Something about Pongal Festival first:
Its a 4 day harvesting festival and is celebrated by nearly all Tamilians “regardless of their faith”. More about Pongal on Wiki

Requirements:
Jaggery – Your desired amount
Rice – 1 Cup
Moong Dal – 1 Handful
Coconut Milk – 1 Cup
Elaichi
Kaju, Kismis

How to prepare:
Dissolve the Jaggery by mixing it continuously in boiling water on a burner. Water should be around 2 Cups. Use that water to cook the Rice and Moong Dal in a cooker. Once it is cooked put it in an utensil and place it on the burner. Add Elaichi to it and then add fried Kaju and Kismis. Keep mixing and then add the coconut water. Keep mixing for 2 mins and you are done.

Thanks to my Mom and my friend’s Mom for their help with the recipe.

The Korlai Fort Light House is at a distance of about 9-10 Kms from Nagaon and normally takes around 25mins to get there if you have a vehicle. Our primary reason to go there was to see the sun set over the horizon, and we are glad we did witness a beautiful one. This was my first ever trip inside a Light House and was happy I not only saw the inside but also understood how it works from the person managing it.

About the Korlai Fort:
It is a fortification built by the Portuguese in order to get a strategic position to use it to defend their province which stretched from Korlai to Bassein. (More on wiki)

Korlai Light House:

A little history: The Portuguese had occupied Korlai hill and surrounding coast line during 15th century. In addition to fort on summit they had built a beacon – column supporting a stone sphere on the fort wall over the south bank of the entrance of the creek. The fort served as important surveillance point. Occasionally log fire was lit when they expected their vessels. After the British took over the region a light was being exhibited from a beacon provided on the north side of the creek.

The person incharge took us in groups of 7 through the narrow and steep stairs and even narrower openings that lead to the higher floors.

The person gave us a 10 minute explanation regarding the Light House.

The primary lamp equipment(230V 150W Metal halide) is said to be having around 40 nautical miles range and has its own character(flash white every 3 seconds) which the boats use to identify their location.(Rather than seeing a continuous weak light, one sees a brighter light during short time intervals. These instants of bright light are arranged to create a light characteristic or, pattern specific to a lighthouse which is called a Character.) Boats without equipments like GPS still rely on these Light Houses to navigate.

A spare lamp with a range of around 22 nautical miles serves as a backup in case the primary light equipment fails.

There is a solar panel that charges a power backup which switches on in an event of a power failure, and if the power backup is over, a generator turns on automatically.

The Light House also had a transmitter that sends a code specific to that Light House to be identified by boats.

The lamp used in the Light House is just a 150 watts one, but it is magnified by the outer lens covering it.

The beautiful sun set:

After some bitter drinks,
and after past some foolish jokes,
some really funny jokes,
but all belly aching jokes..
figures slowly became visible gradually,
without knowledge of their past,
their past either good or bad,
they laughed and lived their present,
and the crazy people finally arrived..

First it was the song “Evan Di Unna Pethan?”(Eng Translation: Who the hell is your dad?) (pardon my Tamil translation), and now I cant get over “Why this Kolaveri Di?”(Eng Translation: Why this murderous rage?)

This song has a typical Dhanush expression, a catchy tune, a weird but interesting “Tanglish(Tamil-English)” lyrics and a feeling that happens commonly and frequently to many of us – heartbreak.

Dhanush has sung pretty well(actually better than Yuvan Shankar Raja) and his expressions are a mixture of sadness of heartbreak, respect for his lover, anger.. in other words a typical crazy lover. And the lines “Glass la scotch, Eyes-u full-aa tear-u, Empty life-u, Girl-u come-u, Life reverse gear-u” and “god i m dying now-u, she is happy how-u” hit the target.

I even more happy to see Kamal’s daughter, Rajni’s daughter and son-in-law together. The new generation is trying something new and is definitely a good effort. Thanks to new comer Anirudh for the catchy music. Very creative indeed! (Shruti could have used a bit little makeup).

I am not going to post the lyrics as the video already has them in its subtitles.

I was told NCFM Financial Markets Introduction would be a cake-walk, but I hardly believed it. Reason being, its an area which I thought I knew nothing of, while the people who made such statements already knew something about Financial Markets and their working.

Well, it was indeed a dumb and simple exam!!!

You cant ask the same question “3-4 times” with just the values changed.

Examples of questions that appeared multiple times in the exam:

-How much maximum brokerage can be charged if a person buys X Rs of stocks and sells Y Rs of stocks

-If the inflation rate is X % what would be value of Y Rs after 2 years

-Present value of X Rs receivable after Y Years at a discount of Z %

That brings me to the conclusion that the Test was sub-standard and it didnt involve any research. The testing software design was flawed since it picked up questions of the same objective over and over again.

If anyone can clear the test by reading the book once and going through the questions in the model test, I dont really think that certification possesses value. And especially when people start calling the exam a cake-walk, the exam creators need to wake up.

You might think, what a nerd!!! First he doesnt prepare and when he does score good, he’s crying about it. But the reason I am writing this blog is because my emotions were completely different when I cleared SCJP. Ofcourse I didnt expect a good score even there, but I was satisfied with my marks and the knowledge gained at the end of the exercise. I was expecting my NCFM result to correspond the knowledge I gained by reading the book, but it doesn’t.

I hardly put any thought on this until we were discussing on this very topic during our team meeting. For me and for many people of India, Corruption is taboo and looked down upon. However, some questions in the discussion really made me doubt if I was firm on my stand.

In the discussion everyone agreed that corruption is not done without a “need”. A simple real life example that many of us have gone through. Getting a passport. You “need” the passport and the officer “needs” the bribe. But there is a difference between Greed and Need. The officer is exhibiting Greed by extorting money, while you are in Need of the passport. Many might think, why is the person giving the bribe in the first place? And I agree its not a strong example of Need for some.

A strong example can be a case where your brother is involved in an accident with a casualty. And he has been registered in a serious case and you know it wasn’t his fault. If you were an influential person, would you save your brother by contacting other influential people or would you just let him rot behind bars?

I am sure many of us might have been through such situations of Need. We disdain the greedy corrupt but my point is, why do we feel it is okay to compromise our ideals and be corrupt when we are in need?

A couple of months back, I had participated in a session on “How to face client interview” in my organization. The presentation contents were satisfactory. However, the questions given by the presenter after the session looked very useful(because I had come across such questions in my interviews).

Here they are:
1. Tell me about yourself
2. What have been your achievements so far
3. Most difficult situation you’ve faced
4. How you tackled it
5. What did you like about your present/previous job
6. What did you dislike about your present/previous job
7. What are your strengths
8. What are your areas of improvement(some call it negatives/weaknesses)
9. Are you a self-starter and an example(self-starter means someone who takes initiatives)
10. How you feel about working in shifts/long hours/weekends
11. What can you bring to this project/company
12. How have you grown in your organization
13. Why have you left/want to leave your organization

Some points from the presentation:
Though the answers to the above questions may vary between individuals, there are hints in the questions themselves and sometimes they are related to either your ‘Resume’ or the ‘Job Description’ itself.
e.g. Answer to question 7 should be in relation with the Job Description, as to what qualities THEY are looking for.

One of the other important point the presenter told us was to keep one’s answers up to the point and never answer anything more than what is asked. If you do, you are opening up the flood-gates, you would have nowhere to run after that.
e.g. Answer to question 3 should be limited to question 3 and should not include answer to question 4

Also, think first and then answer.

I have always hated corporate presentations. Those presentations detailing how the business unit(BU) operates, how the BU plans to achieve certain targets, what were the targets last year/quarter, who is the leader of a particular team(who cares???) etc. Its so boring because it goes over the top. I know engineers come out strong after their colleges, facing lectures that are worse than whats going on now, lectures that make you wanna cry and run out of the class, lectures that might make your brains burst, lectures that might make the room temperatures go up, but shouldnt it stop at some moment? I dont know if thats the case for every individual sitting around me in the hall, who I tend to stare at thinking, “do they even understand whats going on or do they just pretend to be keenly attentive?”. Might be that or may be I have to agree I might not be good at the managerial parts of an organization. Whats actually on my mind now is the magical land of Spain where Katrina teaches Hrithik how to dive into the deep seas and Hrithik’s eyes are filled with tears after the experience. Yeah! My eyes will also be filled with tears if this presentation doesnt stop.

I wonder how presentations manage to nearly stop time. You keep looking at your watch, but the damn hands, neither the minutes nor the seconds hand, seem to move. And then your depression is interrupted by a possibility of hope when the speaker says, “This is where it gets interesting”, and what follows up from the speaker’s mouth, makes you say to yourself, “Really?…. That’s what makes this interesting???”.

My ass is paining even after I have tried to place it in every possible position on the uncomfortable chair. It gets even more weirder when after the boring presentation, a ray of hope is again destroyed by the speaker and he says, “I know you might have many questions. I will tend to each one of your questions”. This particular question is followed by even more silence with many people desperately trying not to look directly in the speaker’s eye to get his attention and become a victim of “asking-a-question”. The tension is equivalent to Frodo trying not to be identified by Sauron’s eye in the Lord Of The Rings. And the camouflage breaks open. Thats when I smile and heave a sigh of relief. I am not alone.

Sadly, I found, Apple had discontinued producing headphones for iPod Nano 3rd Generation. They have got the new ones with extra functionality, but after I read through some discussions I found out those extra functionality wouldnt work on my iPod. This still didnt make me think of another manufacturer for my headphone. At least I could use the headphone only as a headphone. I started looking for shops near my workplace that sold Apple headphones and was happy to find some in very close proximity.

From being told that “only duplicate headphones of Apple are available in the market” to “there is no stock, visit in a few days” to “we dont sell Apple headphones” to “buy this one, its super cool”(yeah! for a price like that it has to be super cool), I heard all excuses from eZone, The Mobile Shop and some other stores.

I didnt want to go for an expensive non-Apple headphone as I seriously doubted their durability. Finally, I bought this Panasonic headphone for nearly 30% the price of an original Apple headphone.

So far this headphone has given me nearly equivalent sound quality of an Apple one, lets see how much this one takes to break.