The Happiness Engineer Journey

It’s been 3 years of my career as a Happiness Engineer or Support Engineer. Never wanted to be one. To put it straight and I never know that there is a job profile like this exist.  During each part of education my ambition(that’s a wrong word)  differed, wanted to become a IAS officer during school days(I know you would laugh, so am I while writing),  Once entered college, wanted to be in designing, animation, multimedia & site building, guitarist, drummer, singer and a Entrepreneur(Oh yeah!).  Each of them are in different proportions.

Got into a job through campus placement as a  Technical Support Engineer. What I got? Handle home users around the globe to help them get connected to the internet using wired/wireless networking devices. If you’re a regular reader of Awesome Life you might have read that how hard it was . I never thought that I will work in such a worst working environment.  Do you know that you need to get permission even if you wanna get into loo     They will calculate every second as a break time. On the positive side, I had got excellent learning environment for communication skills, basic networking skills and most important stuff is about customer care. People in US give so much importance to customer care. If you would have called a US tech support, you will rate tech support/customer care in India as nothing.

After a year of hardship, got into second job.  Ever since I started reading about ‘The Google Story’ I love so much about how Google was started and innovation they have made. Their amazing and awesome working environment is every employee would dream to work with. I’m no exception for that.  It’s been more than 2 years of career in my second company. I have an incredibly awesome working environment here. Performing pretty well and paid well too.

Still, something is missing in life. How great life will be if we have a button to change the career whenever we want without any harm!! Well, If you get whatever you want then life will not be that much interesting I guess. The journey and the quest continues….

Stay Hungry! Stay Foolish!

Mankatha – A Thala Game

Got something to blog. Alright, after a long time watched Ajith’s movie in theater. Why? Simple, got a ticket from colleague. Thala 50th movie, the hype given by Venkat Prabhu in Twitter and FB from the time the movie started – this day it got released.

Coming to the point, went for 11.30 am show. I’m not going much into story line here. Movie started with Ajith intro, a song, and then movie slowly running to loot 500 crores money which is transferred for IPL gambling. First half, – VP dragged the movie as much as he can which does not suit for any action movies like this. In intro song Ajith sings ‘Drinking too much, smoking too much’ absolutely right in the movie, he could have added shooting too much. PremG and Ajith comedy scenes are good even though some of them were taken from Twitter users like @kaattuvaasi  Ajith mentioning lot of hangover dialogues which is so funny and typical. Vada BinLada song was good too see in celluloid.

Second half moves somewhat faster than first half. Arjun contribution will be more in second half than first half. He suits best for the role. 4 actresses Trisha, Andrea, Lakshmi Roy, Anjali appears in movie. But no one’s character has given importance in the movie.  Lakshmi Roy was mmmmm in the Ballelaka song. You can see usage of teeeng teeeng sound more in second half. Climax was twisted round on me, well not very much. You can judge it if you have watched all VP movies before.

Music is good for the title song, other songs are not up to the mark. BGM is good. Too much usage of ultra slow motions could have avoided. Other than that police dept guys(Arjun +) wearing blazers everyday, Hyderabad press reporters talking in Tamil kind of things are still continues in Tamil cinema. Cinematography is well done. Ajith looks so good and stylish in the movie, seems this was also e adichan copy from Oceans 11 or 13 characters. Yet to see those movies to find the plagiarism.

Overall Ajith’s Anti Hero attempt, a good treat for Thala Ajith fans, and for Ajith a good 50th movie rather than a mookai 50th movie by Vijay. I really cannot say awesome, wow, fantastic, I can say this movie as ok or good. 2.5/5 will be my rating. Even though that doesn’t matters for anyone

நானும் எவ்ளோ நாள் தான் ப்ளாக் எழுதாமலே இருக்குறது.

The Guitar Dream

Playing an instrument professionally is always a dream for me. Today when I checked Google, it has an awesome doodle for Les Paul’s birthday.  I have rewind-ed my time line! A year back  I have started learning guitar and even wrote about it here  Balancing my work timings I was able to attend the class for just 3 months To become a good player you will need at least have 6 months training.

So the dream is still a dream. I wish somehow I could have continued the class.  Any way, you can use your keyboard to play the guitar in doodle and some notes are here.

Oh Oh Sanam from Dasavatharam – H H H J K J H G H  H

For the first line of our national anthem – ASDDDDDDDDDDDSDF

“Oru Naal Podhuma” from Thiruvilayadal – K KK JK HH K K ; L K JK HH GFGF D

Thanks @krishashok

Rebecca Black vs Wilbur Sargunaraj

If you have not seen this viral of Rebecca Black a 13 year old girl, take a look at it here. She got huge hits(28,468,328+) and trending in twitter for her first video song ‘Friday’. Not because the song is so good, but people hate her and the song so much. Well, I love this music and this song. It might sounds hilarious with those lyrics. But I still like it

Yesterday was Thursday, Thursday
Today i-is Friday, Friday (Partyin’)
We-we-we so excited
We so excited
We gonna have a ball today

Tomorrow is Saturday
And Sunday comes after…wards
I don’t want this weekend to end

Some one in Twitter said If you like this music, you got no taste. After all music should make you feel happy, relaxed, at times should make you laugh and make you forget all your tension right? This song got something catchy.  If a 32 year old Wilbur Sargunaraj can sing so funny, makes you happy, why not a 13 year old Rebecca Black can do that? If you read the Wilbur Sargunaraj song’s lyrics you will burst out of laugh. Even US people love him a lot, you can see them dancing with him at some of his parties. He’s so funny, make you laugh and dance. He is so popular and even featured in Wall Street Journal’s blog. He was referred as India’s Youtube star, and referring himself as simple superstar, Tamilnadu Superstar etc. This guy got lot of talents. His first song ‘Please check my blog’ is my favorite Check it out here…

What should I blog about?

I’ve been asking this question to myself for very long time. This is a good idea to post Well, that’s finally become a post. When I checked my archives, I’ve posted interesting things happened around me during my school, college and corporate life.

People like it reading them and some of them even ask why I have stopped blogging(I really got some fans, good to hear ) It doesn’t mean that nothing interesting happening. Something I really felt to blog haven’t happened. After Facebook’s revolution now everything is transparent. Whatever you write about, everyone reads that. People whom you never met which FB suggests as friends , Friends of Friends, visitors via Re-tweet will read that. So you got to know what you are writing.

I can write something which am interested about. Something about good music, stuffs I read about, some tech stuffs. I really have to spend some more time reading more and more. I’m missing it by getting stuck into FB I don’t read things which are really long. Unless which is very important or which impress me to read further.  At least am tweeting some what frequently.

So what am trying to say here is am gonna read more, and try to write more in blog(I heard the latter a lot of times ). okay finally finished a new post.

2010 in review

Well that’s a come back and good post Thank you WordPress for this summary.

The stats helper monkeys at WordPress.com mulled over how this blog did in 2010, and here’s a high level summary of its overall blog health:

The Blog-Health-o-Meter™ reads Fresher than ever.

Crunchy numbers

A Boeing 747-400 passenger jet can hold 416 passengers. This blog was viewed about 5,200 times in 2010. That’s about 13 full 747s.

In 2010, there were 6 new posts, growing the total archive of this blog to 39 posts. There were 25 pictures uploaded, taking up a total of 20mb. That’s about 2 pictures per month.

The busiest day of the year was August 1st with 74 views. The most popular post that day was Friendship day wishes to everybuddy .

Where did they come from?

The top referring sites in 2010 were google.co.in, en.wordpress.com, google.com, orkut.co.in, and facebook.com.

Some visitors came searching, mostly for nokia 5220, rottikallu, looking back, awesome life, and 5220 nokia.

Attractions in 2010

These are the posts and pages that got the most views in 2010.

1

Friendship day wishes to everybuddy August 2010
4 comments

2

Got a new mobile October 2008
8 comments

3

Rottikallu tour March 2010
4 comments

4

Weird and wonderful…! July 2008
11 comments

5

Farewell Time Memories March 2008
21 comments

Denial of US Visa at Chennai

Good opportunities are rare and not everyone get it. When you get such a rare opportunity you will fly in air, actually to fly in air for the first time I got one such opportunity to go to US for a short period officially. Prepared for a week to get all those documents needed during the interview. Disturbed my friend by calling a lot of times to know more about the interview process and docs preparation. Because he attended the interview recently and cleared it. That was a L1 and I have applied for B1. Everyone said getting B1 was not a tough job. Only L1 will get denied lot of times. Having said that lot of B1 visas of my colleagues were rejected in recent times. But I got all the documents pukka.

Interview was on last Friday 22 October. It was a beautiful morning ( getting into movie effect ) 11.45 was the time for the interview. When I started at 10.50 from my room found my signature was missing in my offer letter photo copy. So ran to a shop near by bus stop which had no power(fate started from there) then ran into another shop thankfully got the copy there. Now everything is ready.

Started to US Consulate in bus and reached there at 11.30. Fortunately no queue was outside the Consulate. Went inside and appeared for the finger print process and went for the interview. A big fat American guy with bow tie called me for the interview. Greeted each other and he started asking me the basic questions like why I want to go US, what am doing, how long I will be there, My salary, Experience, about my company. Before I complete any answer he was shooting the next question. To my surprise he have not checked any of my documents, not even one.

Suddenly he took a white sheet and said ” According the law 214 (b) I cannot give you visa” I was shocked and said “Wait give me an exact reason to deny” and this guy was talking about ‘Ties’  I do not have strong ties in India, I’m single, I may get settled in US, financially blah blah…. I was blank and said ” I will be there for a week  and…. ” He said the same words again. That’s it.

Who the hell want that 214(b) law? This is ridiculous. This guy planned to deny my visa application once he started the interview, just for a sake asked questions. We do not have any other option to change his decision. This is not fair, B1 visa costs 7k to apply and we do not have any option to escalate this to someone and explain our application is valid. This is B1 and I heard that L1 costs 25k to apply. Interview was just 2-3 minutes and he judged that I’m not eligible to go. This guy said one of the reasons as I’m single. Dude, do you want to me to loose my freedom just to get a US visa?

Visa applications are getting denied more at Chennai US Visa consulate more than any other consulate in India. Thanks for the support and tweet by my Senior Thiruppathi

I was about to ask this to the guy who interviewed me ” Enga ooruku vanthu ukkanthu kitu yengala poha kudathunu solra, ne yenna avlo periya appataker ah? illa avlo periya appataker nu kekuren”   It’s time to read some bharathiyar oops, it’s Maruthakasi (Thanks Jana)  poems to make myself cool

என்ன  வளம் இல்லை  இந்த  திரு  நாட்டில்
ஏன்  கையை  ஏந்த  வேண்டும்  வெளிநாட்டில்

Friendship day wishes to everybuddy ;)

Happy friendship day to all. I was in a very good mood last week and this friendship day will add more reasons to celebrate. So let’s party

One of my friends got an email from a customer like this

” I called you people several times. But why nobuddy responding”   LOL

So just thought of changing everybody as everybuddy Hope you all like that.

My new addiction

There are lot of things which everyone wish to do in their life right from childhood. Not everything would be possible. There are lot such things for me too. One of them is I always wanted to learn a musical instrument. Never had and created an opportunity for that.

Last month, visited one of my brother’s friend home and found a Guitar there. Just lifted it and tried playing. Wow! the sound was good and it’s weightless.  I loved it. Then seriously searched for a music school and found one with a well experienced master nearby by residence at Chennai.

After a month of class, I bought my own Spanish acoustic guitar which is on the top of this post.  Once I brought that to my room, my friends and room mates took it and played the guitar  like all other instruments apart from a guitar. They played it as a Piano,Sitar,Veena and some weird positions too   It’s been two months  am learning Guitar. It’s nice and not that easy For making the initial learning easy, master will teach to play primary school rhymes.  Twinkle Twinkle was the first one I played, then Mary had a little a Lamb, Row Row a boat, Lightly row(which I haven’t heard) Yankee doodle, Jack n Jill were learnt. My friends are teasing when I play these rhymes and telling some innovative and funny reasons which I never thought of to play these rhymes

Looking forward to learn and play more music which others can really listen to

Children and their fun

You might have wondered the presence of mind, memory power and how fast the children catch the things happening around them. I have experienced many times these things from my niece and nephew.

I remember the difficulty I felt to memorize one or two poems during my 6th grade   Now my niece who is in L.K.G recites 14 poems(includes English, Tamil, Hindi) continuously. They do not find it difficult. Sometimes they will play by standing in a table. When I said be careful and the reply is ” Risk edukarathu ellam enakku rusk sapdra mathri ”   My sister always wonders about  their conversation in English with their friends. It was very funny and nice to see them conversing in English. One day while I talk to them over phone, I asked “Enna panra” and she said “Phone pesitu irukken”

My nephew who is just 2.5 years old is very naughty and funny. Few days before while I was talking to him over phone.

Me : Dei enna panra?
Nephew:  Dei! mama… Dei solla koodathu thappu…
Me: ?!?!

(At the end of the call)
Me: Ok say Good night.
Nephew: Ok bye! Good Night! Fine. Thank you. see you…

It is always fun to talk to them. I’m wondering what I did in my childhood.