And the result..

I tried being a 'guy' for a day and I should say I was pretty successful. The day started off by rolling out of the bed at 7.15 am after having a very sound sleep and not doing the bed, ofcourse :). Then got ready to go to work.. Didn't pay too much attention to whether my shoes matched my shirt color or if I looked pretty. I was at work at 8.10 am and logged on to espn.com, yahoo finance and then cricinfo! Then the day went by pretty smoothly, had a couple of meetings, as usual projects were behind schedule and as a guy, I let my manager worry about it ;)

During lunch, I went with my friends to a Thai place. Ordered food and were chatting for a while about company politics and cars. Came back home after work at around 6.00 pm, made my coffee and sat in front of the Tv for 2 hours. Then I realized that I had to cook something for dinner. I did not panic, instead I picked up my phone and ordered pizza with extra cheese! Did not bother to clean the dishes from the previous day.. I continued to watch the idiot box and answered a few phone calls, spoke to my mom for 5 MINS and then put the phone down :) That itself is an achievement coz conversations with my mom last atleast 25 mins everyday! I felt lazy to put my bed and ended up sleeping on the couch!

On the whole, pretty relaxed day, no worries, and did nothing productive ;) Now I realize why guys love the way they lead their lives..

Guy For a Day

Sometimes I wonder why life is so complicated for women. We worry about the most trivial of all things whereas the men seem to be the easy-go-lucky type. Although every time I have asked my guy friends about their not so emotional attitude, they always seem to give me the same reply - “We just don’t show our emotions”. Why is that men seem to feel it is not important to show their emotions? We are not asking you to cry at the drop of a ball, but why not tell us how you feel instead of making us “nag” you for things?

Wouldn’t life be simpler if we women are also the carefree type? We not only worry about things related to us, but also why the men (friends, father, bfriend, husband etc.) close to us don’t worry about things.

For one day I am going to try my best not to let things bother me. I am going to be a guy for a day!

A short week

Took off Monday, Tuesday was a holiday and ended up working from home today!! Nice :)

Thanks to my friend who snowboards like a maniac, I was introduced to this amazing stand up comedian!

What now?

Another year has gone by. Every year seems to go faster than the previous... Was speaking to a friend of mine and found out that he retrospects his new year resolutions at the end of each year and evaluates how much of it he actually accomplished.. I have made resolutions, but never actually sat and thought through how did on those resolutions!!

This year, yet again resolutions have been made.. But I am going to remember to do a monthly instead of a year-end evaluation.. Following six sigma :)

Oops almost forgot.. Wish you a Very Happy New Year!

Tamilzh Pasanga (Tamil Boys)

Thanks to my friend who shared this video with moi!

No longer a Virgin

I lost my Snow Virginity last Wednesday! We had 1-3" snow around the Cincy area. When I woke up in the morning, it was all white and beautiful. I sat down near my French window sipping a cup of hot coffee and admiring the beauty of whiteness!

(Apologies for the picture - too cold to go outside to take the pic)

Then came the time when I had to drive to work.. I walked outside and my car was covered in 2" of snow. I started the tedious job of clearing snow, surprisingly it was not half as bad as I thought it would be! The only stupid thing I did was initially when I was pushing snow off my car roof, I stood too close to the car and had a nice snow shower :)

Am I Cynophobic?

For some reason I had an affinity towards animals when I was a kid. Usually kids my age used to be scared of going near them but I used to look forward to meeting my animal friends!

I should have been about 5-6 years and I used to love watching an elephant making its evening rounds on my street. If I remember right, the elephant and its mahout used to come by on weekends for close to a year. They used to stand in front of my house and I used to run to the gate to give the elephant a banana. My sister, being the timid one, used to stand near the door and watch me feed the elephant.

My other friend was the cow which used to come to our house every morning (5 am) with its master to milk. We used to get fresh milk and most of the days I used to get up and used to feed the cow.

Picture source: msnbc.com

Now I go no where near animals. For some reason I have grown to be really scared of dogs (cynophobia). Although as a kid I always wanted to get a dog, now I stay 10 feet away from them! I am not sure if it was a dog chasing incident when I was in 6^th grade which made me fear the species or something else.

Can you udnertsnad?

I funod smoehtnig vrey itnesreitng and shcoknigly ture!

Wnat to konw waht I am tlkanig auobt? Ciclk hree

Through My Eyes

This past couple of weeks, I turned into a complete movie buff! I watched so many new and old movies that it kind of got difficult to keep track!! So here are few of my reviews..

Bourne Ultimatum:

Cast - Matt Damon as Bourne, Julia Stiles as Nicky and others.

An amazing movie with great stunts and cinematography. The movie starts of with Jason Bourne being chased in Russia and someone in Spain trying to get information on the true identity of Bourne. A journalist in London has the information and publishes in the newspaper that he has details on Bourne’s identity. As expected, the journalist is murdered even though Bourne tries to save him. The scene at the Waterloo train station is very engaging! I loved the chase sequence at Morocco. It was very well taken. On the whole this movie is definitely worth the watch!

No Reservations:

Cast - Catherine Zeta-Jones as Kate, Aaron Eckhart as Nick and Abigail Breslin as Zoe

If you have watched Chini Kum starring Amitabh Bachan and Tabu, the role of Catherine (Kate) is almost the same as Big B, the arrogant but excellent chef. Kate is an excellent chef with a bad temper. She has a sister and no friends. One day, her sister and her niece meet with an accident and her sister dies. Kate brings home her niece, Zoe. In the meanwhile, to keep the restaurant running, the owner hires the new chef Nick. The rest of the movie is about how Kate deals with the situation and what happens between Kate and Nick. Not exactly a chick flick but don’t watch it with great expectations.

Sathampodathey:

Cast - Prithviraj as Ravichadran, Padmapriya as Bhanu and Nithin Sathya as Rathnavel

The movie starts of with Bhanu getting married to Rathnavel who works for the Railways in Chennai. Soon the couple discovers that Rathnavel is impotent. Bhanu believes Rathnavel did not know about his disability and decides to give her marriage a second chance by adopting a child in spite of her family asking her to divorce Rathnavel.

One day Bhanu discovers that Rathnavel is a recovering alcoholic and that he was very much aware of his impotency before their marriage. Shocked by the truth, she decides to get divorced and returns home. Bhanu then meets Ravichandran and gets married to him. What happens between Bhanu, Ravichandran and Rathnavel forms the second half of the movie. Worth the watch if you have time to kill!

Small things

I remember the times when I was a kid, my parents, sis and I used to sit and watch Just for Laughs on TV.. Those simple times are memories to cherish!




Never get bored of them - even now :)

Don't forget your muscles at work!

Picture source: fitness.com

How many times have you felt really tired and worn out at work? An easy solution to that is to do some simple stretches.. Don’t worry these stretches are not going to look odd to your co-workers!

If your work involves sitting in front of a computer screen, the first thing which you should do every 2-3 hours is eye relaxation exercise. Close your eyes and move your eye balls up and down (3 times) then side to side (3 times). Once you do that, rotate the eye balls in clockwise direction (5 times) and then in anti-clockwise direction (5 times).

To relax your shoulder, hold one arm straight in front of you. Then use your other hand to bring the stretched arm to the opposite shoulder.

To loosen your chest, top of shoulder and lower arms, try this:

Make circles (clockwise and anti-clockwise) with your ankles and wrists.

Stand up, bend forward and try to touch your toes without bending your knees. If that is difficult for you, give a slight bend at your knees.

You can also do the same stretch seated.

To relax your neck muscles, move your neck very slowly up and down (3 times) and side to side (3 times). Then very carefully rotate your neck clockwise and then anticlockwise 3 times each.

This 10 minutes that you spend on relaxing your muscles will help you loosen up and feel better!

How many times a month?

Off late I have been super lazy to do anything.. When I come back from work, I watch TV, speak on the phone, eat and then sleep. This has been my weekday schedule for more than a month.. Probably the fact that I cannot access Gmail or blogger from work is one of the reasons for my sabbatical!!

Picture source: cartoonstock.com

Anyways, I got to thinking as to how many times in a month do we buy something online? I buy a minimum of 5 items online each month from electronics to chocolates! So on an average I spend about $150 on online purchases. There are a lot of websites which offer deals and discount coupons. But couponsChief is one which I use the most. You can find most of the coupons from fatwallet.com and slickdeals.com here. The main reason I like to use CouponChief is because unlike the other deals website, the coupons here are classified and categorized. So it is easy to find coupons without getting frustrated!

Some of the good deals going on now:

29% off on Adidas products
Savings on digital cameras from Circuit City
2 DVDs for $15 at BestBuy
The Body shop discount

Something which I have learnt after coming to the US.. Never buy something without googling for discount coupons.. whether it is car rental or some purchase. You can always find something!

Men, Women and Marriage!

I got this forward from my friend and just couldn't resist the temptation of blogging about it.. Here is fodder for 5 mins of laughter!!

• "When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let him keep her" - Sacha Guitry

• "Woman inspires us to great things, and prevents us from achieving them." - Dumas

• "I had some words with my wife, and she had some paragraphs with me." - Anonymous

• "Some people ask the secret of our long marriage. We take time to go to a restaurant two times a week. A little candlelight, dinner, soft music and dancing. She goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays." - Henry Youngman

• "There's a way of transferring funds that is even faster than electronic banking. It's called marriage." - James Holt McGavran"

• "The most effective way to remember your wife's birthday is to forget it once..." - Anonymous

• "My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met." - Rodney Dangerfield

• "Marriage is the only war where one sleeps with the enemy. " - Anonymous

• First Guy (proudly): "My wife's an angel!" Second Guy "You're lucky, mine's still alive."
  

All that said and done, you cannot force yourself to love someone but it just happens! When that happens, marriage happens and the way your life is shaped after that is completely in your hands!

Amazing Amazon

Picture source: amazon.com

For me, Amazon has always been a great place to find books, electronics and DVDs at a very competitive/low price. One month back I got a memory stick for my then brand new Digital Camera! Since I had just moved to OH, I gave the hotel address where I was staying temporarily as the shipping address. I waited for about 3 weeks and then contacted the seller stating that I hadn't received the shipment. The seller sent me an email with the shipping details and told me that the item was delivered to my Florida address. When I looked at the address, I found out that it was not delivered to my previous home address but to the address where I was staying 1.5 years back! When I told the seller about the mistake in the shipping address, he simply told me that he cannot do anything about it..

As a last resort, I decided to try my luck with Amazon and wrote to them about the situation. Yesterday I got an email from Amazon.com telling me that they have credited the entire $$ I spent on my purchase to my account. I was amazed at their customer service. Amazon for sure knows what customer service is all about :)

Whom to blame this time?

Phew.. It has been exactly one month since I blogged! The past 40 days has been so crazy that I even forgot the feeling (contentment) of sleeping for 12 hours a day ;) Slowly I have begun to realize what 40 hours/week means.. It actually means that even though they pay you only for 40 hours per week, you must work a minimum of 50-60 hours/week just to make sure that you get your next pay check!! If your team or group has fellow desies, you will not only have to be careful about your work hours but also watch your back!! Competition in every aspect gets tougher with them around!! On the whole work has been a jumbo roller coaster ride, but only with twists and turns and no fall-outs so far.

Now that I have pretty much settled down at work and in my new home, I will definitely try to blog regularly and try not to blame time and/or work!

No time!!!

This past week has been so hectic. We have been having Project Management and financial classes. And the highlight of the week was a Quiz on Friday! We had a chance to visit a call center and we had a good time learning about the things they do there.

A few of my friends and I watched Ocean's 13 on friday. I liked the movie.. Although a few scenes were similar to Ocean's 11, it was way better than O-12.. I thought George Clooney did an awesome job as usual. There were a few scenes which seemed too far-fetched. I would give it a 2.5/5...

Oh, btw there are so many Indian restaurants in Cincinnati...I went to another restaurant last night and the food was ok but the service was good..I am slowly discovering desi stuff in Cincy..

At last !

It has been more than a week since I blogged. Work has kept me really busy.. Have to get up at 6.00 a.m. everyday and get back home by 6 - 6.30 p.m. Once I get back to my room, I am completely drained out of energy! I think it is because after one month of solid vacationing, my body thinks that I am still on vacation! I am guessing everything should be fine by this coming week!

I finally got hold of my dance video on Google! Eight of us performed for an Indian event in 2005.. It was a lot of fun! We choreographed the dance and had practice sessions late in the night..

Went with my friends to the Cincinnati reds baseball game last night! We had loads of fun.. This was my first ball game and I simply loved it.. There was this guy sitting in the row in front of us, he was so totally drunk and was very entertaining.. He actually made the game more lively and enjoyable..

Marriage = hell?

Picture source: cartoonstock.com

Most of the guys always talk like after marriage they were literally tortured by their wives.. Is it true that we women actually change? Do we start expecting more out of the relationship? Do we blow the smallest of misunderstandings out of proportion? I personally believe that it takes two to fight! So guys, stop blaming the wife for every fight... May be she has a point about your clumsiness, forgetfulness or laziness!

Here is a conversation between a husband and wife.. Have a good laugh!

Before the marriage:

He: Yes. At last. It was so hard to wait.
She: Do you want me to leave?
He: NO! Don't even think about it.
She: Do you love me?
He: Of course!
She: Have you ever cheated on me?
He: NO! Why you even asking?
She: Will you kiss me?
He: Yes!
She: Will you hit me?
He: No way! I'm not such kind of person!
She: Can I trust you?
He: Yes.

Now after marriage you can read it bottom-up !!!!

May be next time

When we made a trip to Key West, I tried to book one of the inns near Duval Street but then all of those beautiful inns were completely booked. When we went to Key West and saw those inns, we decided that we should stay there next time.. These are old houses transformed into inns and have beautiful gardens, swings and close proximity to Duval street and the beach!

Picture source: hawaii.com

I remember the time when me made a trip to Munnar in Kerala, we booked a house rather a mansion and had lots of fun. There was a river flowing behind the house and there was a huge waterfalls 5 minutes from where we were staying.. It was an awesome vacation. It is always nice to stay in rental houses instead of hotels. You get the feeling of relaxing at home and still feel like you are on vacation! The same feeling can be got now if you are planning on a Hawaii vacation.. You can rent villas and have an amazing vacation! These villas are very well described, you can have a look at the photo gallery and choose the one which is spacious/suitable for your vacation..One cool thing about all these rental houses is that they are all located near the beach.. it is not like you choose a cheaper one and you end up in a house in the middle of the town! Now I am tempted to go on a vacation to Hawaii.. the only thing is that a vacation in Hawaii can cost you a fortune. So if you are planning to go on a super - dooper vacation to Hawaii make sure you book everything in advance, have your wallet full and be prepared to come back with an empty wallet!

Where next?

I am planning to take my parents to Orlando, the land of theme parks! There are a few parks that my parents haven't seen yet, so most probably this is going to be the next stop!

Picture source: wikipedia.org

One thing about Orlando is that not even one weekend goes by where you don't do anything but sit at home.. The three months I spent in this wonderful city during my Internship was awesome. Slowly I found out that water rides and roller coaters are not the only things this city showcases. Be it the Tragics - Orlando Magic games or the wonderful downtown with lots of restaurants or the vibrant Winter Park walks, I for sure had lots of fun! My friend and I discovered a German cafe and pub in Sanford downtown. We had a German friend and we went with him.. It was lovely, the live music and dancing was so much fun. Those good old days, I am going to miss all of that for sure once I leave the sunshine state!

Coming back to the theme park tickets, I found this website called Orlandofuntickets.com where you can purchase tickets at a discounted price. I am planning to take my parents to Magic Kingdom, Universal Studios and Islands of Adventure. Last time we went to Epcot, Animal Kingdom and Sea World. I have been to all of them except Magic Kingdom. I have already purchased the Universal Studio Tickets. Hopefully there won't be too much crowd.. I know I am just hoping against hope! This time of the year is the peak season for theme parks and each ride might have a waiting time of upto 3 hours! But in sipte of that, you can definitely manage to have fun and thatz exactly what we are going to do!