Today morning I went in for H1b stamping @ Chennai,India US consulate and the consular asked me Are u a computer scientist? I was quiet taken back,perplexed, short of answer and was wondering am I really a computer scientist because I can program.

After a while of my thought process; I totally had to deny it and say I’m an web application developer.

But I’m still wondering why was that question asked and what was going on in consular mind?

What would you have answered if the same question was asked to u?

Yep I’m in India on a long vacation.

Today I watched Ravanan and my verdict is that it’s a Santosh Sivan movie which should be clearly enjoyed in a big screen not @ home.  Santosh Sivan’s cinematography is @ it’s best and has captured nature @ its best.

I have already mentioned it’s a cinematographers movie and the story line purely based on Ramayana with a little twist for the current age, lets get to the story. Although it’s a know story line and trying to repackage it is quiet hard, but Mani Ratnam has already did this kind of repackaging in a successful way for movies like Thalapathi, Iruvar but this time it wasn’t up to the mark.

Pros:

1. Cinematography.
2. Supporting Cast, be it Karthik, Prabhu, Munna, Prithiviraj and Priyamani do their limited roles perfectly.
3. ARR BGM’s.
4. Vikram’s acting, not his best though, reminds me of pithamagan.
5. locations.

Cons:

1. The most important, you jump in to the movie @ the beginning itself , there is no concept of building up the story. Unless you have the patience to watch the second half, you will be wondering why the hell I came to this movie and wondering if there is any story in the movie.
2. Suhasini’s dialogues. Sujatha is really missed in this department, he could have pulled off the movie.
3. Zero comedy, this movie is a total drama. So most people looking for a masala flick, should really stay away.
4. ARR songs, as if he was sleeping while composing some songs.

The first Con I believe is the reason for all the bad reviews and spreading a bad review about the movie.

Don’t expect a Mani Ratnam movie, then you can enjoy it in theater.

BTW my friends who watched the previous show mentioned it was worst than Aasal movie (all time crap), so I went in to watch a movie worst than Aasal. May be that’s why I liked the movie

Remit2India.com has started these annoying marketing campaigns bombarding me

1. by calling me and asking me to send more money back to India @ odd times pretty much every week , even though I send money back pretty much every month to pay my EMI. I wish I can send a million dollars a month back to India to keep u guys happy but I don’t make that much.
2. Email blasts reminding me that the US dollar conversion rate has gone up.  I can live with 1 email blast not with 8 of them which is called spamming ur users.

remit2India.com I really appreciate ur service and concern to notify me about higher rates but keep it to a simple email blast or a phone call, not both of them @ same time.

It would be nice if u guys provide some kind of option in the site for the marketing preference and I would happily say no to email/phone campaigns. Me and my friends will be happy,if you can get this done and don’t bombard with marketing campaigns.

If there was any other better service provider to transfer money to India, I would happily switch over to them, but not so I’m stuck with you guys.

BTW if some one doesn’t pick ur calls after 2 or 3 times it clearly means they don’t want to talk to you and Yes I have added ur number to my block list (+2230833100).

Please Google  ur above number and see it for urself how much people are annoyed @ ur campaigns.

Update on May 22, 3;55 PM:

I finally picked up the phone from this number again to complain again after listening to their music for like 5 minutes.

Who calls you and puts up a music and asks us to wait for them?

Long story I tell the CSR that plz stop calling me with marketing and she mentions it was just a reminder call and I still insist that I don’t want them and out of no where she hung up the phone.

remit2India ur customer care sucks but ur service is free, so until its free I will use you guys and also act like a jerk like you guys do.

Well the news is out the Govt. of India is derecognizing 44 so called deemed universities in India due to lack of infrastructure facilities. Finally some one in the Education department recognized it and blew the whistle.

Although I didn’t study in any of these universities but I have visited some of them during my UG time and they weren’t gr8 even then so I’m gonna assume world didn’t become flat in last 5 years.

An example for the so called deemed university standard is when some universities awarded doctorates to some south indian actors just like a freebie (Google it).

So will these actors return the so call doctorates since these universities are no more universities?

I hope at least from now on people think twice before accepting any kind of doctorates just for the fun of it. I’m sure actors work hard as well but Please don’t mix academics and acting it doesn’t go well keep them separate.

Oscar looks good with A.R.Rahman than with Dr.A.P.J Abdul Kalam. Doesn’t it?

I was always under the impression that my country India was well developed culturally/socially and still developing economically.

Its not more than a year since 26/11/2008 Mumbai attacks happened and already my country(India) government has totally forgotten about it. The Prime minister of India is on whirl wind tour of USA during 26/11 this year and talking about the US – India relationship/climate change/nuclear deal which is good though but not @ the cost of missing out on paying respect to the fallen people on 26/11/2008.

May be

1. they lost count of days to pay respect for the dead due to bomb blasts or
2. have a better reason not known to everyone or
3. didn’t care about it or
4. technically the head of State is the president who is back there in India or
5. practically the head of government is back in India . you know it

Just think about it would any of the developed countries head of states would have accepted the invitation to vist a foreign country that too on the first anniversary of a bomb blast itself?

Looks like we are trying too hard to develop economically and loosing the social part of it. I do know the PM is taking care of business as a professional weighing on the benefits but still it could have been handled in a better way. Just my thought..

Well who ever has used Orkut are aware the blog post title message which shows up when Orkut’s server are too busy to respond.

But this time no donuts for the whole Orkut team since they have set a hard limit of only 250 video links per profile which I hate personally hate and I’m not even a heavy user of Orkut. Here is the message I get when I add a video:

You can only add upto 250 favorites. Please remove some favorites in order to add new ones.

Looks like the Orkut network is going backwards instead of moving forward by implementing this kind of limit.  Considering India being one the major market for India this is a really bad move since Indian music industry is driven by the film industry with each having 5 songs minimum.  Don’t ask me why we need 5 songs in middle of a movie that’s a whole different story.

The reality is every orkut user bookmarks(embeds) all kind of youtube Indian film songs and this limit is going to make the users move to a different network. Wake up Orkut..

Here are some suggestions Orkut might do to improve the videos section which I personally used to like:

1. Will it be too hard to create a playlist of all videos so we can listen to all of our favorite song.
2. Has it even considering enabling search for the videos? It makes me wonder if this product is really from Google.
3. If a youtube video has been disabled can it at least remove them by default instead of occupying my limited video library limit.

Considering all this downfalls of Orkut I do think may be I should join Facebook but I use these social networks to keep in touch with friends which Orkut does it ok for me.

May be I should depend more on my blog running on WordPress more where I control my app/data than letting them control me what I can and can’t do.

I was caught unaware, unprepared and without guard when it bit me.

Yes, today I was bitten by a huge bill of 120$ of data charge for 12,000KB of data for my ATT wireless phone service.  So thats roughly a penny per kilobyte which is one of the costliest KB that I have ever paid for in my life.

Probably my new phone N85 should have connected to the internet without my knowledge during the initial days of buying it.

If you don’t intend to use data over wireless please call your provider immediately and block/opt-out of it A.S.A.P because one day or the other you will be bitten by this bug and it will be painful.

BTW my friends have warned me about this for a some time but I didn’t care about it much but today I feel the pain.

You have been warned !!!!!

BTW this wouldn’t happen in India because data plans are too cheap then here.

With the United Progressive Alliance – UPA lead by Congress(I) winning the 2009 Indian parlimentary election with a surprise and its ripple effects has started showing up.

Obviously the first place to feel the effect is the closest to the center that’s Srilanka where BBC has reported that Velupillai Prabhakaran leader of LTTE has been killed. Although it could be rumor as usual but pretty much LTTE will be taken of the equation from now on in Srilanka.

But good news LTTE regrets the loss of innocents life ,not able to protect them any more and willing to silence their guns (nice term indeed).

There above statement is like the saying in tamil

kann ketta pin sooriya namash kaaram

which means Praying to the Sun god after losing the eye.

All mayhem over the weekend..

Update – 05/24/2009:

LTTE has finally accepted that Prabhakaran is dead. Hopefully with the end there will be a better solution in srilanka.

As usual I was lookig for a site that would show the Indian goverment election 2009 and I found out that electio commision has a site set up with the maps and stats online.

Here is the web site http://www.eciresults.nic.in/

The intersting part is they have a amazing interative map online using ESRI Arcgis Flex API and Arcgis server.

BTW ESRI is a company that I work for and now I can tell my friends when my friends ask about the place I work.

I was totally shocked and surprised by this sudden move of the current CM of Tamil Nadu M Karunanidhi to go on an indefinite fast unto death today to bring a ceasefire between srilanka and ltte.

That too after  J Jayalalithaa declared she would strive to form Eelam if she wins the 40 seats.

Sooner or later some one is going to promise we will rename Tamil Nadu to Eelam if we form the government in central. We still got solid 17 days before D day so any thing can happen people be on the watch out…

If I’m right these 2 parties AIDMK and DMK ruled Tamil Nadu for last 30 years ,were part of most governments in central and this war has been going for last 30 years.

What are the odds of this scenario happening and a solution not being found for last 30 years?

-Updated April 27,2009 1.00PM

What a surprise the fast didn’t even last more than 3 hours?

Is it cosidered a fast if I dont eat between breakfast and lunch?