Vettaiyadu Vizhaiyadu

For a long time, I stayed away from this movie. I was told that this was a gory movie, some scenes were disgusting. I hate disgusting scenes and I stayed away. Finally ... one day, there was no other tamil movie worth watching on the shelf. So I picked this one up. The movie rotted in my apartment for a few days until I finally decided I must somehow get through this one.

That was the standard I had set for this movie, the expectation from me. Irrespective of all that, I actually liked the movie. I enjoyed seeing it. I thought the movie was very stylishly shot and it had a very fast moving first half. The suspense and the clueless murders kept me gripped to it.

After the suspense was revealed over interval, the movie started losing the momentum. Thats the biggest problem with Tamil movies. They just wont sacrifice on the length of the movie irrespective of how boring the movie could become. That said, if I paid 10$ for a movie that ends in an hour. The Indian mind in me will crib that it was a big waste of my money :).

Many scenes in the movie reminded me of Kaaka Kaaka. You can easily guess both the movies were made by the same guy.

Verdict: For a one time see, its good!

The Geeky Me ...

My day today at office was great. Not just because it was productive. But for a change I felt like I achieved something.

I dont have a lot of experience in multi-threaded programming. And recently I was given this task of converting a single threaded application to multi threaded. I wrote so many versions of this one task until I reached the final pseudocode.

1. A simple thread application that uses polling to communicate with the child.
2. Ofcourse, polling is not CPU efficient, used semaphores.
3. Then, I came across this new .NET term 'ThreadPool'. More efficient, so modified the existing forking scheme to use thread pools instead.
4. One thread pool was not prioritizing threads properly. Priority thread pool didnt suit the requirement. Split to use two Thread pools.
5. Further on, more enhancements ... Exception handling, logging, etc etc.

I started off the day knowing nothing about threads. By the end of the day, I knew more than 5 ways to implement the same requirement.

Feels good. Thats what I call a good day at office.

My identity ...

[A post recovered from my old blog ... ]
I happen to find a friend of mine after a long time on orkut. This was our chat script …

She: Hey there! Its great to find you here.
Me: Same here! How are you doing?
She: Fine! So, do you orkut often?
Me: Hmm … not really. I am more of a MSN person.
She: I see! Do you use Yahoo?
Me: Not unless someone insists. Do you use Skype?
She: How about Friendster?
Me: No … I visit orkut more frequently than Friendster.
She: I see, ok! What is your email id?
Me: You know what … This is my gmail id: … , my yahoo id: … , my hotmail one: … , skype, orkut, friendster, hi5. You can have your pick! Just inform me which you choose.

I do have more email ids than that. I am sure I’ll be out of space if I had to list everything! Every one of those ids is me, and yet not me! My friend was also insisting I should fill in my profile details correctly, so everyone is "up-to-date" about me. Which means when my real identity changes, I have to change all these virtual identities of mine without fail.

Looks like I have reduced to just a few words on the internet :(.

Traffic lights ...

Every day in the morning, I drive 2-3 blocks from my home to office. It takes me less than 5 mins to reach office. But there are approximately 5 signals that I need to cross.

For the first time, admist the morning hour traffic, today all the signals between home n office were green in my favor. I didnt stop at even one. And my travel time reduced to 2 mins :P

Ah well! small pleasures of life :).

Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix

After a long time, I read Harry Potter. After 4 books, I had had enough of Harry Potter, so I stopped reading them. With the new book and the movie releasing, I decided it was time to catch up.

This biggest plus of this book is my break. The fact that I was reading Harry Potter after a long time made me read it. I liked sensing the magic all over again. The book was not as thrilling as the fourth nor as innovative as the third. I kept waiting for more thrills and more suspenses.

The whole story hung off ... a Prophecy. And frankly even after reading the whole book, I didnt get the whole point of the Prophecy. Why did Voldemort want it on the first place? What information would he have got, that he didnt already know? What additional information did we get ... except for Neville Longbottom's story?

Somehow ... to me, the part of the Prophecy resembled Lord Krishna's history. Kamsa is told the eighth child will kill him and here Voldemort is also told about his killer. In both cases, the child escapes.

The biggest drawback of this book was that my imagination was so restricted. Every time I thought of Harry Potter, it was Daniel Radcliffe that came to my mind. The worst part was the story of Hagrid ... the whole time I could only imagine Robbie Coltrane. That totally ruined my imagination. I could not picture any other giant other than him. What a pity!

Overall ... if you have read 4 Harry Potter books ... there is no reason for not reading this one ... Go for it!

What a day!!

Today was one of the most satisfying days in a long time now.
Friends, tulips, frisbee and ... paruppu saadham with ghee to end it all ...
There is nothing more I could have asked for today!

Kiasu ...

Ah! I had forgotten that word. I had forgotten that urgency. I had forgotten the fear. Seriously in the one year in US ... that Singlish word had lost its role in my life.

Instead the fear has been replaced by a smile. The moment I used that word today ... it brought an instant smile on my face. And more so ... seeing that this word has a separate page dedicated to itself on wikipedia, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kiasu ... makes the smile broader :).

Emotions ...

Did you know that emotions literally translates to two Latin words ... e(x)/out, outward + motio/movement, action, gesture. As simple as that ... emotion is an outward gesture.

Stressed ...

The fascinating things stress does to me ...
- I am losing weight without stepping into the gym.
- My appetite is decreasing.
- An inactive personal front.
- And a partial satisfaction on the work front.

Lately I have been a bit obsessed with work. Trust me when I say, 'working hard would be an understatement'. Unfortunately the outcome from all the efforts makes me wonder if it is worth it. Well, things at work did change a little ... more respect, more responsibility. But if I have to maintain this ... oh gosh! it scares me!

Well ... like always to relieve myself I am resorting to something I like doing most ... reading n writing!! Blog is back to active guys!

Back to the roots ...

After a very long time ... I revisited a field that made my life a lot interesting years back ... Personality Analysis. I was back to reading Sigmund Freud and doing some online personality tests. I was back to analysis myself and my stupid personality ... yet again.

My biggest revelation in this attempt is that I am an extreme personality. I was not so surprised at the find but i was definitely surprised at the extent of it. For every question that I was answering ... I mostly clicked either 'I completely agree' or 'I completely disagree' ... there were so few questions with the gray shade. Well ... good or bad ... thats me for you.

Another find ... Oh I have changed. To the better or worse. I have changed. My personality seems to be getting stronger and clearer ... day by day. I'd be surprised if people find it difficult to figure me out. My personality is just out there with nothing really under the covers. Straight forward, transparent, confident and bold.

Lately some incidents are making me realize that probably the extremeness and transparency is a little difficult for everyone to handle. Less do they realize thats just me, just the way I am. Well, there is nothing I can do about it. Thats me for you. Period.