Sunday (E)Mail

Over the weekend, my friend sent a mail with a huge attachment related to ‘Mungaru Male’. Now that cannot be the crux for this blogpost. Notable thing was, at the page-end of my Gmail account, it was cribbing ‘2890 MB used of 2920MB’.

And pakku lets his small-marble like eyes to pop-out. Yikes, am seriously poor in exaggerating things. But, I was seriously concerned that my primary mail account was running out of space. And that too my Gmail account. This after using 2-3 secondary Gmail accounts, a yahoo account, hotmail account and above all my unlimited corporate account.

Affright of my mail account getting an “Invalid-Mail-Id” tag due to insufficient space, me got into the saving act in fire-fighting mode (this phrase due to the huge amount of client-meetings I attend – fire-fighting mode, limelight, challenges, sand-clock et al).

This primary Gmail account of myn was created way back in May 2004, when possessing a gmail account was like owning britneys self-ridden hairdo. I cut my fast-growing curly-hairs on a monthly basis and wonder why it does not get into eBay. Need a self-assessment ;-)

Back to my gmail saga!! Thanks to my dear friend, had access to this special mail account, within months of Google launching it. Then, I never thought that I would ever exceed the 1GB limit it provided. Just about 2.5 years later, I see my gmail account crossing the 2.8GB barrier. Yippie, an achievement!!!! Now, I am not so rich that I can pay Google for more mailspace. Also, never would I pay for a mail account.

For people, who are wondering about the mail-contents, it is strictly confidential. Moreso, as my elder bro reads this space and if he finds anything fishy, he reports the same at home. And “paapa pakku” will have to answer hazzaar questions posed at.

Anyways, it is not that secretive too. It contains loads of mails exchanged between P3A, when I say loads; it is loads, that’s it. If anyone were to print out all those mail-threads, it would easily pile up to a 3 flooreyed building. That was a wild guess. Wanna challenge it !!! Apart from that, it would have some “memorable” photo-shoots of celebrities (that includes myself too), few work-related dump stored in Drafts folder(as I feel gmail is more easily accessible than a CD/DVD in a secure CMM-L5 work area). Apart from this, it contains a few megabytes of unmentionables.

Before the wings of your brain-cells fly high, unmentionables are my credit card, bank, share and all those financial details. Now that I have portrayed the importance of this particular mail account, how could I clean it up? How can I delete mail-threads close to my heart? How can I trash the trashy-mail-threads of P3A? How can I let go my previous work-related details? How can I delete the financial details?

Ghossh, that was lots of questions. Please bear :-). Still, pakku goes ahead with cleaning activity and at the end of a wonderful sunny sunday at home, after about 6+ hours of activity, my Gmail account reads 2730 MB used of 2920MB.

Of all the hours spent, I was reading the mail threads/attachments and trying to decide if I could delete them or not. Very difficult task, which squeezed more than 3 litres of body-liquid from my body ;-).

6+ hours of sunday noon, 3+ litres of body-fluids and I could only manage about 200 MB to be trashed. Very Very bad success ratio!!!

Buoy, reading my own thoughts just about 2 years ago, let me know how gullible, different, harsh, caring, idiotic, smart, wise I was and how I am now. It was quite an experience going through my past in the present and trying to recollect the day’s wentby.

Now, even after such a strenuous exercise, I could not resolve the space thingy. If any of you gentle ladies and gentle men, know how to increase the gmail account space, please write to me atpakkus@gmail.com

Nope, that’s not my primary gmail id.

Cheers…

Manchi coffee lanti cinema

Its not that I have over-exhausted tamil movies, that I have shifted focus to telugu movies. But, yeah for now, I am relishing them. For all, not those typical gultee movies of Balayya or junior NTR blah blah.. Well I am not in any way degrading them in this forum. Its just that they are targetted towards a different mass.

To be frank, I cant speak in telugu, but yeah when it comes to movies, I can understand the minutest communique :-)

One of the movies worth a mention in this space is Anand. When I watched the movie over weekend, I felt a feeling of guilt, that how could I miss it till date. Yeah, it was released way back in Oct 2004.

And whenever pakku loves a movie, he goes on watching it umpteen times. Hence, the weekend was with Anand and Rupa :-). After all, when Melbourne is burning with 40+ temperature, you have very less to think of outdoor activities and cricket is a strict NO.

About the movie, its all tributes to independant woman. Very Very well romantic-genre narrated script with apt performance from across the board. Lucky is the female, kamalini mukherjee, to essay such a role in her infant stages of her movie career. Albeit the theme of the movie is simple but wonderful screenplay coupled with stronghold on direction does make it enthralling.

For people who have watched "SwathiMuthayam" or those typical legendary K. Vishwanath movies, you can feel this movie in same lines.

If you want to spend your evening at home, away from all the worries and get into a world of warmth/love, this movie could be one of the choice.

But yeah, its not a movie, which can shake you heads down. The storyline aint new either. If you have keen eye for detail, it can enthrall you the most with its freshness and is a class apart :-)

More here

Have a nice week ahead.....

pakku

Luncheon..

Around noon today, one of my design manager (yeah, working in a functional consulting role is catering to different managers) asked me for luncheon and ignorant of my chicken-packed dabba, I oblige. And I felt my dabba was yelling “makkaar, dhokebaaz” in a typical agitated female voice from my laptop bag.

In Aus work culture, having an individual luncheons with team is more a PR thingy.

My manager asked me for any preference on cuisine and since he being an American, mentioned Pizza!! (impression jamaana padtha hai babu). And, he agreed *Pakku lets out a victorious grin*

Surprisingly, he orders for a Veg Pizza and I follow route. Going on with the informal conversation, we converge to India. Yep, bangalore. And he was quite disappointed at the way blore is. Just when I started to defend it, he spelt out a comment, “basically, I was staying away from downtown and I felt nothing much todo. If I were to be in MG Road, it would have been different”.

Awestruck!! he remembers the place even after 3 odd years having stayed there for barely 3 months. Great!! As, I went on chewing the cheesy(crappy) pizza, I was cursing myself for proposing pizza. Thy policy when it comes to luncheons away from India, is to choose the best Indian restaurant and have a blast. And, here I was in a self-inflicted punishment.

Just as the conversation went on…

“So you know India quite well”, me askind him just when he started talking about pubs in Bangalore and the enthu in Mumbai.

“Yeah… I stayed in Mumbai for an year”, he quipped

“ohh yeah…”

“Actually, my wife is an indian from mumbai” exclaimed my manager with a expression trying to make me feel comfy.

“that’s nice”, me with a dry smile on my face started thinking, hamaare des mein khabil-honhaar-smaart ladkon kaa kamii hai kya, ki usne tujhse shaadi kii….

On the contrary, he looks awesome with an american skin and almost my height.

Me further dragging the India-convo..”How do you like Indian food?”

“It’s the BEST”.. in a typical american accent with a thumping voice

“All these(indicating at the pizza) are crap after having indian food” he further explains…

I could imagine myself as a specimen with stranded spikey hairs, eyeballs popped out with enlarged mouth to let a shark in and industrial fumes out of my ears...

Its RED...

Standing in epicentre of an almost oval ground, gazing at the floodlights of MCG in the horizon and cursing thyself for not getting a cap to cover my precious portion of the body from the scorching sun, I was feeling a sense of excitement. Yeah, for the first time I was feeling what it is to play cricket in a proper artificial grass-laden pitch in Melbourne. To be frank, this was my first tryst with proper leather-ball cricket.

For all these years, I have seen, played, won, and lost umpteen soft-ball cricket matches. Be it the gully in front of our home or the engineering college ground or at the corporate level in koramangala. In Bangalore, I was a bit afraid to play hard-ball cricket and also did not get the right opportunity todo so.

But yeah, I have done it down under in a proper 40-over a side match. Minutes before the game, I was twisting, twirling the red cherry with such ease, that the captain of the team would have felt, I wasn’t novice. Hence, he offered me to stand at slips. Vary of the bowlers speed, I rejected it and instead chose a position right in front of the striker square of the wicket. Not sure, if I felt aka jonty or yuvraj. But when I did occupy my position, I regretted my choice.

For 20-odd balls, ball was not amused with me. But, when it did, I felt the ball. Yep, it was RED and more RED on my fingers. In softball cricket, thrust is on my fingers to catch the ball and I used todo with ease. When I did it with hardball, the thudding experience was more painful than enthralling. My right-handed fingers just couldn’t handle it and there they went off expressing their ire on me by going RED and appealing me to catch the ball by palms. Lesson well-learnt but with bruised fingers though.

Sunglasses are a must here, moreso in outfield. Just when, I was feeling comfy with fielding the ball and throwing back, was asked to bowl. Wat the heck!! My physical height always gives an impression that I can bowl, but I wanted to bat though. Now, I did not have a choice and also I wanted to see how it feels like bowling in an artificial grass-laden 22-yard pitch.

After measuring my short-runup, when I did bowl the first ball, it was whacked for four on the leg-side. Watta an auspicious start!! I just had bowled a short-ball. My childhood mate just spoke to me for a moment and gave some tips for howto bowl the line in a grass-laden pitch. Pitch it straight, pitch it in the line of three stumps and allow the ball todo the rest. Simple, aint it!!

The onus was on the seam of the ball. Since it was a brand-new ball, pitching the ball on the seam would generate the necessary swing of the grass. Well, I hadn’t tried swing before, it’s just the theoretical knowledge and anyways I wasn’t controlling the swing. The allocated 6-over was finished off in 2 spells, with not much glory or disappointment. To my joy, I felt the swing from the grass whenever the ball pitched on the seam. Bingo!!!

Bowling and fielding for 40-overs in an open ground is tiring. The saving grace was the breeze running right across the face. Such a reliever!! Relaxed I was to get back out of the open ground after the first innings.

Few mls of Gatorade and shade had relaxed me quite a bit while my team started to take on the opposition bowling. I was enjoying the game, chatting with fellow members and cheering.

Finally, the moment came, when I was asked to pad-up. This had to be the defining moment of the weekend, for I hadn’t hooked on the pads or the gloves, till date. And, I was (yep was, not now) supposed to be a cricket fanatic.

Zero- experience doesn’t mean zero-knowledge. First I hooked on the body-guard (OK OK, I had got a new one), then the thighpads. It was an amazing experience as I was feeling secure with the life-saving armoury. The pads, armguard and there I was ready for the battle.

Just when I started virtually playing the shots in air with the bat, I was hitting my pads- “thud” “thudder”. Yikes, what a difference playing with the pads and without. Good that I noticed it, away from the pitch. As I sat there, dreaming that the camera spotlight would be on me and the commentators would be saying “Prakash is padded up and could be the next person to come in and have a blast”. The dream was crashed instantly when someone yelled “Next batsman”.

Selected the matching gloves and when I started pulling it along, was feeling more enthralling, that my knuckles were also saved from whizzing ball. It was short-lived though. When I picked up the bat, my grip on the bat was gone. If commentators had to comment they would have said,” Look at that, he is yet to learn holding the bat and is ready to face pace bowling.”

Fortunately, when I had to get in, there was a drinks break. Hence had ample time to feel comfy with attire. Then started searching for a proper helmet which could fit my huge head. Unfortunately, I couldn’t find one. Then convinced myself that noone would bounce the ball to my height :-)

Now the funniest part of the whole show. Started walking towards the pitch and I started feeling a hitch in my thighs. Yikes, how embarrassing!!! Then gracefully adjusted the guard to suit my running. Thoughts of me making fun of sachin, whenever he adjusted himself crossed my minds. Payback time :-( Walking with that huge pads was like crawling. Ghossh.. such a transformation and so less time. Since the oppostion were Oz people, any hint of uneasiness would have made them think of me like a “bunny”. And, I did not wanted that.

First ball I faced, just came whizzing in offside, the max I could do was push my frontfoot and go for a forward defensive shot. No contact with the ball. 3 balls gone and still no contact with the ball. I was confused as I was guaging the line of the ball and I wasn’t making contact. Over done and I had survived. Fortunately, when I spoke to my childhood mate, what was going wrong, he only had to say “don’t expect the bounce of tennis ball here”.

Common Sense, yeah!! I wanted to get on the strikers end and play more. The very next ball I got it. And I started comfortably running with the pads on the whole 22 yards :-) . Took my stance for pace bowling. The ball was in the same offside good length line. Yippie, the ball hit my bat and the loose grip I had, made the bat to swirl. Anyways, I was happy that there was some contact. Adjusted my hand-grip for better shotmaking.

The next ball, the ball perfectly hit the middle of the bat and there it was the pleasant sound, which I always wanted to hear. The eloquent sound of a “thud” on the meat of the bat. Yippie, first runs and elated I was.

Few overs went by, coupled with swing and miss, the “thudding” music and confidence was growing. Believe me, getting a proper front-foot shot on the offside over covers is pure elegance and when you get it after a lot of effort, you feel the pleasure of relaxing in cloud nine. While every damn offside shot is cheered, any shots on the on-side is more “OK” kinds than “wow” kinds.

As I started feeling the know-hows, I wanted to face more pace than spin. The batting against pace is more elegance, timing, placement.

The ball is always in the mid or off stump corridor and if u miss, you are gone. Also, it gives you chance to run it down or try a few a elegant looking front-foot shots. Just when I started to move my front-foot along the line of the ball and gauging the distance from my leg to the bat, a not-so pacy ball just hit on the mid-stump line came whizzing past on the off and I was caught hold on the crease without much movement of the legs. There it was, the most unplesant sound any batsman can hear, the “phattaar” sound of timber followed by a “Ohhhh”. When I looked back, the off stump was knocked off the ground and slept about 3-feet from where it was standing.

And believe me, walk back from the pitch after getting bowled is the most frustrating thing.

Anyways, it wasn’t a disappointing first time effort and considering I was playing with seasoned players no regrets. But I am seriously regretting having played it on Sunday. I am feeling every body part as I work in office today.

Few swollen fingers, bruises and tightened right arm shoulder. Yet, I am waiting for the next Sunday..

Cheers…

Kudos dude..

*Warning - major p3a rant*

When we first met during our engineering days, my first thought was “why is he sleeping in the daytime?”…I am not sure what you had felt, yeah that’s pretty obvious now :-). Later meetings always led to an impression of “buoy, he does have an utmost liking for eating”. To this date, my thoughts havnt changed, may be the intensity could.

To be frank, I never thought we could come together so far, after I met you first. Well, now we have and we have done it with utmost passion without any regrets. And along, we have mingled ourselves in a great coterie, P3A. And don’t you stand as a cherubic exception being the only “A”…Now don’t flaunt yourself to “A” of D-2. Ok Ok.. I just meant to say you completed the wonderful link of P3 with an “A”.

During the days when I seriously felt that geo-distance does negatively bring into a relationship, p3a was an exception. All credit to you for being an integral binder. When either of us worked in four different places of the world, we still made sure for a constant communiqué. A true example, if there is a resolve from either end; geo-distance does not matter.

Of all the years we have spent time together, the transformation has been incredibly smooth and for good reasons. From our care-free (not actually, we were those diligent students even in an engineering college, where profs would remember us) student-life to freebies-googling-for-job to young-turks to responsible (really?) adults. Now, you are stepping forward into a new world of pleasant surprises :-)

Unfortunately, due to self-inflicted ambitions, I have been a defaulter in most of the p3a get-togethers. Please do exempt me from the ire. On the contrary, you guys have been major defaulters in terms of treating me. Just a valid defence from my end.. parvagilla amele nodkothini ….

Ok Anil, as you step forward for an auspicious association with Sreegowri, all the best wishes and congratulations from me and my family and wishing you both a fun-filled, wonderful days together going ahead :-)

Kudos to you mate for breaking the “bachelors’ group” tag and also introducing a new member. Now on if ever you flaunt any unmentionable humour or ogle at females, we know whom to contact …ROFL

Cheers mate

love is pleasant... But sacrifice is eternal :-)

Intelligent people back home in bangalore, have gone crazy of a new kannada movie "Mungaaru Male" (Monsoon Rain). I hope I got that translation right :-). Nope its not the remake or dubb of telugu blockbuster "Varsham".

Initially, pakku felt it was more like the craze of much-hyped movies like "Jogi" . But, when I read the rave reviews, was really shocked such a good movie in kannada was made without much noise. May be after "Amruthavarshini", this will go in the same class(Well, have not yet seen the movie, I can only wish it does). From what I have heard and analysed from the songs, movie theme seems somewhat like "love is pleasant... But sacrifice is eternal.” So true to realistic life story :-)

Lazing back at home over weekend, downloaded the songs and here am iteratively listening to it. One of the song is too good to miss out. Jayant Kaykini, smart looking mangalorean(?) has sketched the lyrics of it. Guys in bangalore, dont miss this movie, seem to be very good to miss it.

When pakku goes frenzy about songs, he posts the lyrics here :-). Sonu Nigam at HIS ETERNAL BEST...



And the poetic answer to the above song, sung by elegant Shreya ghoshal is much much more enthralling...

pakku