Mundane Musings

So, what's the big deal about my name ? "Guruprasad Raghunathan" -- does it sound too gross ? Just because it's lengthy, does it bog you down in any way ? Well, it does, for several people in foreign countries. Exactly a year ago, sometime during Christmas, I successfully failed in my road test (for the second time, in less than two months) in the US, in an effort to obtain my driver's license. You know what was running through my mind when I overlooked that dreadful "STOP" sign and was almost about to have a collision with an SUV (who had 'the right of way', as they call it) coming from the right ? -- "what the heck is wrong with my name?" I came back to my senses when the inspector, who was sitting next to me yelled, "Watch out!! You're gonna get me killed !!". I felt like shouting back, "Hey !! It happened because your gluttonous paunch was completely obscuring my vision! So, YOU better watch out!!". Unfortuna...

What you're about to read is an actual resignation note (unedited version) that my manager-friend received from one of his team members. "Hello, I will not cum in office from today onwords.I fell down in the road last friday while returning from the office near madivala flyover. I right leg and right shoulder got little damage. As per the doctor advise I have to take 30 to 45 days rest to recovar campletly. Since I going to Australia far MBA in feb last weak I Can't join the job again after my recovary far shart period. So I decided to dis-continue my work from today onwords. I really sorry far the inconvenience caused to resigning my job. Tanks for the great suport and copration from u r compayny. I yum resign." Atleast, 'I will not cum in office' was pardonable to a certain extent, since it gave my friend a hearty laugh. But, 'I yum resign' was the last straw to break the camel's back. After reading that last sentence, my friend felt like...

It snowed 'monkeys and donkeys' in the east coast, yesterday. Don't get me wrong, they weren't scattered all around. Simply meant to use a different phrase, just for the heck of it. 'cats and dogs' are reserved only for rains, aren't they? Coming back to 'monkeys and donkeys', it had been snowing the whole of yesterday and Connecticut recorded an average of 10 - 12 inches. M y wife and I, kept gazing outside the whole day hoping for the storm to abate, so that we could have a romantic walk before the snow turns into ice. Atlast, it stopped around ten in the night. This was the moment we were waiting for. Both of us, fully armoured with thick winter clothing, finally stepped out of the house and walked towards the parking lot. There were heaps of snow all over the place and it took us a while to discover our black beauty, the Audi A4 , which was hidden under one of the mounds. As we started shovelling to unearth our car, we indulged in a deep convers...

Long ago, I authored a post called 'Sex and Chess' (Click here to read it), where I had outlined the similarities between the two 'games'. With a lot of thinking and imagination, I came out with 13 different points to highlight what I felt they have in common. Yesterday, I realized that was nothing -- Google went a step further and outwitted me by establishing a connection between 'Mainframe computing' and 'Sex'. I was working on a bug-fix at my workplace and had to google out something related to a mainframe problem. I entered a few search strings and hit the 'enter' key. The search results that showed up on my laptop screen, almosted tossed me off my chair -- I was laughing out loud and couldn't control myself. Look at the circled areas in the screen snap-shot above (click on the image to "enlarge it" *grin*) to check out how imaginative and fundoo humorous Google could get with it's ads !

First Crazy Wednesday 'Crazy' Mohan, needs no introduction. His name says it all. I've grown up listening to and watching his stage dramas in several 'sabhas' in Mylapore, Chennai. Infact, there used to be an auditorium called 'RR Sabha', adjacent to my school building ,where many of his shows took place. So, it was just a hop, skip and a jump from the school's gate. I used to be so much crazy about 'Crazy' Mohan's dramas, that I would directly sneak into the auditorium with my school uniform, back pack and lunch bag, to get a glimpse of Maadhu and Cheenu, who were my favourite comedians then ! crazy kid, huh ? Crazy Mohan's dialogues had a neat mix of satires, puns, one-liners and to top it all, confusions! The names of the characters in his plays and scripts ought to be Mythili, Janaki, Maadhu and Cheenu. He's been pretty much consistent with that, atleast as far as I've known. The interesting part about his wits are that they...

Right from the day I watched Pithamagan (a few years ago) in Mayajaal (a multiplex in ECR road, Chennai), I've been wanting to write a full-fledged review about the film. Everytime I tried doing that, something or the other cropped up and I used to get quickly overwhelmed. I had been revamping my blogger template for the last one week(yeah, it's been more than a year since I blogged) and noticed this post titled 'Pithamagan', lying in the drafts, with no content in it. Anyway, the dust has now settled and it's way too late to go for a complete review of the film. It is beyond doubt that Pithamagan was a blockbuster; not to forget the several accolades that were showered upon the film. Bala's deft screenplay, maestro's soul stirring music, Sangeetha's mature performance, Laila's comical role, everything about the movie was well handled. Infact, this movie was one of my personal favourites too. However, certain things about the film really did irk me...