Chenthil sent me a link about Mediaah!! Blog being closed due to legal issues, sometime/longtime back. Not that I overlooked it but then the mail was drowned into my mail box and I just didn't follow it up. Looking back, I should have responded pretty fast by a post reacting for it. Mediaah which was served a legal notice by a media 'biggie' requesting/compelling /asking/whatever-heck to remove some 19 posts because they were denigrating the company. I haven't read those 19 odd posts but I am sure with the blogosphere's reaction to it, Mediaah was just trying to be unbiased. Now this can happen to anyone of us, bloggers and there should be a clear line of understanding of what's being slanderous and what not. I only hope, Mediaah will be back and I get to read their archives again.

No cribs for Kribs. I am sure, he will be back after a break. Cool off, guys.

Last few weeks, I was busy following Seattle's weather to catch my morning bus and wasn't following blogosphere, closely. It's only when Kribs says,"goodbye", I get to read Sudhish's Kamath's interview on Kiruba's blog. It's exciting to see Sudhish with so much enthusiasm with his fingers pointing the west. More than that his premise for their upcoming films, especially the one named Bad News, triggers my expectations. Good luck Sudhish on That Four letter Word.

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Behind Maggi 2 minute noodles pack:

Step 1: Boil one cup of water
Step 2: As soon as ganguly goes for batting, put the noodles in the boiled water and add the tastemaker.
Step 3: Stir till ganguly is on the field.
Step 4: As soon as ganguly is back in pavilion, your noodles are ready to eat.

If that's an old one, blame me not. It was delivered to me on e-mail, just yesterday.

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[Pic : Galatta]

I Promise entertainment for the entire family - Signed by Kamal Hassan on the faked 500 rupee note poster up the stage.

Now you wanted to know who the marketing guru was. None other than our own Kamal Hassan. It's probably now the media is pronouncing that Kamal is on his marketing exercise for Mumbai Express. But ever since he started featuring those un-edited Behind the scenes of Mumbai Express, he has started to market, in-directly.

Again, it's appreciative of Kamal to push theatres on going-digital. He quotes that shooting the movie digitally saved him over a crore rupees on the film cost. While PC Sriram experimented with digital
film making in Vaanam Vassappadum, Kamal is taking it up in a big way, inspiring producers to go digital. Its high time Mani Ratnam and his wannabes shift to digital shooting for their upcoming films. I am not sure if all the labs at kodambakkam are equipped to do digital processing but I'm hoping that this will trigger of a trend to upgrade to digital film processing and digital film projection. Just like how Kurudhi Punal and Thiruda Thiruda urged theatres to upgrade their audio systems to Dolby/DTS.

Kamal Hassan's production house, Rajkamal Films, is also venturing into the audio marketing and that hints me on the special music done by Illayaraja. With Mumbai Express being an entertainer and Singeetham directing it, Kamal must have got real quality time to experiment on these things other than the plot/direction/camera. Yet another interesting trivia is that Mumbai Xpress is the first film from south to have been digitally censored.

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Looks like the Indonesian earthquake with a magintude of 8.7 has also triggered a Tsunami alert.for contries surrounding it. The Indian Home Ministry has alerted the coastal states including Tamil Nadu and Andaman Islands.

A prayer more than a hope that the Tsunami doesn't get in the way anymore.No way !!

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[Pic : rajinifans.com]

Looks like a 100s of Cheena Thaanas in a single Chandramukhi. Konja Naal Orulla Illanaa.....Ennappa Ithu ? Thalaivar Missing !!

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So all I could is to bundle up with a dozen flicks of various genres including the kollywood ones and call this movie marathon. The King County library provides a free access to all the 43 libraries around. For a book types, like me, it is a welcome break. I'm just ordering books that I haven't or wanted-to-but-couldn't-get back in India and read them to glory.

The first one was an awe-inspiring auto-biography, Every Second Counts by the tour-de-france champion Lance Armstrong. This guy after surviving a cancer, pitched back and won not one but five championships of tour-de-france. Mind you, tour-de-france is considered to be the most grueling championship and a real test of stamina for mankind. Every man's life has a history but very few have such completely devastating lives told in the best possible way without pretence and unnecessary adjectives. Lance Armstrong is one hell of a guy. Truly. And I'm just checking the prices of bikes around for a tour-de-seattle. BTW, the last line was a lie for a lazy like me. I'm currently reading Rebecca Blood's The Weblog Handbook and also hae piled up Biz Stone's Blogging book as the next read.

Films. Name them and they are available at the library. From Akira Kurosawa's Ikiru to Rajinikanth's Muthu, there is just every other international movie available. I've booked more than enough flicks, most of them being on the non-commercial ones that you cannot get in India. Michael Moore's Bowling for Columbine and Woody Allen's Play it again, Sam were some to name from. I'm surprised to see there are 50 people who have booked for Akira Kurosawa's Rashomon, before me. That says all.

With all these films lined up, my head would burst a 1000 pieces if I don't say my opinion on them. Instead of reviewing every other movie in a detailed fashion, how about two-minute-reviews ? Something real quick and just worthy stuff on film. The regular ones would go on as ever. I'm trying it out to see if it works.

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I am Andrew Shepherd and I am the President.

Michael Douglas, one of the best American Presidents on-screen. Better than Bill Pullman[Independence Day]. Topped with Martin Sheen and Michael J Fox, it was a cheerful script. Enjoyed the movie after a long time, again.

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Why in the whole world the geeks go ga-ga on simple code snippet that resides on the toolbar of google at toolbar.google.com and only when downloaded, activated and clicked every single time, actually works. I am not even bothered about if Autolink is an evil in the goddamned wicked world of internet. I'm just concerned about how a simple thing because of it's bad naming, gets screwed up right royally even at it's beta version.

If you are completely unaware about the snippet and the toolbar stuff, here is a quick re-cap. Google's new toolbar beta release included a feature called Autolink. I am hell upset about the naming. Will come to that a little later. Soon after it's BETA release, the feature autolink becomes a top-rated keyword in blogosphere. Reason, top bloggers like Dave Winer, Scoble and others start criticising Google for introducing an evil called Autolink.

If you were to browse through an online library catalog and looking at the book list, you would find the ISBN number of that book published next to it. Let's assume it's there. And you are looking at a book named Idiot's Guide to Web Links, you see no more information about it. If you want to see more on this book, most probably you might hit Amazon and search for the title of the book. Instead, how would it be if Google would locate all the ISBN numbers on the web page and auto link you to the respective books on Amazon. Fabulous isn't it. Saves time and a dozen more clicks. Similarly for package delivery confirmation, Vehicle number[VIN] checking and ofcourse for the address linking, Google provides a solution on it's BETA version of it's new toolbar release. All this autolinking happens only if you follow these steps religiously,

a) Download Google toolbar.
b) Activate Autolinking option.
c) Click on Autolink button everytime you want the toolbar to provide autolinks for a particular page.

Now this Autolink is what some people call as Slippery Slope or Evil. Opinionated Bloggers have already taken sides on this debate. And it's still running full house. The point is, I don't see even traces of evil here. If a sane person downloads Google Toolbar, enables autolinking option on the toolbar and clicks every single time on the Autolink button when he needs to see the links, he needs Google to do autolinks. Where is the question of Google changing web content by providing links. It's just a code snippet that works on tthe local copy of the webpage on your machine. It isn't making a global change to the page on the servers. If you need it, you get it, else buzz off and keep off from coming to Google. One of the arguments that these Autolink critics offer is that Google might make this as an compulsory option in the subsequent releases of their toolbar and it would affect the ethics of web page linking. Now that you say can be seen as evil. As long as they provide an option to opt-out of this Autolinks, we are good to go. I am hoping for the kind of character, Google has displayed until day, as a company, they are trust-worthy.

Yet again Microsoft comes to picture. Their introduction of a similar[similar not same] linking procedure called Smart Tags was turned down by the industry analysts and hence was taken back. So the analysts want to take back this Autolink feature of Google as well. Until the time Google stays with the current ethics and integrity, their software would rock. If going public is going to change Google's way of the web, let Satan eat their pigeon ranking code and make a mighty burp. Peace.

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Goodbye Gemini. The yester year Kadhal Mannan passes away.

Meet the Press, Mumbai Xpress.

Anniyan music to be out by April. Paattu CD vaanga naama odi polamaa.

Survival of the Rowdiest. Selva Raghavan kick starts Pudhupet with his home team. Take a world tour, Selva. No point in winning always in your homeground.

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Whoa !! Flickr was clearly a Google animal and they missed the bus. Yahoo announced that it bought Flickr, few hours back. With the announcement of Yahoo 360, it was expected that Yahoo might acquire few small players, whose application, Yahoo might integrate into blogging/social networking utility, Yahoo 360.

Flickr was one of those software applications that was clearly an offshoot in this clumsily imitative internet world. It was certainly a killer app for photo blogs just like delicious was for bookmarks. There were talks on the blogosphere that Google might just go for Flickr.

With Flickr on the Yahoo side, the Googleplex would have been alarmed this rainy sunday to gear up with their next best release of blogger tightly integrated with Picasa. It's going to be long nights ahead for those geeks. Good Luck !!

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It was like 12B. The crowd, the rush, the push and the seat blocking. Just as same as the Vadapalani-T.Nagar crowd. Travelling from a suburb to the downtown Seattle is becoming an event everyday. With a metro bus full of Indians, it gives me a feel of being in Chennai, except that not many talk Tamil.

The one sitting next to you can say, Kya Yaar/Bagunaara/Inna Mamey, anything of the listed/unlisted Indian language. Sometimes you might have an america-born-asian youth constantly fidling with the tiny electronic gadget which could be the size of a matchbox and might play mp3, kick off the electric heater in your house or sometimes remotely run a few unix shell scripts to index the cramped database at work. Who knows ? Everything is possible with technology, especially here.

You can blabber about deal going with Comcast cable or ask for the best Indian restaurant around with your Indian bus friends. All these details are available after 'deep' research of prices and quality. From buying selling cars to broomsticks every single product is analyzed thoroughly. So you can be sure that any advice you get from a desi with regards to price/place/product is a reasonable one. But chances are you might end up sitting with a snob whose face would read a name like Munsaamy or Goindsamy. He would just not even smile at you and would behave like descending directly from St.Peter's special heaven. As you sit next to him, he would take out his ancient cellphone and talk stuff like gonna, awesome, whasup, gotta go, shoot and what not. The worst part is that you might meet our heaven descendent at an Indian store arguing in local tamil or telugu, bargaining for $2.75 frozen paratha. Fate.

The best thing about Seattle is the commute. The city is well connected with the bus service. For someone like me to have seen nothing but cars in Chicago, this was a surprise. The roads are built on hilly areas which means you will have a roller-coaster ride to the city and with those tall green trees half-covered with the morning fog, it's a pleasure ride. As the bus crosses the Lake Washington, you find a maze of bridges built below and above to the one you travel. Yeah, you can slip into a dream of singing like Shahrukh on the open car[Pardes].

I am carrying my SONY Digicam with me mostly but with the pace of bus zooming on the express lane, all I could get is a shot of moving objects and not the lake. Will have to get down and click them someday.

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Anniyan gets pushed to May 15th, for Chandramukhi. Hope they come on the same day. Not for the wait but just curious about the results.

Mumbai Xpress also gets post-poned. Not because of Chandramukhi but due to post production jobs.

Prakash Raj's ropes Priya, an assistant of Mani Ratnam for his next production. Thats news. Gossip is that KB also directs a film named Poi, for Prakash Raj's production house. Is that a Poi/lie ?

Mani Ratnam kicks off story discussion for his next film starting April 2005 with all new stars. A friend close to Madras Talkies mailed.

Chandramukhi Countdown - 27 more days to Devuda Devuda.

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[Pic - Hindu]

This was something that I was looking for a long long long time. Vasanth's break from Kollywood seemed like a mystery to me. Though he was associated with many charity programs and was also directing Ashokamitran's Thaneer, he was out of the mainstream kollywood for sometime now.

After Keladi Kanmani and Nee Paathi Naan Paathi[remember gowthami's Nivedha song], like Mani Ratnam, Vasanth was also one of my favorites. Not just because he was from the KB group but because he had an elegant down-to-earth approach in telling stories. Aasai which was an offbeat thriller was cute. Not only Vasanth gave a fresh life to Ajith's dying cinema career but also established Prakash Raj after his first tamil film Duet.

Nerukku Naer seemed more of a Agni Nakshathiram rehash but still was a good college movie. And I saw it couple of times for that Engenge Engenge song where Surya was still running behind Simran in the streets of Kolkatta. Povellam Kettu Paar was more of a Crazy Mohan movie than Vasanth's. I still feel Vasanth has the ability to ground his movies well and there is a good amount of urban middle-class crowd that will enjoy his movies.

Looks like his next flick with Surya, 9:30 to 10:00 talks about the changes in two peoples life in just 30 minutes. 9:30 to 10, sounded like a serial timing on the cable. Thats when you get to Chithi/ Annamalai or Selvi. I think it's not about it. Vasanth's comeback sounds exciting to me. But don't tell me he will rope Deva as the music director, again. Let's have Illayaraja or ARR.

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So that completes the circle. Google - MSN and now Yahoo. Yahoo 360, a service that looks like a mix of Blogger and Orkut. I should say it more like the MSN Spaces rather than the Blogger + Orkut stuff.

The service isn't active yet but looks like Beta service will be launched very soon. I haven't seen many interesting blogs on MSN Spaces. So what is yahoo trying to do when they have a killer app like Blogger owned by Google, which rocks. Doing for the sake of doing doesn't help anyone, I say.

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Few Indians in America make any attempt to integrate in American cultural or social life. So few visit an American home or a theater or an opera, or try to understand the American psyche. An Indian's contact with the American is confined to his colleagues working along with him and to an official or seminar luncheon. He may also mutter a "Hi!" across the fence to an American neighbor while lawn-mowing. At other times one never sees the other except by appointment, each family being boxed up in their homes securely behind locked doors.

After he has equipped his new home with the latest dish-washer, video, etc., with two cars in the garage and acquired all that the others have, he sits back with his family counting his blessings. Outwardly happy, but secretly gnawed by some vague discontent and aware of some inner turbulence or vacuum, he cannot define which. All the comfort is physically satisfying, he has immense "job satisfaction" and that is about all.

RK Narayan's My America is a simple-yet-devastatingly ironical look of an Indian's American life. This article of RK Narayan was written for Hindu's Frontline in 1985. I keep reading and re-reading this but now I am starting to appreciate it better. My America has the classical writing style of RKN. Very subtle, very genius.

Sujatha had written a similar article called Vellinaattu Mogam Konda Ilaignargalukku which was even more straight-from-the-heart and hard-hitting. I had just too many discussions on this with my friends. The last few were with Balaji and Latha. But don't worry, to pick up a discussion on this again, is a cake walk for me. I'm ready !!

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If you are the one[NEO], your google homepage will show up like this today giving you an invite to GMAIL. I never got one. This snapshot was from here.

But hurray, GMAIL is born.

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Other than Vidyasagar getting a neat break with Rajini film, was there anything special about Chandramukhi's music. But who wants to write a music review for a Thalaivar movie. I am not Anti-Rajini. I like him and hence to make him proud, no review/preview stuff for music. But then here is the sort-of-one-liner [not necessarily] for them.

a) Annanoda Pattu - A typical Kolla Kuthu Vidyasagar song. For Karthik it was Maya Maya [Baba]. This time it's KK. Neat job but some bad pronunciation. Didn't like KK crying, Ah!! Ah!!. Made it seem seem like a moan.

b) Devuda Devuda - Vidyasagar wants to compete the opening build-up music for Rajini, with ARR's Muthu music. Never. Who else except SPB could do it for Rajini's opening song. Shankar Mahadevan himself didn't impress for the Baba song. SPB delivers. What a way to reach the high pitch and say Repeatuu. Cool.

c) Kokku Para Para - Cute song. Seems like an ARR song for a Rajini movie. Wonderful Harmony.

d) Athinthom - Did I hear Maankuyiley Poonguiley recently ? Very close to that Illayaraja classic. Don't agree with me ? Listen once more. Yet again it's SPB's forte for such numbers.

e) Konjam Neram - Decent melody. May not have been in this album if not for Prabhu-Jyothika pair. I hope so at least. Madhu Balakrishnan's voice suits Prabhu. Asha pronounces Alagu for Azhaghu. Could have used a Tamil singer. Honestly, I like Asha and Sadana Sargam singing except for their bad Tamil.

f) Raa Raa - Smokers, take a break. A classical number to move the movie. Very enjoyable except for the haunting voice that interrupts and pronounces kala kala kala kala. I know the movie plot is based there but then as an album the song fails because of that.

Pretty mediocre for a Vidyasagar album. He has given better ones before.

Marks ? 1190 out of 100 like Thengai Seenivasan rating Rajini in the Thillu Mullu interview. Remember Iyampettai Aruvadainambi Kaliyaperumal Indran. Same stuff. Rajini is out of the rating race, read more, for his fans.

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to become an Amazon member. I know that you can walk into a desi store, where, the door bell rings when you open the door and buy a Dosa mix. But then, being online is online.

BTW, I am not very choosy with food but while in the US, these things tend to get your taste buds, belligerent. Just mentioning this because the last posts were on food and you might end up thinking me as a Gadothgaja.

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This is something for which most desis nod heads with me. From the suda suda filter coffee in davara tumbler to the slogan on the coffee cup saying, The beverage you are going to enjoy contains hot liquid, I'm learning to accomodate.

Starbucks is beginning to be a costly replacement for my Indian Filter Coffee. Yet I'm becoming comfortable to walk to into a Starbucks Coffee shop and order in a single breath "Hey, How-u-doing, Mocha-Tall. Make it extra hot. No whipped cream. You see, I'm already going bonker bonks with the cheese thrust". Get the covered coffee cup, open again and add sugar-like-stuff to make it sweeter. Yesterday, trying to act smart, I added some cane sugar and you must have seen my face go all eight directions.

If you didn't know, Starbucks, the American Coffee shop revolution, started in Seattle. I knew that just a week back. While I landed, I was surprised to see a Starbucks at evey corner of a street. Not anymore. So if you are anywhere in Seattle downtown, you might be just 50 feet away from a Starbucks.

I am starting to love all the Cappuccinos, Lattes, Mochas and Espressos. Just as I enjoyed the ambience in the Chennai Barista, I'm enjoying the crowd here. Geeks sitting around with a cordless mouse and working on their laptops connected to the wireless hotspot, Women - while sipping their Caramel Mocha adjusting their upperlip lipstick on a handy mirror, a gentleman on the blue shirt and a thick reddish tie relaxedly reading The Seattle Times, a middle aged woman reading just the first page of The New Yorker and me still stirring the cane sugar in the Mocha. Vivid Images inside a Starbucks Shop. Enjoyable.

P.S: My laptop is still adjusting to the WI-FI. So it might take a week before I do some Vetti Banda stuff of blogging from Starbucks and name the post, The First Post From Starbucks On My Laptop. What a boast that was !! I hear you saying Lazy finally becomes GEEK !! Atleast I hope.

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There is this very interesting discussion going on in the comments section on Kamal Hassan, his movies, his personality and all-things-Kamal. All this with comparison to other directors like Mani Ratnam and Bala. I've done this before at length, both verbally and in writing, in the blog and with friends. Sometimes got myself flamed for it too.

What I am doing now is just watching this space like any other lazygeek reader. One of the joys of blogging comes like this as a conglomerate of ideas and thoughts. I enjoy it. Thanks dudes.

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You probably knew this before but just for my bookmark. Google hires Mark Lucovsky, from Microsoft who was in the team which created Windows NT. What's next ?

The Autolink debate is here to say. But then accusing Google like this hurts a Google fan so badly. What the heck is wrong about world domination on the enterprise computing. After all we have seen the worst of domination already. Didn't we?

My stone aged laptop still loads Gmail without any issues. I bumped over this new feature of basic html interface for GMAIL only then. Looks like it's a pretty new feature.

The lakshman rekha between online and offline got erased. Ask the Google Desktop search how. With desktop search going live, I've become even more lazy. It was few months back since I dropped the idea of arranging files in folders. They are all there in my comp but only google know where.

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Righta Thappa has good reviews coming in. Here is Shobha Warrier's review in Rediff. As usual she re-tells the story of Righta Thappa in the review. Forget that. Shobha is full of praises for R Bhuvana, the director of Righta Thappa. While, I am sure the movie is going to be good the review makes me skeptical.

From the way the film has turned out, she can call herself successful.

Given Rediff's recent reviewing talents, I am afraid if this is the feministic thing that's going on.

P.S - If you hate to believe me, there is this Shobha De advertisement next to the review. Probably co-incidential but then makes for a good joke.

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[Pic : idlebrain]

Oh !! Oh !! Annanoda Paatu
Oh !! Oh !! Aattam Poduda
Oh !! Oh !! Akkaraiya Kettaa
Oh !! Oh !! Artham Nooruda

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[Pic : Vikatan]

After a week of being alienated from the kollywood world, I was hoping that this interview[need uid/pass] of Kamal for Vikatan would be a refresher. It was, it wasn't.

Even as Kamal Hassan starts of the full-time promo for his latest flick, Mumbai Express, he doubles it to take on the group who are asking to give Mumbai Express, a tamil title. While this was the same with Sandiyar/Virumandi movie, he spoke about the issue just before the release of the movie. That was on his interview to Madan for Vijay Tv. This time, surprisingly, he is charged against them even before the music of the movie has been released.

As he opens-up on Mumbai Express, he details the hi-tech slums of Mumbai and the lifestyle of India's business capital. Kamal as Avinasi makes a living by driving the dangerous circus bikes. While he is sure that there won't be any issues to release Mumbai Express alongwith Chandramukhi, he calls the new generation actors to make peace. Ajith and Vijay, are you listening ?

If only hope the interview had stopped there. When our mindful(!?) interviewer touches on personal issues, Kamal tries to be comfortable but ends up being shallow and little arrogant with his answers. He probably should have chosen not to answer questions about his relationship with Gowtami and his divorce with Sarika. But then who wants to be dubbed as a snob in this senstive kollywood industry.

Especially when he conveys that he doesn't comply with the marriage school-of-thought and when he substantiates his two marriages, they stand out to be silly. Sorry Kamal, better luck next time. But you chuck that out. I'm already expecting Mumbai Express to be release in April for two reasons. One for Kamal Hassan and two, Illayaraja.

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Oh !! yeah, I am probably sleeping too much here and that's a note to myself.

Apologize dudes, I logged out without any notice and it's been one of my biggest breaks from the blog. Thank for all those assumptions/wishes in the previous post that included being abducted by aliens, aadi maasam cry and sowkiyama stuff. I thoroughly enjoyed them. Someone with the nick 'an old friend' had guessed it partly. However, it wasn't a post that was intended to make you guys blink but just a FYI note to say that I may not be able to update the blog everyday as it was from India.

Anyway, I loved the movie, Sleepless in Seattle. Just for Tom Hanks. Had never expected to be here anyday. Microsoft is just a stroll away from here. Like Chicago, Seattle too has an unpredictable climate. Not-so-cold-not-so-warm types. Rain comes down often without bothering you too much. To be straight, this one is a hillstation like our Ooty. Been wandering on the downtown area for the last week and I've lost couple of kgs by that, given the steep roads. Went to a Udipi Cafe last night and nice masala dosa after a week.

Just one more week and I would settle down to start blogging from home. Chennai guys, enjoy Saravana Bhavan and Sun Tv(!!). I'm deprived of them(again !!). This is called as desi crib and it's starts right here for me.

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