Shyam's Blog

Above were the gifts given to us for this year's Diwali. Our office has a holiday on Tuesday. With people taking off on today (Monday), it was a deserted look. Went to office in the morning and not to be surprised, I got a big gift pack. Every employee gets it! Early morning 1AM, we had a new baby in our family. My brother and bhabi got a new baby boy. I listened to his cry over phone and his pitch is good to become a singer :). Happy Diwali to everyone!

It is the same guy who stands at that place every day, that lady waits for the bus right at that corner, this driver drives in full speed right at 7:32 am, and this coconut vendor starts opening his stall by 7:35am - So many faces I do see every day when I am heading to office in the morning. To start with, I start my house at 7:25am and walk for couple of minutes to reach the stop where our office shuttle arrives at 7:35am. On the way, this is what I see - couple of moms with their kids walking them to school nearby, few senior citizens finishing their morning walk and few getting to stores nearby to buy something urgent. At one specific corner, I daily cut across cow dung on the street. That's because, there are 4-5 cows in the house adjacent to that corner! Once I reach the stop, my waiting time starts. In that busy street, same set of shuttle buses pass through everyday - few college buses, couple of school buses and many office shuttles. Two college goers always stand there wi...

1) From yesterday, I started back my music lessons. It was great to get back to my guru after many years. Song taught - 'karimukha varadha' in 'naata' composed by GNB. 2) One market which is opening up in India is DTH (Direct To Home) television. All we need is a dish antenna. Current players - Tata, Airtel and Reliance. 3) Watching television is so monotonous - all channels are filled with so many competitions that it is easy for anyone to just open a channel and have some competitions in it. Television before was run by actors/television stars/news reports, but now, it is run by common man. Even news channels have Ads saying that common man can send in videos/news clippings and they will put them on their channel. In a way, television channels are making money (if at all they are) by having such shows for which they don't have to pay much to 'common man' to be part of the show. 4) Today, my wife and I visited Big Bazaar shopping mall. I am hunting for Febr...

Jan 10 1999 , Jayangar , Bangalore April 18 2000 , Fort High School, Bangalore April 18 2000 , Fort High School, Bangalore

Jan 26 1990, Hubli 1991 , Karnataka Medical College, Hubli Our debut concert - Nov 1997 , Bangalore June 18 1999 , Bangalore Singing at Jayanagar National College Auditorium (College in which I studied 95-97)

Found this old audio archive. With the tape getting older, I converted this to mp3. I have sung this playfully without seriousness. If I see a kid now sing like this, I think I will be impressed. When was this sung? In my primary school! I had recorded 30 minutes of audio with 10-12 songs in it for my grandma. Here is the mp3 now.

It was a day-out for both of us as we spent time in the Forum Mall here in Bangalore. After a short shopping in Jayanagar Shopping Complex, we planned to watch the movie, A Wednesday, which was running in PVR Cinemas. We reach the Mall by 3pm and bought the ticket at PVR Europa Cinemas. We had couple of hours to do some shopping/window shopping. With a quick snack at "Transit" (this is the food lounge), we did some window shopping. After a while, my wife wanted to sit and there was no seating area. We went inside a home-theater demo area and tried to sit there for 10 mins and see the features of that 60K-odd rupees home theater! By then, it was time for the movie, A Wednesday. The movie is a suspense thriller and a good one to watch. Moral of that movie - Every common man has the right and responsibility to couter terrorism. Don't take this moral as "authority", it is just "responsibility". Forum Mall is indeed a nice place to spend a day. So many peop...

Got up this morning to notice a laddu kind of swelling in my throat. Reason - viral throat infection called Mumps. It is painful to swallow anything and remedy is to take painkillers and leave it to heal by itself.

We got a Hyundai Getz today. One of our colleagues sold this car which he had hardly used. It is a 2006 Hyundai Getz GVS. We chose this car as it was in a very good condition and a brand new would have costed us 40% more than what we paid. On the occasion of "Ayudha Pooja", it was good to get the keys for the car! A few of Getz from the web... Technical Spec: Dimensions and Weights Overall Length (mm) 3810 Overall Width (mm) 1665 Overall Height (mm) 1515 Wheel Base (mm) 2455 Ground Clearance (mm) 160 Front Track (mm) 1450 Rear Track (mm) 1440 Front Headroom (mm) 980 Front Legroom (mm) 1180 Rear Legroom (mm) 880 Boot Space (liter) 290 Gross Vehicle Weight (kg) 1500 Kerb Weight (kg) 1095 Fuel Economy Mileage Highway (km/liter) 15.3 Mileage City (km/liter) 10.7 ...

Wishing everyone "Happy Dasara"

Bangalore is ready to host the first test match of the four-match series between India and Australia. It rained heavily last night and for 9th, hopefully, we will have clear skies to have a complete 5-day contest. Why am I blogging this? I am few inches (put it as miles) closer to watching this match live sitting in the Stadium!

It has already been a month since my wife and I returned to India from US. So fast! I have to answer people one question - "How do you feel returning?" Answer - It is good! I knew what was at stake and I was ready for it. We had discussed pros and cons and we are happy that things are going as planned. There are many pros 1) Home sweet home - being here is always sweet, no matter what. 2) Family is near - our parents are near, always around to help us in everything (we miss our brother and SIL who are in US). 3) India has changed on many aspects compared to 6-7 years ago. This helped us a lot in getting adjusted. 4) Music and masti is always round the corner. Cons?? 1) Miss the liberty of online search for shopping goods. I am not able to search for the right stores for the right goods. If I go to store across the street, I am afraid that I might get a duplicate product. 2) hmm. For now, missing the car I drove there in the US. Same car is available here too. But, it is too t...

On my way to office this morning, I was listening to Amruthavahini radio channel. A talk show with veteran musician, Vid. Seethalakshmi Venkatesan was being aired. She has been singing for more than 6 decades now and is a disciple of Semmangudi. Few points she mentioned to be noted: 1) Music needs practise and dedication - Now-a-days, kids and their parents aim to learn for a short span and start giving performances. This doesn't bring the best of music. 2) Audio recording class sessions these days have made things worse - kids tend to make this a usual routine and end up not getting the micro-intricacies of any song. Also, seeing the text/book and singing is not the best way of expressing music. My brother and I have seen this and we always made it a point NOT to see the book and sing. This distracts the singer and also makes the listener concious about the fear of missing some lyrics. 3) Audience has changed over generations - Few decades ago, one had to sing 'ghana' (raa...

Mixture of items to blog - 1) Finished setting up Sony home-theater system during the weekend. The system was kept idle at home without being put to use. So, thought of arranging the set up in the so called "Entertainment room". The quality and sound is good. Hope we (family) get to sit, relax and enjoy some movies in future! 2) House wiring - finding plug points in the house has been a hunt. Each room has just one point - that is how houses were wired couple of decades ago. Now-a-days, each room is fitted with atleast 3-4 plug points. To solve my problem, I have been trying to get extension cords and make sure they don't come in the way of we walking around. 3) Big Bazaar drive - My wife and I wanted to check out Big Bazaar on Sunday evening. We drove to two of its outlets and returned home without getting to enter it! No parking space in the Bazaar and surrounding radius of 1 Km. 4) Radio Channels - Radio City is one channel where RJs are supposed to talk always smiling...

Spotty spotted in the dark few minutes ago! It is 4:00am now and I am back from chasing away Spotty, the frustrating street dog which I mentioned earlier in my blogs. After a few frustrating nights, I asked my dad about that dog and he told that its pet name was Spotty. Why the name Spotty? Answer - It has spots on its body ;) Tonight too, it started off barking an hour ago. With few shouts and warning from me and my wife, it did shut its mouth for a while before starting again. I took a mug, went out to balcony and splashed on it and the place it usually sits/sleeps/barks from. Moments later, there was silence in the street. I am so familiar with this dog's barking sound, I could recognize its barking 2 streets away - nightmare for those neighbours there :( One curious question - what makes this dog bark so relentlessly each night? It doesn't synchronize with other dogs' barking in the locality. So, it is not a question of response-ack. Something different though.

This is an inspiring story of a person whom I recently met. Moral of the story - Good education will make one achieve higher heights. Vijay (name changed), 27, is a successful man now. Dad and mom are based in a small village near Ooty, TN. With three kids, it was a hard time to bring them up for a couple who had small earnings. Dad, with matriculation, was a bus conductor and mom had hardly finished 8th grade. Everyday, dad witnessed 100s of bank employees (and others in similar cadre) travel in the bus and earn a decent living. His only dream was to make his kids study well and earn well. At high school, Vijay was a boy with more activities outside the classroom. He was more interested in playing cricket with local village kids than going to school. Not bearing this, dad decided to put him in to local hostel (2 Kms from home) of his high school. This is a situation where a son is made to stay at walking distance away from home and stay under direct vigilance of Principal. Strictly un...

Choices to buy a car in India are many now. Compared to 2002, 2008 has many more cars in a whole range of prices and classes. I have been trying to test drive as many cars as possible to get a feel of the current auto market here. One conclusion is, we have some great brands with full comfort facilities - but with a price to pay. Hyundai cars are smoother compared to Maruti Suzuki when it comes to changing gears. Local brands like Tata and Mahindra have good steady cars with lower price tags. One needs to consider them if they are not too much in to resale value. 1) Hyundai i10 Kappa Sportz 1.2 AT - A very smooth and comfortable small car to drive. Did a test drive on this last week and found that it is suits me the most. Legspace is very good, headroom is good too (being Hyundai). Autotransmission makes it very much suitable for city drive. We have to keep the fuel efficiency aside when driving in city ( 10 Kms/lt). 1197 cc engine with 80 hp is sufficient to give fast pickup. One poin...

Driving map from Home to Office (Courtesy - http://in.maps.yahoo.com ) Started home at 7:15 am and reached office by 8:15 am. It was not a bad drive with jams at only couple of junctions. I took the green path which looks pretty straight forward. The red path is the one which Yahoo Maps suggested me once I reached office! Yes...! now, one can get driving directions online. Directions are available for 'known' landmarks (or area) only. This is more than sufficient for someone who needs to drive from place A to place B. One cute thing about yahoo maps - it will give you Auto-Rickshaw fare! For the above map, it showed - Rs. 70. Driving back home in the evening is a bigger challenge.

Kannada movie industry's music has singers from all over the place. I can hardly find a local boy singing - all are 'hired' singers from Hindi. Below is one song which is a good one. The video is not the original one. I liked the way this guy edited this video - a nice job indeed!

Isn't it frustrating to hear a dog barking late in the night? This is what has been happening frequently next to our bedroom window. The previous tenants next door who were dog lovers took care of this street dog by feeding it often. Now that they have moved out, there is no one to feed it. It comes there and starts barking with a standard frequency which is hard to skip. If it skips, it becomes a waiting suspense for me. Last night, we tried to locate that dog. My wife first made window noises to make it stop barking, which it did for a while. But, at regular intervals, it slowly started again playing a virtual hide and seek game. After a while, I got to the act of chasing it away, but couldn't find the dog in the dark. I don't know how other neighbours sustain the frequent noise of this specific dog!