Are our metros still standing?

Are our four glorious metros: Delhi , Mumbai, Kolkata and Chennai as great as they were during the British era?
My answer is that these metros have only been successful in changing their names so far. Mumbai, my favorite city, when it comes to bashing, is so broken today.
The underworld threats, political problems, pollution, fully non-functional infrastructure, and the overgrowing population have harmed the city so badly that future development in the city is uncertain. Kolkata's political non-development agenda to keep the people poor and businesses away has been successful so far. Today, it is not even considered a metro. Chennai, is better than Kolkata, as it has attracted the IT and and a reasonably functional infrastructure. But I foresee social squabbles because of the increasing influx of immigrants. And it has a closed culture due to which it is not preferred by expats.
Delhi is the only survivor because it is the capital. It has managed a reasonable infrastructure, a pretty good influx in businesses, planned suburbs and a quality life. And Delhi is slowly usurping the title of financial capital from Mumbai, as financial businesses are moving their head offices to Delhi.
In the end, the fact remains that today tier 2 cities like Pune, Bangalore and Hyderabad have a better quality of life compares to these metros. And tier 3 cities like Ahmedabad, Mysore, Coimbatore and Jaipur are also joining the bandwagon.
Hence, the so-called metros need to do a reality check and see where they are. For all that I know, It will take a century before Mumbai becomes Shanghai ;)

Review on Raavan

Highlights:

Prithviraj is hot without moustache!

Ash and Vikram have done a good job.

Storyline and direction are pretty good, but dint feel Mani Ratnam's oomph factor.

Good music!

Things I did not like:

Long poetry like dialogs

Karthik flying like "Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon"

Prabhu- He irritates me....

Well the story is around Tirunelveli, but I doubt its shot there....its more like Ooty and Kodai, cos lots of mountains around. Ash is perfect for the role of Sita. ;) Married but still makes any guy go mad for her!

In all a good entertainer, but not worth spending money at Inox to watch this.

A pirate that I was meant to be!

Well for those who know me will also know that I must be talking about a game ;). The game is "The curse of monkey Island". Never guessed that a point and click game can be so interesting and challenging. Nevertheless this game is awesome and so funny.

The main character in the game is a wannabe pirate Guybrush Threepwood. He rescues his lover Elaine from the Zombie pirate Lechuck. The characters that Guybrush meets during his quests are very interesting and the clues are also planned brilliantly.

I got stuck in this game so many times that I have finally started using hints from the web. I know that sucks but I am not that intelligent to solve all the puzzles by myself. The scenarios in this game are also very fascinating. This game is so made for me.


All in all, a very adventurous game for all wannabe pirates. :)

Corporate Sheman!

Women make a bad example, when they try to ape men. One such example was Priya. When she laughed, her team mates would get scared. People in the office kept as far from her as possible. Whenever, someone joined her team, they would get the “best of luck” from people around. She was one great example of people who liked to drop their shit on others and penalize them for that.

She had scraped her way through promotions by her family influence and became a team lead. So, she was very insecure about her abilities. Once, a new project manager joined the company. When Priya got introduced to her, she introduced herself as a project manager!

She had her harassing techniques in place. Whenever she received a storyboard, she would make a hell lot of edits and tell the content writer that it was a poor quality work. Whenever people replied in mail for doubts clearance and verification, Priya will never mail back to them. She would go and sort it out verbally. This was her strategy, because later whatever was wrong would be shoved back to the person and she would be on the safe side. Her motto was to never make anything formal from her side so that she will not be held responsible.

She had no hint about the word professionalism. She thought that her team members were puppets and she can behave however and talk anything to them. She would demand formal birthday treats from her team members in the name of team activity. She would call people names, under the pretext of being friendly. Whenever someone would tell her politely to stop doing it, she would get back at them and say that they are not cooperating as a team.

Her best tool was that she was irritating to the core. People would do anything to make her go away. Therefore, she was a difficult person to handle. When someone would get the strength to confront her, she would just confuse them. They would give up and she would prove them wrong.

Phew, never thought I would meet such people. But only when you meet such people, will you know the worth of good people.

Petting memories

It all started from Kiki. She was my first pet. She lived in the kitchen window extension area, with her mom, dad, and little sister. Thats when we discovered the pigeon nest. Well, we discovered it, when Kiki's parents nested one set of babies before Kiki's turn. But at that point, the baby was almost grown up and was learning to fly. Kiki was around 10 days old when I saw her. She would squeak so loudly when her mom visited in the evening. Her voice could be heard in my room, when I was busy playing age of empires. She would try to put her beak into her mom's beak and pester for food. Her sister had a weak growth from beginning. She stopped growing from her 6th or 7th day. Kiki looked very old, big, and fluffy in front of her. When mom and I used to peek from behind the window, Kiki's mom would know that someone is around. She would hint her to stop squeaking and stand still. Both of them would stand there without moving, like statues. Kiki was the cutest baby I had seen. Her innocent round eyes, her small wings, cute little tail feathers, her cute squeaks that earned her the name Kiki. :)
Then came peeku and teeku, velvet, later pingu, black beauty, baby and a whole lot of cuties, who made our window their home. In some time, there were babies in our bedroom windows, and balcony area too. Whenever I was bored, I would pick and gather the babies and have a tea party. Their dads who baby-sitted in the day time would get annoyed with me. One dad at the kitchen nest would make weird pigeon sounds to tell me that he wanted his babies back.
I miss them so badly. Watching them was so much fun. The mom pigeon cuddling the babies, the mom and dad sharing the egg-sitting duties, the babies learning to fly. Take it from me: Birds, especially pigeons make the best pets!

All's swell that ends well!

Phew! The journey along these five months have been pretty insightful for me. You never know where life takes you and you reach a point and introspect to find out that thats the place, where you wanted to be and were planning to be. These five months were definitely my testing period but I did reach where I planned to be. So, I will have a good night's sleep today.

To begin with, let me tell in simple words, what I went through for these five months. Starting with the placement season at my college, my first interview was with Manipal for a marcom role and ya I was not selected. I took it with a pinch of salt and moved on thinking that I will get a better role. Then came Optima on day zero of placement, where again I was put aside. Then there was Heymath, where I thought this would be the one. But when I reached their office, I felt a tinge of my old elearning days and asked myself, if I wanted to go back to the same atmosphere. My interviewer set me free and I was again rejected and this time I was not disappointed. Then came Marg, 3I, Everonn, Exemplarr, and Infinity.

Finally, I started searching for a job myself, which was a more disgusting experience. I got calls for technical writing(most boring job around), IDing (less boring but boring), and even call center openings! Even more worse was that most of them were on contract to hire. Everyday became routine where I started applying for as many jobs possible in Naukri ( trying to reach the goal of applying 50 openings per day) besides playing sorority life.

Surprisingly, I got a call from a corp comm role in TVS, I applied and was called for an interview. Even more surprising was that they selected me that day itself. Well, now I look back and find out how life is so testing but also promising.

Ahem..., so I met the VP of GSCM yesterday, will be meeting VP HR today and things are pretty interesting at this point of time. So I am to make up for the time and start filling my blog space again!