every other was in the past, will be won on talent, character, the ability to rise to the occasion and a spot of good luck.”

I made up point #11: it is about time for Mr. Nirmal Shekar to stop writing about cricket. As this the “nth” time he brings in tennis and confuses himself and others about cricket.Here are my 3 points to Mr. Nirmal
#1: don’t compare and quote tennis with cricket.
#2: don’t compare and quote tennis with cricket.
#3: Don’t compare and quote tennis with cricket.

Good day.

ஆத்திரக்காரனுக்கு புத்தி மட்டு

2007-03-14T11:04:00.000-04:00

A great start for the WI, while Pakistan was beaten completely. Pakistan fielding made the touring wiggles sing “hey there shaky shaky”, some fielders were outstanding while most should be standing out for their fielding. Lara’s captaincy was perfect on the dot, bowling changes were done well, and all the players came to the party at the right time and blew the candle at the same time to shut down Pakistan. Dish network coverage seem to have improved, they are slowing coming to their senses and started to take the cricket fans here seriously. I am yet to hear the so called radio commentary they offered in the package.

Pointing vs. Gavaskar gains momentum, Aussie skipper Ricky Pointing could have let go the ball however his recent outpour was not as good as his batting display, he decided to offer a stroke for the faster one from SMG, but managed to open a can of worms. Even a new born would say “ au slGA GA GU GU” translation: “Aussie cricketers are famous for their sledging which is often sugar coated as mental disintegration by Ponting’s predecessor”. Ponting has also commented about Gavaskar being a selector for the Indian team, which is not true, he was just a batting consultant for some time for the team.

Allen “சுலோச்சன” Border has joined the fight, and has said “Gavaskar has a mistaken cultural belief in the way Australia plays the game”, Aussies dudes this is what world is feeling about your team- “Aussie cricket teams in general have mistaken cultural belief on how cricket is played in other parts of the world”. When you look at the Indian history, we know that there were many Mogul kings who have conquered and ruled India, yes for country of such vast size - it is an achievement; however the ways and methods the used to achieve such a victory was disgusting. History remembers these acts more than the culture they bought along with them to India. It is time for the Australian cricket to realize that “journey is important than the destination”. First get the gamesmanship right.

Gavaskar has not been saying this now, in some of his book Gavaskar has mentioned about how Aussies bowlers and fielders would not hesitate to comment about ones mothers and father. The world has not forgotten the popular Lillie and Miandad on field fight and we all know how Shane Warne poses.

Ponting also commented that Indians are not good touring. There are many occasions I can quote where Australian captain has nose cried about pitches in the tour. And more over this is the world Cup, a prestigious event for the game of cricket, being a captain of a powerful side and, also the defending champions - Ponting failed to respect the event and started trashing teams. This is not in good spirit. As of now Ponting is very angry and agitated [ஆத்திரக்காரனுக்கு புத்தி மட்டு]

World cup is totally a different mental game. Can I say that Australia’s entry into finals in few previous cups were due to luck and due to pathetic mathematical calculations? Can this take away the champion title, no, likewise, Indians or any other ICC member have been playing cricket as long the Aussies have been, Ponting should give the due respect to them instead of nose crying.

And finally Mr. Ricky ”the often LBW” Ponting needs to remember that India were the runners up in the previous world cup. And in recent weeks before world cup, it is Australia that lost more one day games than India. Australia might be a powerful team, but cricket is much bigger than them.

Dish NETWORK and its Res”TRICK” tions

2007-03-12T11:44:00.000-04:00

I am all set for the World Cup Cricket, watched the opening ceremony on DISH NETWORK. First and foremost the transmission quality of Dish network was quite pathetic. What is the point in paying for the package and ending up with poor quality pictures? I cross checked game clippings on other networks, [SKY, SET, DIRECTTV] pictures were crystal clear and quite a pleasure to watch cricket. Even the cricket clips shown on Sun TV news was better off than the live coverage. Dish network transmission is the worst that we could ever see.

Another joke in the Dish network’s offer – The Free internet access to watch the game on the internet, however the IP is locked down to your house DSL/CABLE connection. People, 90% of domestic connections are on dynamic addressing; very minimal number of people will have static IPs to their domestic internet. IP changes frequently for most; moreover logically speaking, having subscribed it on the TV why would anyone watch the same thing on the Computer? Direct TV seems to have much clearer and sharper pictures, how- why I wonder what you are?? Pictures are from the same origin? Why Dish network pictures are too dim, lack sharpness and like 70s a lot of ghosts?

World cup Cricket will be shown only on the primary receiver, other receivers in the house will be blacked out. This is due a contract with the Cricket broadcasters. But when we subscribe to Dish Network, they are in a contract with us to show the programs on all the receivers that we lease - does this not break my contract with them? Fear might be that some moronic subscriber will try to scam the transmission and share with others, but once again technically no one can move the receiver to a new location, the receiver will dial a number and match it with the home phone number on the account. Genuine subscribers are taken for ride by these networks.

What is this radio commentary deal in their advertisement? Till date No one knows about this??

The whole idea sounds very bizarre to me with these resTRICKStions, I called dish network to complain about the picture quality and all other details, sitting in some far-east country our good operator “Hung” - the telephone line couple of times. After some DishuM DishuM - I have raised a formal complaint on these issues, it seems it they get more calls on the poor quality they would consider fixing the problem.

Dish network needs a serious revamp of its equipment. We need clear cricket tranmission!

Menace

2007-03-07T14:20:00.000-05:00

SunTV’s menace continues: Sun T V’s is now filling the air with lot of new programming, looks like Vijay TV has gained popularity, hence as often Fox Television does press the “copy” or the “import” button. The bottom line for us –it made things worse,. The program called “Hollywood Junction”, what the heck is it all about? What is the significance of the title? What is the point of this program? This looks like a cheap and crude uma gold version of the popular BBC show “Whose line is it anyway”. But alas actually resembles the weekly edition of the cine Producer benefit show minus the record dance that is often shown on Sun TV during weekends. [A note on Uma gold : an imitation gold sold in Alima jewelers Ranganathan street, their ad can be seen in cinema theaters around Chennai even today, in this you can catch the store owners in the ad posing and making a phone call while everyone in the ad movie will be in a super pink color பகல் வேஷம் getup.]

Manivannan and his side kick are as dry as “Vijaya” “Thangamudiyaladaaaa” Rajendar’s Cricket metaphors in Veerasami, supposedly the participants are cine comedians. At times the automatic laugh track also fails to laugh for their acts. Comedy show is not getting comedian s on the stage in a Chukky Cheese looking set to do things. This program is an insult to genuine creativity.

As if this not enough we the new interview show called “அன்புடன்” an interview show hosted by [retired] Tamil actress Gautami. She produces the program. The first show was a total bore. Experts feel [அது யாருயா?] this show was created to challenge Vijay TV show called “Coffee with Anu[Hassan]”, Anu Hassan can be really secure now -the Sun TV production was right Royally Pathetic . We do need some coffee to stay awake and watch the crap.

Gautamiji, what is this funda about the Sony Vio laptop displaying the clip? A “seriously” childish act; [Note it - usage of an oxymoron] while title song was mere waste of time, and the camera shots were too long and far away, interview க்கு எதுக்கப்பா ஜிம்மி ஜிப்! Shot? In spite of Kamal being there, the show was lackluster less. KamalJi managed and placed his subtle gloats, few I noticed were like travelling in first class on plane [எந்த producer தலைல துண்டோ!] and even before the release Dasavatharam is already an industry mile stone. Honestly there are many more subjects we can ask Kamal! But! .Gautami failed, as if this not enough an emotional Director KB was talking seriously about an accident during the புன்னகை மன்னன் shoot, suddenly a voice loud and clear

“முதுக்குத் தேச்சீ விடும் குரங்குகுகுகுகு”, “Heroவிக்கு Heroine தான் Hero”,
“ஏழரையை சாமளிக்க திராவிட ஜோசியம் “ – உடனெ வாங்கிப் படியுங்கள்...
தினக்கூ…தினக்கூ… தினக்கூ… [super super ma]

What the heck is wrong with this people? Show producer dudes, kindly check a David Frost’s interviews on BBC.

This and That.

2007-02-27T11:08:00.000-05:00

At last, we get to see some sort of warm weather in DC, don’t get too excited, It is just about 4c or 5c, but believe me this is really tropical when compared to what we had for past 2 weeks. The past weekend was a cold wintery one, Weather man from every little TV and Radio station using very powerful Doppler Radars predicted Ice Rain and wintery mix, but Mother (-In-Law) nature said Hmmmm and dumped 6 inches of snow instead. We had to stay indoors and watch TV! And of course! Shovel snow.

The newly migrated Sun TV show –அசத்தப் போவது யாரு!- Sun TV managed to pull in the Crew from கலக்கப் போவது யாரு! of Vijay TV. I have always felt that standup comedy genre has been missing in Tamil for long, and when I saw this program on Vijay TV, it did look very promising and I want this genre of entrainment to pick up. But Sun TV thinks otherwise, they manage to dilute the genre by mixing up with cine personalities once again, the only program on Sun TV that has very little cinema is the news program, Do you think that we need movie personalities to carry this show?. Based on the hyped cine popularity, poor participants are forced to use superfluous terms to describe the judges and the special guest. In fact I was about to sell my TV after hearing the participants glorify Mr.“Chatty” Babu and Laughing Gas Bob as comedy “ஜாம்பவான்”, I felt it was unnecessary and honestly it a sounded “மச்சி...மச்சி இது tooooo mucheee”. I hope this program is judged by people from different walks of life. The overall teleplay failed to catch my attention 100%.

Last Saturday after first 10 minutes, it was slowly becoming more or less “அசத்து யாரு”, 2 persons were talking like a cat, ok! i agree it is talent!, but How can we take this for more than 10 minutes?, and do you know that S.J.Suriya, the chief guest identified expressions in those catty conversations. And title OSiBiSa tune, why? Can they create an original Hook phrase?I feel Vijay TV had the show better organized. It seems the real show starts next week only, let us hope for the best.

Oscar “திரு நீள்ளளள..கண்ட்டர்” night: The 6 hours of hyped media spectacle, the show was going on and on and on and on.. I think it is still going on some channels. ABC HD coverage was a dull and sound mixing was “clearly” Horrible. Ellen Degeneres sounded boring than the fish character she did in Finding Nemo.

Short Films and documentaries are serious subject matter. People working such genre put forth serious effort and passion, however academy did not think so, they got hold of 2 little kids to give away awards for this category, while Jerry Seinfeld took his liberty and filed “Documentary” under boring category. This was not in good taste. Winning the award is one thing at the same time person presenting award is another big deal. They should appropriate personalities and standard when giving such awards. I don’t know if anyone saw this, Eddie Murphy walked away in the middle. He was disappointed for not getting the award. Honestly the Oscar show was not that interesting. Here I like to quote my friend Udhaya’s golden comment - “it was all Latin America, Jews, Gays and AlGore’s speech, meaning Oscar awards was nothing but a republican night mare.

Finally, “சிவாஜி கனேசன் கலைமன்றம்” ,a popular DC based Drama troupe will premier their next Tamil Drama கல்கியின் அலையோசை [Dramatized and Directed by Sridhar”]on April 14th 2007 at the Murgan temple Auditorium, Washington DC. I am composing background music for the drama, a pre independence era subject, it is always a great pleasure to do background score, being it a live drama, - it is a challenge. There are more than 20 scenes with symphonic and fusion/semi classical based musical scores in the drama. The composing session was over last week and now I am recording the strings and percussion sections. Will be available for download after April 14th 2007.

Good day.

a Load of XXL BULL

2007-02-20T12:45:00.000-05:00

Sourav “DADA” Ganguly , Great come back after being written off by the BCCI selection team, and the treasured Mr. Greg “show’em the finger“ Chappell, Ganguly top scores in 3 continuous series and shuts his critics from a position of strength.
Just rewind and read the press coverage when Ganguly was dropped.

Mr Kiran More in his own golden words: Was it a difficult decision to leave out Ganguly?- Not really. It’s always hard to drop a senior player who has played for the country for a number of years but as a selector you have to make tough calls. We decided that we need some fresh legs in the team and build a side for the future. So is that the end, permanently for Sourav?- Yes, as far as this committee is concerned. We have taken a decision and that is the way we feel. Kiran More, the chairman of the five-man committee, told Cricinfo in an interview last evening “Sourav Ganguly will not be recalled into the Indian team as long as the present selection committee is in office” - More’s statements are mere Dead snakes when compared to the next guy in the list.

Mr. Greg “Roll the ball brother” Chappell learnt to use the political nuances found in abundant among Indian cricket administrators. Also perhaps, he was primed by his elder sibling Ian [Chappell], whose is notorious for offering free insights about Indian cricket. I need not explain about his preset animosity and bitterness towards Ganguly. Moreover, Ganguly’s batting form was pathetic and his buddies in BCCI officials were in tough fight with the other faction, certainly the circumstances were moist enough for any kind of conspiracy to take over. Atmosphere was so perfect for Chapel to talk freely and vilify Ganguly’s actions. Why? There can be only Lion in the jungle, Chappell assumed him to the Lion.

Chappell in his own words: India's cricket coach Greg Chappell believes Sourav Ganguly is no longer fit to lead the side and has threatened to quit if the captain is not changed. Chappell, the former Australian captain and batting great who took charge of the Indian team in June, sent an e-mail to the Board of Control for Cricket in India (BCCI) saying Ganguly did not deserve a place in the team either, the source said. "Chappell has told the BCCI that he will find it difficult to continue if Ganguly is retained. The coach believes Ganguly is not physically or mentally fit to lead and had lost the respect of the younger players in the team. As if the above not enough Chappell was let go easily when he tainted Ganguly by stating “Ganguly wanted to continue playing for India because he needed the money”. There is reason for calling him prince of Kolkotta, he hails from an aristocratic family where there is no shortage for Vitamin-M. Top publishing companies in the country are owned by his family.

Can I know WHY Mr. Chapel took the coaching job? May be to serve Indian Cricket? Duh! , I am sure he did not come here to work for nothing. After all it is Chapel who traveled 10,000kms to make money. The main purpose for taking up the coach portfolio in India was simply M O N E Y. But Chapel, cheaply branded an Ex-Indian caption who rebuilt the team from scratch after the match fixing allegations, he got away easily.

Today Ganguly is back with power, his batting does the talk and puts an end to his critics, having said that, his critics have also turned the plates- both Kiran “the Ulta” More and Greg “the reverse” Chappell are shamelessly using Ganguly’s come back saga to their benefit., by dropping him it seems they did good to Dada,
damn, are we that naive to take this Bull ?

Finally,
Australian cricket team is having a nightmare before the world cup, they slipped to number 2, After being beaten by “ENGLAND”, they were whipped by the Kiwis. This loss is much bigger blow, I don’t buy the reason of saying main players have been rested etc , I feel the current side is not very weak . More over Gil Christ has nose cried about the tour. It seems no one in the team wanted this tour; just think for a moment, had Aussies won against Kiwi? It would just be a “come back tour”! When you are at very high altitude, the fall is quite drastic.

PADAL - AVAILABLE NOW

2007-01-26T23:56:00.000-05:00

CLICK HERE TO BUY

Official Press Release
Contact: Shankar Nagarajan
Phone: (617) 285-1266
shankar@h1bees.com

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE January 26, 2007

SRIKANTH DEVARAJAN’S PADAL ©
TAMIL MUSIC ALBUM
WASHINGTON DC, USA JANUARY 26TH 2007

Srikanth Devarajan, an Indian Composer based in Gaithersburg, MD USA is releasing his fourth music album titled "pAdal"© on January 26th 2007. Srikanth Devarajan is a computer engineer by profession and a gifted musician. This is Srikanth’s fourth commercial music album. His previous album titled “H1BEES” received rave reviews and press from media around the world. Padal© features 10 tracks in Tamil, ranging from youthful to romantic, humorous and classical songs steeped in culture. The album has an innovative mix of style and substance, embodifying the creativity of the composer.

Padal© also features Karthik, one of the leading film playback singers in India besides talented vocalists, lyricists and instrumentalists from USA. The composer, executive producers and the production crew involved in this album have put forth their best efforts over the last year and have worked meticulously to make this production a grand musical success. H1BEES iNC takes great pride in releasing the music album. For further information please visit http://www.h1bees.com
-End-

Download Press Kit

Weekend

2007-01-22T13:36:00.000-05:00

Finally Winter weather around DC area . My weekend was just similar to an Indian python’s weekend, eat large quantity of anything and lie still for hours together on the couch, and with great difficulty lift the head in an lazy angle when someone moves by or watch games on TV. NFC and AFC football finals and of course Cricket! and the greatest game show known to mankind Thriuvalar Thirumathi on Sun TV.

As expected BCCI converted a car park for our batsmen to raise their batting averages. Ganguly and Gambier played with grit and slammed lots of runs for India, sent a message to Greg Chapel , who came here few years ago to “fix” the team for the world cup, but just 50 days away from the world cup, we are still contemplating our batting order. Dravid and Dhoni came to the party and went on to score “swashbuckling” runs. There was hardly any ball movement hence the usual quick fall of wickets was missing, however umpire Suresh Plastry, oops Suresh Sastri compensated the fall. Umpire Suresh Sastry fell at regular intervals on his own accord, Hope is doing ok.

Our national waste – Ajith Agarkar, proved once again that he lacked cricketing basics, he missed a run out which was fine by me, everyone was missing everything, but the way he missed was pathetic, he was looking at the ball when it was thrown to him by Raina, and to my surprise he went on screaming at Raina for the throw. Sreesanth doped oops dropped a dolly, what happened to him - Over confidence? Sachin also missed an easy chance in the slips, Why? India won the game in spite of Chandranpaul ‘s big knock – but his batting stance made me uncomfortable. It was very ugly, I felt like watching Rosy O’Donnell trying “Bharathnatiyam” for Donald trump’s “nattuvangam”.

The commentators were good, L . “Who swallowed the Mic” Siva, Jeff Dujon, Tony Cozier and Saba Kareem, it was much better than what we heard in South Africa. They were busy discussing , if it was a bowling or a batting pitch but I was wondering if there was actually anything called pitch.

NIMBUS having paid BCCI more than some 3rd world country’s GDP for the telecast rights were left with no money for the actual coverage. Live signals from Nagpur was totally useless and the camera work took me 20 years back and reminded DD Kendra. Today international sports coverage around the world are, at the least guaranteed for crystal clear pictures, even the telecast on NASA TV, all the way from the space station has phenomenal picture quality, Why Nimbus can do it right?. Seriously when the world of sports is talking High Definition etc, the coverage had no definition. Very Poor Picture Quality.

Talking about poor quality, just before the Cricket, I caught up with the new Sun TV game show Thiruvalar Thirumathi, today it bagged the award for the most Uninteresting Show ever shown on TV. The creators of show seems to have never heard the words like creativity, interesting, game show etc . Crave for the record dance continued, and the poor participants were asked to dance, instead they walked around Dias like watering fancy plants and had to be termed as dance. The whole concept seemed uninteresting within 10 mintues. Thanks god Cricket started at 10.30pm! EST. Hostess of the show ex-Actress Jayashree. She tried her best, One good thing to note was her Tamil, it was clear and warm. She did to suffer from the “illness” syndrome suffered by most Sun TV VJs.

Good day.

This and That

2007-01-17T13:33:00.000-05:00

Usually when I come back from work at around 6.00pm [Yeh! Shut those jealousy eyes] , like most I channel surf and mostly avoid CNN, because Lou Dobbs will be busy preaching against American jobs going offshore, forgetting the fact that his parent company was first to do so, then right royally avoid Sun TV, because 10 out 10 times it would be a mega-serial where husband and wife have 20 extra martial affairs each, and live as big joint family with a set of professional assassins technically called their in-laws plotting against each other. At times I end up watching Law and Order on TNT, but yesterday “Without a Trace” marathon was on TNT, not my cup of Chaiya. I continued channel surfing.

“Vidhi”, I had to pass through Sun TV, a dance program was on, cine choreographer Lawrence nodding his head with the host Ragav. At first go , I assumed that this was a JARDs, [Just an Another Record Dance Show], but soon I was amazed, This the first time I see something like this on Sun TV, It was simply a Wow!. The participants where physically challenged, and were trained by Lawrence himself. It seems he runs an academy and trains such physically challenged persons. Some of them were physically handicapped, and I was really surprised to know that few of them were Blind. Their Dancing and synchronization was perfect to the core, if not better than most dances on Sun TV. Amazing! Hats off to Lawrence for taking time to train them and show them a path towards a new future. After seeing these guys perform, here is the message, Seriously if anyone says that they don’t have the time to pursue their passion and have been blaming the world for this, it is time to shut the #@#$# up and start working hard towards it.

The greatest reality show on Planet Earth, the next season of American Idol - Randy “I am yet to hear his CD” Jackson, Paula “the always Full & Tight” Abdul and Simon ‘the Smart Ass’ Cowell were in full flow. Many contestants were able to do anything other than singing, and the judge‘s comments were more Blunt than before. Many had their middle name as “cry baby!”, at times the show was more or less a soap opera. Simon and Randy drooled over the Spanish girl right from the moment she walked in, later as she left the room Fox TV cleaning department was called upon to clean up the mess.

As if this was not enough for the evening, at the same time Vettiyal, oops Pattiyal was on Sun TV. A great story of 2 homeless guys growing up together to become violent mercenaries. A bloody violent movie absolutely not suitable for prime time TV. Moreover the added attraction , movie opens with a fantastic funeral procession and “housing building” dance, a very good start and a must watch for an auspicious Hindu religious evening.

Finally, the news is that Shilpa Shetty, the Bollywood film star faced Racial abuses in a reality TV show called Big Brother in UK. This is not the first time, and this will not be the last time. Move on!

Good day!

CD review,.

2007-01-12T11:45:00.000-05:00

Few days ago I got the CD of Pokiri., staring Vijay, directed by Prabhu Deva . Music: Mani Sharma

Mani Sharma comes good with tight compositions. Let me go in the order of tracks that I liked the best.

1st “en chella peRu Apple”. My prediction is that this song will come around for a long time for sure. A playful hip hop in “kindof warm“ Sivaranji. And well done Suchitra!, Wow!, Zimply Powerful! Vocals . Her voice gives the song the new dimension that composers would want these days. All the adlibs were well done! And watch for the unique vocals by A.V.Ramanan in this track. I really enjoyed words “en sontha orru otty - enna sweater potuku” by Pa. Vijay!. Very trendy and impressive. Have you noticed this, the word “bull- bull thara” is always present in songs involving Prabhu Deva & Mani Sharma.

Next song that impressed me was “Doli Doli” ,. This track has tight and slow Bangra groove, somewhat similar to aiiiiiooo pathikiche pathikiche. Ranjith - “the vocal power house” totally Rocks. Today vocals is all about the attitude and power, both the vocalists [Suchitra again!] brings the needed attitude to the table. I also felt that the arrangement was also very interesting in this track. Prudent use of vocal slicing, and watch of the smart placement of “Synth Arps” in the second interludes impressed me quite a lot. In the first interlude keep an eye on the solo violin then the sitar part that jumps to few Sindu bharavi notes for few seconds, very tight changeovers. The second BGM the sitar plays 16th notes and compliments the fast paced beat. It is very hard to play such phrases on a Sitar.

Vasatha Mullai , the new trend is to use words/music from old classics, only the first lines are reused. The rest of song was written by Na. Muthukumar. Track opens with a theme music similar to the good old “varAi nee varAi” [piano opening]. This sounded nostalgic to me as I have heard [then] Mani now “Mani Sharma” playing it quite often on the piano. Rahul Nambiyar does the lead vocals. In this album Mani Sharma has remembered to use all his band-days buddies, he has used the services of Krishnamurthy, a veteran stage singer, who use to sing TMS songs on stage. He sings first few lines of vasanthamullai, which is played as vocal slices by sending it thorough various filters and plug-ins. One of the new things I found in this track was the vocals slice at end of the second BGM, very new and I have never heard it before in Tamil. Very good programming.

The song “nee mutham ondru” written by pa. Vijay, Ranjith vocals,. The bass and the song groove dangerously close to kuluvalile. But changes in the middle to a large extent. There is also a remix second version for this track. However I felt the song was missing the width found in the above tracks.

Adaungada, the usual [nee entha ooru] Vijay opening dance number and the mambazam that has a Vaidivelu crying sounds, another cliché number.

Over all a good attempt, we will have to wait and see if Mani Sharma was able to port the fame to Tamil from the mega hit Telugu version of this album.

CD was a worth Buy, recording was simply fantasic.

Ugly, Bad and Good

2007-01-08T17:02:00.000-05:00

UGLY:
Our million dollar Coach hinted that “Hard decisions would to be taken”. My question, did he have any remorse in chasing away Ganguly? After all, due to personal politics Chappell kept Ganguly out of the team , however today irony is such that, Ganguly scored the most number of runs for India. The Coach gives him a left hand appreciation,. “He was here to do a job and he did it well”, so may I know the job portfolio of the coach and other batsmen in the team? If anyone should be sent home , the first axe should be Greg Chappell . Right from the day he became the coach, players morale has been right royally low. One of the TV commentator mentioned that he spoke to Chapel l during the morning golf session, What? how can you? When your team is facing a tough situation, our coach is gone golfing, what can you say?. He have never understood the Indian chemistry, and will never. The first tough decision should be to fire the coach. Seriously get someone [like T.A Sekar] who has better coaching resume than Greg Chappell.

Next the boasted Indian batting potential, it is high time to stop boasting about it. IMMPOE [ In my most perfect opinion ever] Sachin’s and Dravid’s innings was the main reason for the final test debacle. What the heck was the game plan in their mind? Why Sachin and Dravid played like Allan Knott facing Abdul Kadhir? was it that hard to push for singles. Who suggested to Dravid to play for a Draw? Why did he use his pads more than his bat? I feel this batting partnership ruined our victory chance. I wish Dravid and [especially] Sachin had used their potential to take on Pollock and the damn new unknown spinner. Sachin got into a crab shell for some unknown reason, I am trying to find a lower word than tentative – may be I can use the word “unsure”. Sachin played his most “unsure” innings of his life., even his staunch bakthas [like Yours faithfully] were totally disappointed by this approach.
Dravid Captaincy was very well below par, . At 3.00am sitting in front of my, was able to think better bowling changes. I was surprised, when he over used Kumble. Why try hard when he was not effective enough. Why did he not try Viru and Sachin in the morning session? Viru was just given one while Sachin comes to bowl when everything was over and to my shock ball was spinning like a fan. Poor Karthik was screaming “the Magic Man is back” , however it was too late. There was no “prestige” for the magic this time. Dravid’s XXL size blunder to split an opening pair that gave the only century partnership of the tour. There are reports out today that it was Dravid who wanted Viru in the team. Colonel Sarkar was very particular in dropping him. Dravid had the same soft corner for Kaif who recently received the most boring player of 2006. Kaif broke more eggs than Wendy’s breakfast parlor. Dravid should be more aggressive, in fact I would get back Ganguly to be the captain. Dravid and Sachin are good resources, they can do tasks for you and but cannot not manage resources. A captain must be good manager. Time to Drop VVS and recall Utappa . Utappa is been scoring lot of runs in domestic games or even Tamil Nadu captain Badrinath deserves a chance more than VVS or Viru.

BAD:
Umpires, umpiring was pathetic during the serious. Indians had lot of crucial decisions going against them, Boucher, Prince in particular who had no LBWs, in fact Kallis was out caught behind test , but was never given by the umpire. If this had gone in our way, things would be different. In the first innings Karthik got a very poor decision, while in the previous test Dravid was not out in the both the innings. Another shame, the last wicket taken by South Africans was of the 7th ball, What is the purpose of having a 3rd umpire?, a score board?, a ball counter?, a TV scorer?, an official scorer?, none caught this? I doubt it. I feel Smith is a one lucky dude to get such umpires. Generally Indians were at the receiving end.

(Few) Good (Men) Dinesh Karthik , a class act. He proved that he knows how to accelerate and decelerate at will, seriously I am seeing another GRV here. Other batsmen had no clue while he had the guts and the technique to take the bowling on, more over scored some important runs. In the first innings he got a very poor decision from the umpire. Imo, Dinesh Karthik is a better keeper than Dhoni, as an added bonus he was really chirpy behind the stumps. He kept the spirit alive, often our players would resemble a baboon woken from hibernation. Karthik was screaming words of encouragement in Tamil to Kumble, in Malayalam to Sreesanth and in nice Sowkarpet Hindi to other players. I have never seen Dhoni doing such things. I wrote in one of my earlier blogs that Sreesanth should be trained more and given more responsibilities than working with Agarkar. Sreesanth should be made permanent in the team. Sreesanth apart from his bowling, he brings in a fiery attitude, after S.Vishwanath I have never seen anyone in the Indian team with such an aggression. He is a genuine seamer , has taken 18 wickets and hats off to his attitude and energy. Our bowling department has improved a lot, I wish Zahir and Sreesanth are made permanent.

All said and done, The WI series starts soon, The Board of Cricket Control India will plough a car park and call it a pitch, where the ball has no chance to raise above the ankles, our players without proper foot work, using their hand eye coordination will slam about 350 runs per innings. We will be proud!

H N Y

2006-12-29T10:26:00.000-05:00

Curtains down for 2006, all said and done, 2006 was a very busy year in my calendar. More than anything my music album H1BEES was the talk of the town and received very good press and ravings reports all round during first quarter of this year. I was interviewed in various press including BBC, NPR, Baltimore Times and other international media outlets. 2006 was a great to remember and cherish rest of my life.Besides, this year I was busy working on my next music album titled pAdal. Here is the news – the album is complete and the candidate is officially gone for duplication.

Folks, H1BEEES iNc, and Executive Producers Shankar Nagarajan & Srivatsa Srinivasan joins me proudly in announcing “PADAL By Srikanth Devarajan” is scheduled to be released in USA, Canada and Europe on Jan 26th 2007.

The Album has 10 tracks ranging from youthful songs, romantic songs, humorous songs. We believe that this album has a great mix of style and substance and will go very well with listeners.This CD also includes a track sung by Playback singer Karthik [Chennai]. Album also features various talents in USA. I sincerely enjoyed and enjoying every production moments. Everyone working with me in this album have put forth their best efforts and have worked meticulously to make this production a success.

Here is a summary from the title card.

PADAL BY SRIKANTH DEVARAJAN
1. 18 Vayadhu – Alisha, Maha & Harini , - Lyrics: Sriram & Srikanth
2. Kadal Ache – Karthick [India], Lyrics: Sriram & Srikanth -
Backing Vocals: Cornelio, Miguel
3. C.H.E.N.N.A.I - Siddharth & Alisha, Lyrics : Srikanth –
Backing Vocals: Harini, Sridhar, Ganesh, Shankar,Srikanth
4. pal maNakkudhu – Siddharth, Backing Vocals: Suresh, Sridhar
5. Nila Charal – Vocals: Kumar & Harini, Lyrics: Priya,(Jathi: Santhanam )
6. Vellaiku pogamAten – Vocals: Suresh, Lyrics: Srikanth,
Backing Vocals: Sridhar, Shankar
7. Serial Killer : Vocals: Chennthil, Babu, Lyrics:Arun Vaidyanathan
8. Love Girl - Vocals: Vidyu, Lyrics: Priya & Srikanth
9. Nadodi - Vocals: Siddharth & Vidyu, Lyrics: Udhaya.
10. Instrumental – Flute- Raman , Piano/Keyboards: Srikanth

Music Composed and Produced by
SRIKANTH DEVARAJAN, USA

Performance Credits:
Guitar: Suresh & Rick, Flute: Raman, Mirudangam: Gopinath,Ghatam: Giridhar, Handsonic & Darbuka :Srikanth, Tapatai/Drum: Karthick,
Keyboards & Programming: Srikanth

Sound Engineers: Srikanth & Bharath
Studio: Studio1234, USA & Sai Presto
CD Design: NiTPix

Executive Producers:
Shankar Nagarajan, Srikanth Devarajan, Srivatsa Srinivasan
All Rights Reserved Srikanth Devarajan, © 2007.

With this note,
I wish you and your family a very happy NEW YEAR!. Thanks for your sustained encouragement.
- Srikanth

DNA "CULTURE"

2006-12-12T12:49:00.000-05:00

During Past week, Green Peace enthusiasts had some good news. Taco Bell, the leading Mexican food chain due to contamination stopped serving items on their menu. Experts say there was a considerable reduction in the red, blue, orange, black and green house gases. However today Taco Bell announced that they have resumed full services, which in turn shall increases global warming warming and the arctic meltdown will soon be a reality. But You know What? this is nothing when compared with what Tamilians Today are dealing with?, A much bigger problem in hand, an outbreak called "CDE" - Culture Degrading Epidemic. Today, the Tamil DNA [Dravidian- Non-Aryan] culture has touched its lowest level.

Experts from the Department of EnE [Entertainment in installments] were busy analyzing “a turning point” in a Tamil Soap called Malaragal. The prognosis was that the Story line in the Tamil Soap “Malargal” has taken our DNA [Dravidian- Non-Aryan] “culture” to a new low level.

In general, the DNA [I meant the real chromosome material] of these Tamil serials are well knitted around adultery, infidelity, treachery, betrayal - technically called as "Gilma" & "Jalsa". In general the core is always - women degrades another women to the maximum extent known and unknown to the women and the man kinds,Men for their part have "n" number of affairs and walk around produly as though it is their birth right and tradition. The "Captives" aka the TV Viewers seem to enjoy this sadistic portrayal of such culture.

When you dissect the anatomy or the frame work of a serial production crew from the long stretch LIIIIIIIIMMMMMOOOOOOO title card that rolls every day , we would bump into a job portfolio called Creative Head. I guess the job description for this office or this person is to come up with various methods to insult women and family values . They formulate various Teleplay mechanisms to ensure Sadism, Sinisterism and others isms are properly in place. I guess our Soap directors , creative head and other esteemed writers Think through/using body parts which the general public would use it to Sit. [Be my guest to add “H” to it] . Frankly, only such process would generate these ridiculous material. God save us from these Morons who create such rotten scripts in the name of creativity. Such elements are walking [நடமாடும்] disgrace to real and genuine creativity.

Today , the DNA [Dravidian- Non-Aryan] "culture" found in Tamil Nadu TVs is such that topics like adultery, infidelity are justified acts of grown up men and women. The go further, the make sure they show physical violence as graphical as possible. At times it is so disgusting it resembles an extremist propaganda video. Moreover in general everyone in the family hates or has sinister plans over the other, then why the F###.. call it a Family? Bottom line today, The so called family values that we Tamils boast about has taken a nose dive and the so called boastful DRAVIDIAN–NON-ARYAN [DNA] “culture” is dancing naked via these sitcoms.

Presumptions:

2006-12-04T11:53:00.000-05:00

Zero and Four +one rain saved game. Why India cricket team time and time again fails abroad? At home, Players like Viru slam and tarnish any kind of bowling attack but on tour they have no clue about their technique. I guess, the measures and standards we set at home are misleading , and hence our players are clueless aboard where evaluation measures seems superior.

During my child hood days in Chennai [70s] - I had this view - LIC building in Chennai was the tallest building known to mankind. Then when I went Bombay I realized there are much taller buildings, years later when I stood on the Sears Towers, Chicago, I realized the meaning of sky scrapper. My point is, life is governed by presumptions. Sometimes, decisions made are based on presumption rather than on the facts.

We worship our cricketers based on presumptions rather than on the facts. Cricket pitches in India have given a false image about/to our players, the BCCI has created a scenario which is - in order to get more people applauding [get more Test and one day centers] , give them a LIC building to climb[Flat tracks], it is easy to climb and make merry. But as soon as they land elsewhere [say Manhattan] they have tough time climbing bigger mountains and face the real chin & shoulder music. Their training is just to climb LIC building, they are not used climbing higher altitudes - result - they are clueless.

BCCI functioning for the betterment of Indian cricket is just another presumption.

Let us see the Major Test Centers in Australia - Brisbane, Perth, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney. Has this changed? Right from the day I was born this has been a fact to me. Australia or any other team visiting have always played in these test centers. I say, why can’t we codify such standards in India? Our board of control for Cricket fixes test centers based on what criteria? Does anyone knows this? Do they have guide lines? I am sure some board member will give me a PDF document. But who codified it – no clue. We have more Test and one day centers than public telephone booths.

My point is we have the most number of cricketing centers when compared to other countries. Yes! BCCI can claim this to be a feature and say India is big country etc. Given such a diversity, BCCI should be organized in order to maintain international standards. Today Software and other products made in India are ISO or CMM etc, certified which ensures international quality. But why an organization like BCCI that has access to enormous fund aren’t enforcing any kind of standards? BCCI office bearers have presumed that they are management gurus.

Our EX-Cricketers in BCCI and other honorary elements in BCCI are self proclaimed Management executives. It is not that we don’t have management staff in India to run the show but the slipshod attitude of BCCI does not permit such changes to bring in the real people. The presumption is BCCI are well organized bunch of people, result Instead of ball parks we have car parks that makes an average batsmen look like a master blaster. I agree every city wants to hosts an international game but at whose cost, - Indian cricket?

Unless and until BCCI is managed by professionals, and starts prompting genuine cricket, our cricketing history and our beloved cricketers regardless of their ability would look like jokers abroad, and as a free supplement - they would serve as walking bunnies for critics.

Appa "SAW"Me

2006-11-30T11:00:00.000-05:00

Like most recent Tamil movies this one also had an English title during the Pooja phase. The tax rebate bait yadayada… rename it in Tamil. There is a rumor that director’s First choice was “Appasamy”, but fearing a law suit from the real estate giant, but finally got it translated – Appasamy in English became Varalaru in Tamil. Why Varalaru? You may check with the real Thagapansamy.

The entire plot was given away right at the title card, Ajith in triple role!, so we know for sure there are 3 data types of Ajith’s in the screen play. And it was matter of few reels before we guess one of type would be Mr. Bad guy.

Exploring “Ajith the Youth”. Youth hero package in Tamil movies consists of a smart ass hero and 8 to 10 worthless non-comical friends. Hero’s friends must be 2 or 3 uncle ages more than the hero. The same package is deployed here.
Next Roll [film roll] , Ajith is the dad for our Youth Ajith. Dad[a] Ajith runs his business empire. Like many computer consultants, he also works for “cha” from home. He runs his billion dollar business empire from an age old 21 inch Trinitron computer monitor and a PC/XT-8088 . Just like the screen play, Dad Ajith is also handicapped. He moves around on a motorized wheel chair reminding Austin powers, at this point Knowing K.S.Ravikumar’s adaptation technology I was seriously expecting 3rd Ajith to be “mini me” .

Youth Ajith [YA] goes to a village [why? He had a free southern railway train pass -ada ponga sir] he meets Asin, falls in love with her [then A.R. Rahman goes to work and records a nice song at 1.00am]. Dad[a] Ajith sees the YA’s love syndrome, helps him out. using his God Father sorry Varalau capabilities sends a G[od]-Mail to someone, the wedding is fixed.

JUST days before the dumdumdumdum, Ajith drinks too much and misbehaves at Asin’s place, there is a split but our Youth Ajith never remembers the incident. You guessed it, Hysterical post-traumatic Gajini Cerebral Anniyan Lacunar amnesia should be the reason. Hence dad takes his son to a physiatrist, where along with the son, director K.S. Ravikumar is also diagnosed with HPTGCALA syndrome.

The script in 2 paragraphs. The plot is our Youth Ajith is a “place holder”, the content of a place holder is changed by the second bad Ajith to tarnishes image of GF and GS [God father and God Son]. Why? Same old Twin crap. Best comedy was when the second villain Ajith using the identity withdraws cash from ATM? does ATM give money by just seeing the face?

Our Dad Ajith was a Classical Dancer with a Hormone Imbalance. He gets thrown out from his own wedding by the girl who does not like his hormone imbalances…...,skip 3 chapters, the second twin misunderstands about his dad, like the audience he is also mentally traumatized, he sets off to settle accounts with his dad family. And Dad Ajith is not really handicapped, he is just sits there to avoid walking like an Egyptian. At the end of the movie when rest of the credits rolls, they show how the second twin replaced the first in various places.

Finally,
Ajith is a talented actor, example Dancer Ajith’s walking style reminded me Sivaji Ganesan’s stylish walk in Puthiya paravai. K.S.Ravikumar is a nice director and added plus point Rahman’s Music, still without a proper logical screen play – the whole effort goes to the junk yard. My 2 cents, if the point of view or the movie perspective is changed to the villain Ajith, without giving any importance to the smart ass Hero or Classical Dancer or Lover etc, this can be an interesting screen play.

Good day.

என்ன கொடும SIR இது

2006-11-29T16:04:00.000-05:00

Over the long weekend I managed to watch some of best made Tamil movies in past 20 to 30 decades. I do not have words to appreciate the creativity sparks found these movies. My long weekend Movie watching spree, opened with a movie called Dharmapuri, staring the one and only Captain!. hero and Savior of 20,21 and rest of the centuries planet earth would be spinning for.

Chapter 2, Captain’s Entry . Let us roll, a leader thug and his gang keeps shooting people, just like in a real war, and as usual no one dares to go near him or tries to stop him. The ground is well set for our captain to walk in for the toss. As expected he tosses 11 or 15 junior thugs and steps directly into fray, our senior thug using a 200000mm shot gun fires directly at our captain. Using the state of Combuter graphics, the bullet ride from the gun is shown in about 200 camera angles known to mankind and 1200 angles unknown to any kind. Bullet strikes our cabtain, a direct impact on his chest, Oh! My god what will happen?,- our Cabtain just took a 200000mm slug directly on his chest, but! Wait it not yet over, like the Perth wicket the bullet bounces off, it starts to travel in the reverse direction, once again the 200 + rest of angles and finally the slug directly lands on thug, “kabamkubeem” , thug evaporates in thin air.
Following this achievement , our Cabtain with his trade mark smile pulls out a round thingy from his chest region , the round thingy saved his life. At first glance it looked like a Punjabi Pappad, or may be the famous Rotti from Vaishnava college canteen ? Or the pesal Dosa kallu that was reported stolen by Saravanabhavan? Wait no , People, here is it, the newly designed aluminum [Bra] Lingerie for men. Technically an aluminum plate often found in jail wards or in the hands of self pitied money and food requesters, [ பிச்சைகாரன technically அலம்பல் விட்டேன்] , it also had twin straps, specially designed to hold the thingy around captain’s thingy. The late breaking news is that Tommy Hilfiger is now traveling to Chennai to make a deal with our cabtain.

Chapter 1, there are 2 brothers which some crazy name, perichali and kotan or some crap. They are the sons of the village bad guy viz, Manivannan, who is the cousin of the village dad - noble gentle man, you guessed it, Vijay Kumar, they ………what the hell. People, I take the liberty to change the title – hence forth this movie would be called as KARMAPURI. [கர்மப்புரி...]

More to go…

Convenient Excuses

2006-11-28T10:00:00.000-05:00

Indian MPs forgetting their responsibilities decided to waste considerable time discussing Indian cricket. I am no big Chappell fan, but I feel matter concerning Indian cricket is too small for elected officials to waste their time on, eventually MPs will call for a sack. Whatever Chappell told about MPs to the team was an internal communication, might be a word of support that was speculated by the press. The whole world knows how our MPs function and what they discuss at the circular office. There is a reason why our Indian parliament was designed to look like Zero from space. MPs discover another Convenient Excuse to avoid their day to day job.

After the Durban Debacle, and Cape Town confusion, Dravid gets injured and is out of all one day games. Though injury is an painful thing to deal, it is a blessing in disguise for Dravid, it will be a good break for him. In my opinion, getting in Laxman or Gangully will not change the course to a great extent. Bottom line remains that, Bowlers need to perform better. Dravid captaincy was not up to the mark, while Batsmen, Bowlers and fielding struggled [What more is left?].. After the match at Cape of Good hope, most have started to feel that India cricket has No Hope.

Kaif and his pathetic batting technique, he plays like genuine Indian tail ender of 1970. I agree he is great fielder and nice person - What Ever! but there is no point in having him if he cannot bat. I think batting and bowling skills are to superior to fielding by an inch or two, the greatest of the greatest fielder gets value only if he shines with the bat or the ball. Kaif’s convenient agile fielder excuse cannot be taken into consideration anymore. We cannot afford it. Frankly the way Dinesh Karthick fielded and batted seems a very good alternate to Kaif. Today Junior players in the team suffer the insecurity syndrome. A promising Raina was the first victim. I hope youngster are nurtured properly. Other than Dravid, Dhoni and Sachin no other batsmen is confident about their technique., because they have no clue about the batting position they would be playing. Over experimentation has burnt these youngsters. When a bowler is pushed up to bat at number 3, it does bring down the confidence of designated batsmen. Also Irfan losses his focus on bowling , which is his main portfolio. IT IS HIGHT TIME to play “the Agarkar Benefit match” and send him home with a yellow garland. For all betterment, Sreesanth should be groomed.

Sachin factor, though India lost games in spite of good and decent scores from Sachin in recent past, unless and until he does something more, he will have to shoulder the pain with Dravid. The median set by the little master is very high, he has no other choice other than to maintain the standard. At the same time, Sachin plays or not other members in the India team should not use him for a Convenient Excuse.

Viru, when will we see runs from him? Stale Statements like Bowlers getting terrified , bowlers will never get comfortable when Viru is around etc should be put to a rest. Viru has been using this Convenient Excuse for years now. Wasim Akram’s recent interview was filled with advices for Indian team. Akram says Sachin should bat like Lara. [Whatever it is?], according to Akram, Sachin has to start playing it out and not get into a shell. I agree partially with him.

Indian Public, showing their anger by burning photos etc of Dravid etc, seems childish and ridiculous. There is not point in politicizing everything . I am just wondering where did the “passion of the MP and their men” vanish during Olympics?, or during the continues decline of our famous Sania Mania? I feel Indian cricket is way ahead than most sports in India. Today we are in a recession. Like any other Indian sport, I also see this, - Cricket is also a sport. Outcome is bound to be a great winner or a pathetic loser, I prefer to get on with it. Honestly, I see something positive here [Really?], Almost every weakness the team has been underlined and highlighted, all this has been identified well ahead of the World Cup and though short we do have the time to tighten the screws. l still remember the West Indies whacking before 1983 Prudential cup, the course seems similar. This would be my Convenient Excuse to support my cricket team. Honestly, I would still bet my money on Team India for the world cup.

Good day.

Weekend

2006-11-20T14:54:00.000-05:00

Saw movies over the weekend. 1st, it was Emden’s Son for Tax Rebate sake it is now called En Mangan, The general feeling I had watching this movie was – a TV serial on 35mm film. I was reminded of the 60s era where camera would be placed in a spot and the cast would just act around it. The camera man must have had an easy time, he just screwed the camera to a tripod and took off to another shoot.
So called story goes like this, Nasser, Born on September 22 of some year after 1914, is a whacko Dad, he treats his son Bharath like ……t . He never cares about kids academics etc, however Bharath is a top ranking kid,. In Tamil movies usually Murali plays such self-pitying roles for a change Bharath covers for him. The reason given for such bad treatments by Mr. Emden was EmdenJi, had a ruthless and unforgiving past. Thank god there was no flash back, Vadivelu does his part well and can be called as the lifer save mint for the movie while Bharath, Gopika and all others were like the last 5 items of Saravana Special Lunch. Added just for statistical purpose.

Another point to note, even if you give a free coupon to Mr. Bhiravar for a Fresh water Spa treatment, Mr. Biravar ends up with the same old dinner schedule, Directors Gopi’s uncontrollable urge and Fetish for funeral rituals continues on the celluloid too, about 2000 feet of film were royally exposed to show this in detail, as if this not enough, a medical condition of a poor old sick man was used for a comical act by small screen comedians. I found it disgusting to watch people celebrating for someone death in the name of comedy. This was environment in which our hero and our heroine meet after 2000 years. The same old ill fated medically unfit mama and athai magal match making. Gopi dude! you seem to be funny guy, however that part of this part of movie was sponsored by Royal Cheapness. In spite of big named cast, decent music, the output seemed like a TV serial.
Next movie I saw had a 4 line script. To save producers money, I think 4 power point slide show would have done the needful.

Slide one: Once upon a time there was village girl, she marries a Car mechanic and settles in Bombay.

Slide two: She finds his past and he was already married to someone, the other girl vanishes to Australia.

Side three: Jo talks to her and gets her to live one day with her husband, his lifelong dream it seems. The End. [I am not even able to make it to 4 lines]

Slide Four: Credits.
For such a weak script we have a Suriya, a Jothika, and my man A.R.Rahman scoring music, the director is one lucky dude. Just add an E to the name, the movie was a JOKE.

Finally, 2 things, Hope you have seen the PC and MAC comparison commercial. Just to evaluate the self proclaimed potentials of Mac I went ahead and got an Apple Mac Power book G4. I started to evaluate from a common PC user perspective [Windows XP]. My goal is to do all the task I do in PC/XP and seamlessly migrate my working environment to Mac. After all the Mac ad claims they offer better services than the PC environment. The first thing I tried to do is install a Voice Chat client, but do you know you cannot do voice chat using Yahoo or Google or Msn , Mac OS don’t have free chat client that support the 3 popular voice chats. There is more, NSV streams [Null soft streams] are popular these days, however owning a Mac you cannot watch NSV streams. However Mac can turn the blame on Nullsoft but Voice chat is major, Yahoo and Msn services work on Mac for regular chats, for voice ..dude – you have go to the pc.

And Wow! India saved a game. Thank God.

Tuesday Talk

2006-11-14T09:24:00.000-05:00

Sydney's Daily Telegraph reported that a spectator had shouted: "Give us a wave Monty. You can't speak English you stupid Indian, I'll have to say it in Indian. What are you doing playing in the English side, you're not English!...."
One more Racial slur from the colorful Australian crowd.

Here is a note on Australia’s history. The mainland Australia has been inhabited for more than 42,000 years by the natives. After sporadic visits by fishermen from the north and by European explorers and merchants starting in the seventeenth century, the eastern half of the mainland was claimed by the British in 1770 and officially settled through penal transportation [underline this] as the colony of New South Wales on 26 January 1788. What is this Penal transportation?, it was the deporting of convicted criminals to a penal colony, such as in Australia, typically from countries such as the United Kingdom (including Ireland).

So my dear moronic spectator Dude, like you checked Panesar ‘s origin, we checked your origin and you know what - we found that it really stinks more than a skunk’s 1 & 2 & 3.

Just yesterday South African Captain Smith warned Panesar about the ”color” music [like Chin music] that he would face in Australia. I do not agree to the argument that it is just an handful of rowdy fans yadayada…it seems there are strict laws in Australia against such behaviors, it does look like the law does not seem to work! I am sure because this is not first time, South Africans, Sri Lankans have gone through racial crowd behaviors. When Indian toured Australia Indian fans had to face racial slurs from a section of Australian crowd , Indians were called Coolies by these esteemed “Racial rowdies” of Australia.

What else you can expect, after all they managed to push the top BCCI official from the dais in the name of celebration and got away by saying I am “Soorry”. I wonder how the Aussie media react if an Indians does this to an Australian? . Remember Gangully’s famous T-Shrit strip celebration that got thrashings from all corners. Apologies apart, the “bad boys” “bad boys” image is being well maintained by Ponting’s men and now the crowd also joins the funs and the free ride.

A very interesting point to note is - English team now has something totally new to deal with – A spokesman for the England team has said "We have come out here to play the game with dignity, and we expect the Australian fans will show the sportsmanship they are renowned for and hope they will respect the players both on and off the field." Whatever!...Cricket Australia should be ashamed.

Do you know the comedy, team India’s formal wardrobe did not travel with them! , it seems the administrators had told the players not to get any formal cloths as it would be provided by the Sponsors , however the world richest sporting body failed to get organized, players were left to be in their informal cloths., Thank god they carried informal cloths. Cricinfo quotes,. “It was one that should have been avoided by the world's richest cricket board which is already under fire for getting things spot-on when it comes to marketing and commercial aspects but failing to make the grade when it comes to other things. Attempts to contact both Niranjan Shah, the board's honorary board secretary and Prof Shetty late on Monday evening failed. “ BCCI’s Pathetic legacy continues.

To conclude, I was browsing Google news, saw these headlines..Huh!.
Chappell says “Dravid is not my puppet, he runs the show”, he also added that Kumble up for the cup. The word “Cup” is defined differently around collage circles.
"Dravid defends batsmen" - , Why anything Dravid does is related to "Defense".?

Good day.

All Set!

2006-11-10T10:50:00.000-05:00

Team India , unofficial ambassadors of Orec XL vacuum cleaners in India, why Orec XL? because just like Orec XL, Team India is also fitted with professional quality suction capabilities. As if this was not enough, teams suction power was enhanced yesterday. Ajith Agarkar has been declared fit once again.

Team India is all set to tour South Africa, a country with wonderful natural landscape and wild life parks , it should be a great paid excursion. With such a poor performance record for past year, any performance regardless of good or bad, can be blindly termed as an improvement.

Another news – it seems Viru is all set to face South African pace, of course, such a mind set is needed for 1st 20 balls of the inning. Kapil “the Advice” Dev has asked Sehwag to introspect deep to identify the problems in his batting. Kapil who underwent an cataract operation managed also to contradict himself by saying “Sehwag has been playing at this level for the last six-seven years and I don’t think he has anything to prove to anyone”. The best thing for Dravid and his men is that they are underdogs right till the World cup, I wish this brews some synergy in the team.

Suggestions for the tour.
1. Never show something that is white and round with a seam, aka Cricket Ball to R.P. Singh.
2. Borrow a matrix module from Keanu Reeves, pump it into Agarkar which will make him believe that all other bowlers struggle - he would bowl well at once.
3. Similar program be tried on Sachin to recollect his batting potential.
4. Dravid should not rename himself to DRAWvid.
5. Someone tell Viru that is there is lot in the game after first 5 overs.
6. BCCI using their money clout should reduce the pitch by ½ , this “can” enable our bowlers to bowl perfect length.
7. When India bats, remove leg and the off stumps , if possible the middle stump too.
8. In order to Save donkey drops and to heal the world –we start from over number 22, with 150 for no loss on board.
9. Kaif should never be made to stand anywhere near the bat while fielding.
Finally,
10. Make sure our million dollar coach Chappell sits somewhere far away from the South African bench, because his experimentation mess is such that, he would send someone from the south African bench. This can result in Alfonso Thomas coming in one down for India.

Have a Good Weekend!

Monday!

2006-11-06T12:39:00.000-05:00

A busy weekend, managed to watch few NFL games. Ben “the Clueless” Berger and his Pittsburg Steelers were totally out of sync, nothing went right them. While the Red Skins managed to win, thanks to “Terrell Tantrums”.

If you still care, Australia won the Champions trophy [duh!] , West Indies played like India aka Pathetic, the opening pair gave a good start, but the rest wanted to rehears their Ramp walk moves for the ICC fashion show. Australia heads home to trash the English, Hyped Ashes starts later this month.

Sachin has stated that India will come good in South Africa, he has also spoke for the players on product endorsements. It seems players go to commercials shoots only after the game commitment are met, Ist it? How come they model well for Commercials but suck right royally in the games? Commercials or not - there is no commitment. Unless and until team India plays to their potential, these commercial shoots will be considered as a distraction. The Irony is Sachin said this in a product promotion.

“Argue Against Success”, One thing I like when I am in Sachin’s topic, Sachin in last 10 games he played has scored more than 500 runs, while the average score by other members for the last 10 games they played was not more than 150. Dravid, Viru et all have not been playing well for quite some time now, however, still there is a call for people to drop Sachin, which is kind of funny to me.

Finally, ICC members voted to get rid of Darrel Hair – 7-3 , the 3 being England, Australia and NZ. Using Eastman Color! They voted YES to retain Hair in the panel. I feel Chris Broad would also be a good candidate to kicked out from ICC Match referee panel.

பாடல் - Music Album Updates,

2006-11-02T09:54:00.000-05:00

Good news is that - we are nearing its completion, and the schedule is in the right direction, In about 6 to 8 weeks it should be on sale. It takes about a month to get the CDs designed and duplicated. I am trying my best to push it with the Manufacturer . The album has 8 tracks, which includes a track sung by playback singer Karthick [Chennai], besides I have used various Desi talents., and I will be introducing new voices and instrumentalists to the arena. Another highlight to note is - album is being mixed on the latest Protools HD System and other latest cool sound engineering tools. You can expect more news on this by end of this month. We clearly enjoyed and enjoying every production movements for past 8 months. Everyone working with me in this album have put forth their best efforts , with this hype, I invite to you to download the latest trailer, you can download it here.
பாடல் (c) 2006-07 Studio1234, USA. Release

Speed this is the Limit!

2006-11-01T09:59:00.000-05:00

“Speed said money power alone could not make India a formidable force in world cricket.”
What does he mean by the above statement?

That was the most ridiculous and irresponsible statement from a ICC chief. Game patronage is different from playing the game, 75% of Indians are great supporters and patrons to the game of Cricket. Dear Mr. Speed - do not ridicule our patronage.

Let us take England, there are many office bearers in ICC who are English. What in the world English team has done better? They neither have money power nor they are so called “cricketing force”?

Check his link….http://www.icc-cricket.com/icc/about/management.htmlI don’t intend to paint my article with colors, but the above link warrants it.

In order to be a formidable force in Cricket, Indians have to pour in currency and also make sure they win all the tournaments, go figure it out How?. When did Cricket started to generate money? After the so called world cup aka prudential cup moved out of England.
Why money started to flow from India? Very Simple Answer - because Indians loves the game of Cricket. THERE IS NOTHING TO ARGUE HERE. Our population which was often ridiculed by the west is our strength today, it is called human capital. If every Indian contributes $1, it is 1 Billion, considerable chunk of fund to organize a World cup. Once again THERE IS NOTHING TO ARGUE HERE.

Mr. Speed, thinking that he is trashing BCCI is actually striking the touchy side of Indians. A typical Indian loves this sport, he does not care if his or her team plays. Even when India was kicked out of tournament, there was considerable crowd watching Australia and New Zealand today, how many times we have seen vacant seats in Australia or England when the home team is not involved?
Moreover, according to Mr. Modi, ICC now has to face a full BCCI committee, in the past they just had a single “YES” man to deal with, though Modi did not name anyone, I think he is refereeing to Jagmohan Dalmia.

Speed another faster one was - “India last won a [ICC] cricketing event in 1983” – dude, this is what I am saying, in spite of not wining, Indian public has been a good follower for this game and the business model has been generating fund to ICC office bearers to travel 1st class and stay in 6 stars hotels.

Speed needs to apologize to the Indian public for insulting and Ridiculing our continues patronage to the game of cricket. Mr. Speed , Adhere to the speed limit.

Good day!

We Stink!

2006-10-31T15:19:00.000-05:00

I am disgusted over India’s performance in Champions Trophy and this multiplied after their pathetic performance against Australia. I am trying to find what is wrong with this team. Consistently, Dravid has been losing games for quite some time now, Gangully at least made sure we showed up in the finals. Today I see that there is nothing called accountability for Dravid or the Indian Team or the Coach or the selectors. There are various reports on the internet that says Greg Chappell will end his contract with BCCI [or be kicked out!?] after the world cup. It seems he is undergoing a lot of problem on his personal side. What so ever! I don’t really care, I think he is not a great coach and will never be one, why wait until the world cup? I am sure nothing will change if the coach is fired right this minute.

Just rewinding more of my frustration, I am still trying to figure out the game plan Rahul Dravid and our beloved million dollar babe coach engaged against the West Indies, . Ramesh Powar was at his best against England, however for some reason he gets dropped, as if this blunder was not enough, he is replaced by a semi-professional bowler popular known for Donkey drops . 1st will any moron tinker with the team that just won a match that too when the bowling department was responsible for the victory? My usual note: - Agarkar was as usual pathetic. I am just wondering what is the reason Selectors, the coach and the captain got in RP.singh instead of Powar?

The way the team played against Australia was sincerely sickening, Kaif in forward short leg position, I have nose cried about this along with many other arm chair experts for past n number of years. Kaif is not the right person to stand in that position, he jumps just before the ball is bowled and hence he is too slow to react, he has dropped a bag full of crucial catches standing in the position. But once again he was made stand in the position , who decides? What is the problem here with Dravid? And these players selected for their fielding drop catches and get about 20 runs per game, at this point I think VVS who was dropped for poor fielding seems better to me. After this loss, Dravid mentioned they lost because – Bowlers lacked experience. What a Bull? Combined games these 3 bowler have played is around 100. If they cannot learn from 100 games , I feel they will never learn. These bowlers were trying to bounce out the Australians. The game plan was kind of a joke.
VB Chandrasekhar made some noise in the press, according to him Tamil Nadu’s Badrinath is a better player than Suresh Raina, and he should be selected in place of him, I am wondering why he failed to make the same noise when he was the selector? Seriously his claims will never count with the title “Former” Selector. He did nothing when he had some power.

Currently the Indian team is in the ICU. Our players should have some pride and passion to improve, however the free flow of remuneration writes off the responsibility and accountability from the players. Who cares, they get paid regardless of winning or losing games and more over an added bonus for showing their esteemed faces in commercials. Passion for the game called Cricket takes the third spot.

Indian Cricket Stinks.

Good Lord!

2006-10-19T11:44:00.000-04:00

For past week, my DSL Band width was similar to Boycott and Sunil Gavaskar both on nerves 90s playing for a draw, yes!, I am trying to define the height of slowness. I waited for 2 days, usually Verizon fixes it automatically, however it did not happen. I decided it was time call Verizon DSL support. I searched the bill that was close to an un-ruled 40 pages sugarcane composition notebook, you know what!, there was no support number on the bill . I called the regular billing number, which was closed. I then searched the telephone directory and finally called Verizon DSL support. Has anyone Called Verizon support recently? , Good Lord! The most irritating experience a human being could face.

7:45:00pm : A Vocodar voice says veriZon [ரொம்ப தேவை], then a sweet lady voice greets you , this is followed by her counterpart in “Para Espanola”.

7:45:20 pm : the voice says “I see that you are calling from xxx.xxx.xxx. phone number. The voice asks us to pick an item from the main menu. “We need to say it”, there were no number options. The main menu - “Billing Questions”, “set dosai”, “2 idlly 1 vada”, “IdiAppan paya”, “if you are vegetarian then say Thayier sadam”, “ if you are fat drink skim Milk” and finally “Technical support”. Using my hereditary Desi accent I say “technical suppert”, Sorry…I could not understand you – the menu options are “Billing Questions”, “set dosai” ,“2 idly 1 vada – Might be sold out by now”, “idiappam paya ”…etc, I swallow my tongue in order to get my “peter accent”, whew! This time it understood me. [120/90]. Then I heard the voice say “I am going to check your line”, and after a lot of minutes, it told me my connection was good. Yes! until now I was lying that my connection was slow. [140/110] .

7:50:01 as if the above was not enough, the stupid voice then gave a ridiculous suggestion. If you have problems with your DSL connection [Duh!] Please go to our website where you will find support material. Damn, MY DSL IS DOWN - the reason I am talking to this lousy robot is I CANNOT BROWSE THE INTERNET. How in the freaking world I can go online now and look for help? Maybe, they can add , “Please use your neighbors connection to check our website.” Adding insult to injury, it then lectures about the website, its URL, URI, their internal JDBC connection string, their programming methodology and every other detail that you hate to hear from anyone.

7:58, After all this nonsense, the voice announces outages in various location, most of them were on Planet mars, technically about 5 lights years away from my location and then innocently the voice queried to me – Do you really want to speak to an customer support Agent? I say @#@#$!!@!@#$ YES.

8:02, finally the robot transfers me to a Verizon Service center located either in India or some other eastern country.

8:06 A real female voice greets me enquires vital security information, they want to make sure it is me, I am forced to give details like கோம்பூர் ராமபத்திராச்சாரியரின் பேரனும், கோம்பூர் தேவராஜநின் புத்திரனும்மான SRIKANTH, Bharadwaja gotHram, utharada natchatiram etc., just to make sure its me.

8:10: Agent throws some pathetic technical questions at me: What is your modem model, Are you using the cable we gave you? Are you using a router, now let us shutdown everything and restart, I tell her I did this exercise about 10 times already. I am a network expert, there is fault in your line. But still she wanted me to do it, every electronic equipment and appliances in my house was refreshed.

8:23: After a complete reboot, nothing worked, she then told me that she is going to transfer to level 2 support.

8:25 to 9:00 – a stale big band music with a fretless bass and brass keeps looping on and one….

9:01 @##$##@%^&^$$ - It automatically hung up on me. [200/200]

9:05 Like Ambulimama satRum manam thaLaRatha Vikaramathithiyan, I called again, I did all the steps, finally got thru to the human agent and screamed at her what happened, she threw in multiple freebie apologies, and asked to me reboot, restart and do the same thing. Finally at around 10:00pm they told me they will be sending someone to check the lines today.

Ps: numbers in the [] are my blood pressure readings.

Game day - Champions Trophy - India vs. England

2006-10-16T09:43:00.000-04:00

Indians won! their first game of the tournament, frankly I was surprised by Indian fielding and bowling performances. [Mr. Barry Richards did you watch it Sir?] In fact even Viru was making few diving efforts to save runs, such incidents denote that there was some real effort put to improve the fielding department. Irfan Pathan and Munaf Patel bowled a clinical line, a consistent line with right length was the secret of success. They never tried fancy experiments, same goes to the spinners too. Power was able to fox the English players more than Harbajan. Harbajan took a very good catch in the deep, while Dravid and Sachin had a “ball” standing in slips. They never missed anything that passed by them, like a hungry frog they leaped on to catches + few insects that flew by them. Indians gave only 5 extras, this is a clear indication for discipline in the bowling department. While the entire bowling office and the fielding was shining with colors, Ajith “Ayopavam” Agarkar was pathetic as usual. I was worried that he would give away the game, But for first time in history, Dravid ‘s thought process was in sync with many arm chair [including yours sincerely!] cricket experts., Ajith Agarkar was never shown the ball again. I feel it is high time to brew someone like Sreesanth to take over from Agarkar.

England performance was very close to the word “poor”. Basic problem they faced was, none read the pitch correctly, Indians due to their home town advantage came close in guessing the nature of the wicket. The ball began to turn with uneven bounce at regular intervals. Top order English batsmen other than Kevin Peterson, none had the technique to face the Desi Ankle Music [opposite to chin music]. English captain ensured Omelets for next day breakfast.

Indian batting started off like the big bang theory, Viru was restored to the opening slot with Sachin. Both the openers blasted off well, Sachin and Viru played some juicy shots, however Viru donated this wicket , he chased a “wide goose” and was caught well in the slips, if Viru had stayed for next 30 minutes, the match would have been over well before supper time. In spite of this wide goose chase batting, I feel Viru has to open with Sachin. , this pair should not be tinkered,. Also India needs a proper #3 player. Irfan should be used sparingly at number 3. #3 is reserved to a “full time” batsmen, someone like Yuvraj or Suresh Raina should come up the order. For England Harmison was not in his usual place., he did not get it right. He bowled very badly till the supper break.

The (dis?)organizers had planned on a fire work display after the game, however someone who had too much coffee, triggered off the fireworks during the game. There was fireworks going on in the background after India lost Pathan. Dravid walked with blasting sound effects. The fireworks seemed to have distracted the newly arrived batsmen Dravid., he was out caught in the slips . Organizers need to ensure such things don’t happen in future. Soon India lost Sachin to a ball that kept low.
Raina walked and contributed on behalf of the Indian contingent for the Omelet breakfast. Soon Dhoni and Yuvraj got the game back on track for an Indian victory, Dhoni wanted to finish the game off quickly hence he tried to show off a little but was out caught, a stupid move by the youngster. Yuvraj and Harbajan then won the game for India. Rameeze Raja announced Munaf Patel as man of the match.

Finally, Sachin scored 35, but more that he reached a lot of mile stones during this game. Today we have people celebrating for 25th day of a movie, I think Sachin achievements should be at least appreciated should not be covered for the words like playing for the team etc. Do you know Sachin has scored more than 6000 runs in day and night games alone., 6000 is carrier score for many players. Well, who cares if you celebrate or not, but I will - I now call upon my good friend Balaji to do the needful and say ……………………..

ICC v BCCI

2006-10-13T12:19:00.000-04:00

The ICC and BCCI cold war is now on center stage. Mr. Modi V.P, BCCI made it clear to the media that ICC was trying to dominate its members, he also hinted that some members of ICC are still living in the period of colonization.

ICC should gets this clearly. For past “n” number of years, attitude of ICC officials has cultivated similar opinions in the mind of many cricket loving Indians. Time and time we have seen ICC being biased and, players from South Asia were punished or treated to a greater degree than say, someone from Australia or England. Take the recent one , Ricky Pointing was let go freely without a match suspension for his unruly behavior with the umpire. Asian players have had match suspensions for such behaviors in past. Having been through heavy handed treatments often by match ICC referees, it is natural for a country to have such a frame of mind against ICC. This feeling doubles when you realize that India brings in about 80% of the revenue for ICC to function.

Latest controversy, according to Mr. Modi, ICC is playing unfair and is holding out on the media rights for the 2011 World Cup by saying that the BCCI can bid for the rights only if ICC Development International, its marketing arm, repeals its decision to restrict the bidding only to broadcasters. "It looks as if the MPA was framed only to tie our hands behind our backs, and then ask us to host the 2011 World Cup. Modi further adds , the cynics and sadists could not believe that India could organize the World Cup. We not only hosted one but two World Cups successfully within eight years. That saw the dismantling of other vestiges of the Raj. but there are certain pockets that still seem to suffer from the colonial hangover.", The ICC must remember this, if ICC wants to triple its rights fee to a staggering $1.5 billion, hey considerable percentage of that money has to come from India. As Mr. Modi puts it rightly it is time to have chief executive Afro-Asia, someone who understands the problems of a majority of ICC members and doesn't heed just the affluent alone.

I am finally kind of happy that someone from BCCI had the guts to take such a stance with ICC. India needs more power in ICC, the reason is very simple - Indian board's media rights has leapfrogged from $40 million to $612 million and this is projected to hit the billion-dollar mark in the next four years.In the reply to Mr. Modi statement, Mr. Malcolm Speed has hit out India and suggested to use right channels to take up this issue. We might see more “speed tickets” during India England tie.

As if this was not enough Barry Big Mouth Richards on Thursday launched a sarcastic campaign against India, saying BCCI had transformed the game for commercial interests by their sheer money power. He says that Cricket is now played for money. Only few at the top posts in ICC or BCCI have been involved with high level of cricket. 1st What is this high level he is talking about? And is there international sport that is not played for money? Cricket is a professional sport. Money making is part of it.

Have a Good week end!

Our Golu pics.

2006-09-26T12:13:00.000-04:00

My wife and my daughter were busy for past few days setting up the Golu, this is our 3rd Golu in DC. In a busy work schedule, Dasara festival is an important social event, through which we get to invite and meet people from our Indian community. Last but not the least, every evening gobbling the protein filled Sundal adds a special flavor to this festival.