.....

Whenever I start writing, there is some mysterious force that stops me. I am not able to define it.

MMX

End of one thing is the beginning of the other. 2009 was better than previous year for me (aka kuppathotti). A little magic was weaved. Will it grow, or continue to be the same, or decay. Need to wait and see.

A closing note for a great year and a beginning note to make 2010 a wonderful year.

Wishing you all a very happy, peaceful and prosperous MMX

Ash

Ash generally marks the end of something and nothing after that. Sometimes, even it can mark a beginning for something.

I think I stared at the sky too long that I almost forgot blogging. Days came and went by. Nobel prize winners have been announced, a big earthquake shook Indonesia, a storm in Philippines and in my own country India created a widespread disaster. The station fire in Los Angeles county, one of the biggest in the county's history was contained fully (there is another one going on now).

Even weeks after the fire died, I could see ashes in my house balcony/patio.

It kept reminding me of the blog i was planning to right about the fire. The ash had just settled down like the sitemeter for my blog.

A light breeze blew (it is cooler in Glendale nowadays) and lifted the ash. It lifted my spirit too, for starting on my blog again and hopefully my blog's sitemeter too rises with this.

As the ash flew in the breeze, I thought it has done its duty here and it is on its way to lift somebody else's spirit.

Its raining meteors!!

When was the last time, you just stared at the sky continuously for five minutes? I bet it would have been years ago, when we were kids, when we felt that the sky had a lot of hidden treasures. It was the time when we dreamed of becoming a pilot to go near the sky or fly in a rocket into the outer space. Those days when we badly wanted to become a rocket scientist or an astronomer.

Yesterday was different. I did stare at the sky for almost 20 minutes just to catch a glimpse of the pereseid meteor shower. After spending 20 minutes on August 11, 2009 in vain just staring at the fog covered black sky, I was very skeptical on catching a glimpse of the same yesterday.

With a great view of the Verdugo mountains (The same view as you see in the photo in my blog header.) from my balcony or patio at the third floor of an old 70s wooden apartment, me and my wife almost had one-fourth of the sky under our view. With lots of fog (might be smog given that we are in Los Angeles county) and the temperature low, it was a mixed chance of seeing the meteor. Being close (almost 30 miles) to LAX, we had lots of airplanes flying by and the city lights from Burbank towards the West made us more doubtful.

Then suddenly we saw it. It was a quick streak of white light, bright at the front and fading away forming a long tail. It was really an exhilarating experience (I haven’t seen one before). I had missed the Comet Hale-Bopp, which was visible from India at some point of time. We waited for some more time and we ended up seeing 10 of them. It was really worth the wait.

The only sad part of this entire story is that I could not catch it in my camera. A very sad thing for me, given my liking to photography.

Postcard

Postcards have been an integral part of the Old Indian Postal Service.

I still remember the days when my grandfather would write letters to my father in those light brownish postcards with the dark brown Lion Capital of Ashoka printed on the back side top right corner. My grandfather with his English knowledge gained by reading "The Hindu" newspaper regularly for more than 6 decades (I am sure it will be more than that) would write his blue Chinese "Hero" pen, making a dark imprint on the post card with little smudging wherever the post card's top layer was not well formed. It carried along with it a smell so specific to the postcards, a mixture of paper and the old print houses where they were printed.

In those days, Inland Cover and the Office cover (I am not sure how to phrase it) were my favorite than the postcards. Inland Cover, with the small font letters telling where to fold first and where to fold second was my all time favorite. The Office cover and the greeting card cover were special because of the postage stamps they carried. Most of the Indian postage stamps that I had collected and which are lying somewhere safe in the newly built shelves at my father's home in Chennai have been sourced by those covers. Most of the foreign stamps were bought by me, when I used to vacation in my Grand Parent's house in Coimbatore and some came from those relatives staying abroad who still remembered to drop a card during the Indian festival season or the English New Year. Some of them still remember, but have switched to those fast and easy ways of communication known popularly as the Internet. Maybe DARPA never thought that the Internet will revolutionize the world to such an extent.

When I started studying French, I came to know about the art of sending post cards.

The French whenever they travelled or visited some new places, they never forgot to buy some postcards of that place. They then sent it to their friends or relatives back home with a very short description of the spot they visited and the weather at that place. If anybody is planning to take a French course, be assured that one question will be based on these post cards. At that point, it made little sense to me about the cards like the light decorated Golden Gate Bridge that we used to receive as a young student.

Why this sudden post about a post card? Has the Indian Postal Service woken up suddenly and started to commemorate the post cards or have they introduced something like the Post Card day. Well, I am not aware of them even if they existed, thanks to the marketing strategy of the Indian Postal Service. I got inspired from a post card image I saw in the Internet which I took and added it to this blog on the top right hand corner, with a small note about me :).

El Sur Grande

It is a place where height meets depth. It is a place where Cliffs meet the Ocean. It is a place where land meets water (in a unusual way). It is place where terrestrial wildlife meets marine wildlife. It is a place where a Waterfall meets the ocean. It is a place where the undisturbed beauty attracts a lay man while the forbidding wilderness makes it ideal for an adventurist. It is actually a place where Man meets Nature. It is Big Sur (Spanish-language "el sur grande", meaning "the big south", or from "el país grande del sur", "the big country of the south") on the coast of California.

Perched on the volcanic mountains on one side and the mighty Pacific ocean immediately on the other side, it is a place for hikers, trekkers, swimmers all
alike. Explore the redwood forest and at the end of it you can go for a swim in the ocean. "You must see it to believe it" surely applies for this place, for one cannot describe it in words.

Fractal is the word that comes to my mind immediately. It looks very irregular and it still looks perfect. Not a strange thing for Nature.

The CA1 neatly blends with the terrain and keeps the place as is, while making the journey a smooth one. The Bixby bridge is awesome, connecting two slopes of the cliff, and looks like a man made wonder embedded naturally. The fog in the mountains add to the beauty of the drive. The wild flowers blossom along the slope down to the blue waters.

I have heard that the coast along Oregon leading to Canada through Washington is also a wonderful experience.A drive down this coastal highway is surely a time to be remembered.

Twitter

I am a kind of person who does it last. It is Tweeting (or whatever it is called) now. After the entire world which uses Laptop started tweeting, I have successfully signed up (Signing up is pretty easy). Anybody interested can follow me here

Quotes

All along my life I have always been impressed by quotes. Quotes by authors, writers, poet, playwright, screenwriters etc.
In my school days, they were mostly written quotes. Quotes from my English Non-Detail and the novels dominated them. Then when I started watching movies, there were few from them. There were times, when I used to write it down in my diary, whenever I came across a good one.
The “Good” quotes were those which helped me in my tough times, on reading which I got inspired or the quotes which aligned with my way of thinking or which created a sense of Déjà-vu.
This weekend I got a chance to see Spiderman-I for some nth time. But it was this time, I heard the last line said by Peter Parker (The Spiderman). The line goes something like this.

“Whatever life holds in store for me, I will never forget these words: "With great power comes great responsibility." This is my gift, my curse. Who am I? I'm Spider-man”

Somehow, I liked this line. And I decided to start a set of posts, where I can put my favorite lines. I decide to put a logo on the blog title (the “ in the title) to say that, the post is an outcome of one of my favorite quote.

Keep watching for that logo!!

Waste

My blog has got a lot of stuff in the first quarter of 2009. A few blogs (little better than last year), many links, pictures on the left side, a header with an image (again!!), two followers and of course the web 2.0 technology. I had tried to put my blog link in my other online avatars like linkedin, flickr, google IM status message, technorati and recently in blogadda to make more visitors visit my blog, not just visit, but read it and not just read it, but also comment on it.

I can say I had succeeded a lot in the first one, very little in the second one and failed in the third one. Except for few (it is ONE) person, there will be no comments from others. As people jokingly say, the comments in blogs are mostly from your friends, whom you have threatened to, unless one had really a good way of writing or put things in a way that appealed. The first way works better for me :), still with no luck (because I do not know how to threaten).
If you reached this line of the blog, thanks for spending some time in my blog. As I earlier said, I had again succeeded in atleast making people read this.

Earth day

As a late dedication to earth day, i have added the tree picture to the header!!!

Yeh jo des hai tera...

A song from Swades. This is one of my favorite song now. It is almost three months since i reached the United States. It is not that I like this song since i have become a "Desi". It is just that i heard the song recently and i do feel that I have missed it for so long.

As far as I am concerned, there are songs in my life, which indicates a transition. A physical transition leads to a mental transition. I kept moving through different places in India and each such transition had a different effect. It is just the fear of a new place and the kind of effort I need to put to adapt to the new place.

This often led to remembering the early days at the new place and I also somehow ended up in relating to a song. This song would mostly be from a new movie released during that time (of course there are exceptions).

I well remember the songs from "Kaho na pyar hai" from my first year at my UG college. As one passed through the hostel corridor, all rooms on both sides had computer playing the songs from this movie.

It was "Uyirin Uyire" or "Ennai konjam matri" from the tamil movie "Kakka Kakka" during my PG years. I had moved to TamilNadu now and it had to be a tamil movie.

It was "Ghajini" (Tamil), when i joined my job. Almost all of my collegues in my training batch had a cell phone and songs from this movie. No wonder that songs represented this transition from college to job.

After almost three and half years, being in the same company and in the same place, things were pretty monotonous. Now coming to the United States was a change. Almost a week after i reached here, I stumbled upon this song in youtube searching for some other AR Rahman's songs, and that was it. It is this song for this transition.

I seriously do not know what or when the next transition is going to be and what song is going to represent it. I am waiting for it to unfold whenever it is supposed to. I am sure, people who read this also will start to map songs to their past and i swear it is going to bring back a lot of old memories.

My space..

The entire structure was crumbled. The majestic circular dome which rested on four strong pillars was lying on the sand. The broken pillars lay scattered around the dome. The dome tried its level best to stay majestic in spite of the salty sea water, trying to wash away the smooth and shining structure. Being near the sea in Tranquebar (or Taragambadi in Tamil), Tamilnadu, the entire structure seemed to be an old one built centuries ago and had seen many natural calamities. But 2004 was a different one. The sudden waves of tsunami bought the entire structure down in seconds.
Now it lay on the shore, washed by the sea daily. The pillar was not as smooth as the dome. Some supposed to be old form of Tamil was inscribed on it. It seemed to convey a message to the people, waiting to be discovered and protected. It was waiting to convey to the world, the life of the people who wrote on that pillar and those who built the magnificent structure.

Since the old times, many things have changed. The life and culture of people have changed a lot in both positive and negative way. Blogs are one of those pillars which reflects the life and times of “now”, with the advantage of being written by many people around the world. Just as the pillar rested on the sea shore, I sometimes wonder, where do these blogs sit? It should be spread across the world and some place which will redirect to it on request. What if one day another tsunami hits this place where the blog resides? Will things remain the same? How will people 200 hundred years later know about us and the life we lived?

Though the old inscriptions on the pillar and the new blogs both are written on sand (real sand and silicon), will the latter survive nature?

திருவாசகம்...

திருவாசகம் -

திருவாசகத்துக்கு உருகாதார்,
ஒரு வாசகத்துக்கும் உருகார்

இது என்றோ எங்கேயோ படித்த ஞாபகம் இருக்கின்றது. ஏதோ ஒரு வகுப்பில், கடைசி பெஞ்சில் உட்கார்ந்து, நோட்புக்கின் கடைசி பக்கத்தில் சிறு சிறு படங்கள் வரைந்து கொண்டே கேட்ட ஞாபகம். பத்தாம் வகுப்புக்கு மேல் ஹிந்தி படித்ததால், இதை பற்றி தெரிந்து கொண்டது இல்லை.

சில வருடங்களுக்கு முன்பு, இளையராஜாவின் இசையில் திருவாசகம் அவர் குரலிலேயே வெளியானது. ஆபீஸில் வேலை செய்யும் ஒரு நண்பனிடதிலிருந்து அந்த இசை தகடு கிடைத்தது. அதை என் கணினியில் காபி செய்தேன். ஆனால் அதை ஒரு முறை கூட கேட்கவில்லை.

சில மாதங்களுக்கு முன்பு, எங்கிருந்தோ திருவாசகத்தின் இ-புக் ஒன்று கிடைத்தது. நானும் வெட்டியாக இருந்ததால், அதை சிறிது நேரம் வாசித்தேன். அப்பொழுதுதான் எனக்கு புரிந்தது, இதற்கு உருகாதார், ஒரு வாசகத்துக்கும் உருகார் என்பது உண்மை.

அதில் ஒரு பாடல். (சிவபுராணம் பகுதியிலிருந்து)

சிவன் அவன் என் சிந்தையுள் நின்ற அதனால்
அவன் அருளாலே அவன் தாள் வணங்கிச்
சிந்தை மகிழச் சிவபுராணம் தன்னை
முந்தி வினைமுழுவதும் ஓய உரைப்பன் யான்.

இப்பொழ்து இதை முழுவதும் படிக்க ஆவலாக உள்ளது.

134 East

There was a long line of cars ahead. It looked very orderly with a pair of red lights at the back and the left light blinking on the all the cars on the left most lanes. The headlights of each of the cars illuminated the license plate of the car ahead of it. A little ahead, just on the signal pole, hung a board. The white letters on the green signboard were clear even in the dark. It looked as if it was feeling a little bit shy being in the limelight, with all those vehicle’s headlight on it and it was more illuminated. The letters/number on the board read “134 East”, the number being circled by an inverted triangle with round edges. It had two arrows pointing down the road, directing the vehicle’s to the correct lane. I took the compass to find the directions and the arrow pointed to me, indicating that East was indeed to my left.
The highways in India have improved a lot over the years, with a similar green board with white signs, sans the documentation of them for the people to use. No concept of East or West in a country which had the concept of “DikPalas” (Guardian of directions) in its early age. This is a country where Gods were assigned certain directions to protect, the concept of sunrise and sunset to determine directions and time.
But sometimes I do feel that, the infrastructure of highways in India is simple to introduce the directions. It is kind of odd to compare both of them. But introducing the directions is surely a better way. Directions are kind of universal constant.
Who knows.. one day people will be taking the “NH-4 West” bound for Bangalore from Chennai

Longfellow!!!

Who is this Longfellow? The people who have a liking for poetry will be the first to recognize him. His full name goes as Henry Wadsworth (not Wordsworth) Longfellow or popularly referred to as H.W. Longfellow. He lived during the 19th century in Portland, capital of United States’ east coast state Maine.
His writings are inspirational and rhyming. In my early childhood days, when I was fascinated towards rhyming poetry (anybody would have been) and when I came across one of Longfellow’s poem, I instantly became a fan. There were only four lines, and I bet I will get it correctly even in my sleep.

The heights by great men reached and kept;
Were not attained by sudden flight,
But they while their companions slept,
Were toiling upward in the night.

Fractals!!!

"A fractal... something considered simple and orderly that is actually composed of repeated patterns no matter how magnified. A fractal is almost infinitely complex. I love fractals, so I put them everywhere" said Sarayu

"Looks like a mess to me" muttered Mack under his breadth.

Sarayu stopped and turned to Mack, her face glorious. "Mack! Thank you! What a wonderful compliment!" She looked around at the garden. "That is exactly what this is- a mess. But", she looked back at Mack and beamed, "it's still a fractal, too."


Fractals are really interesting... Go and get to know more about.

Kuppathotti 2.0

The blog looks different? It might not if you do not follow it closely. Well actually it is different. After the entire world has migrated to web 2.0, it is time for Kuppathotti to do so.

Well this is just the beginning. The changes will keep continuing till you get a totally revamped Kuppathotti.

What a coincidence!!!!

I observed it just now. It seems like a coincidence. A wonderful coincidence indeed. My last post starts at Glendale 7:00AM and it was posted at 7:03AM. It seems like everything happened within 3 minutes. But it is very difficult to have put all those thoughts into words in three minutes.
Actually I had written the post for the entire day in office in small gaps and around 5:30 PM PST (Pacific Standard Time) I pushed it live (That’s the language I speak in office).
And I never thought that my blog settings still corresponded to the famous IST (Indian Standard Time).
Generally IST is referred by Indians for things that gets done late, be it reaching office, attending meetings or reaching any appointments for that matter. But here it seems exactly opposite.
So for people who run out of time or those who are popular for being late, change your clock to some other Standard Time and you will never miss an appointment!!
It is time for me to leave home. This is the only thing that most of us want to do on time, but even this ends up getting late.

PS: This post also corresponds to IST. My next post will be PST and till my next post keep counting the time difference.

MRTS ---> MetroLink

Today, 7:00 AM, Glendale
The blue skies with little white clouds here and there, a gentle breeze, the bright sun, all of these made today a pleasant and wonderful day. Except the fact that, it was Monday and I was walking towards office and not jogging, everything else looked the best. But this does not conclude the fact that I go to office at 7:00 AM or go for jogging daily. Today was an exception in almost all senses.
The side walkway was almost deserted. It is always that way with only few people prefer walking. Again it is not that I prefer walking, but I do not have a vehicle and the office is very close for some kind of public transportation and I end up walking daily to my office.
It was very silent, except for the rustle of the trees in the gentle breeze and the dried leaves getting crushed under my $200 Florsheim shoes. It made me feel that man made sounds are the ones that irritate the senses. But sometimes, these sounds strike a chord with each and everybody’s life that, they are no more irritating.
At that very moment I heard that. It should have been the Metrolink Antelope Valley Line bound for Los Angeles Union station. It did not sound to me as a cacophony. It suddenly struck some chord with me.

1996, 4:30 PM, Chennai
We had crossed “The Oasis”. Oasis in Chennai? Sounds like some restaurant? Well it is not. It resembled a real Oasis, the ones that are found on the deserts. There was a big tree, and we (Me, Keerthivasan and Prakash) used to stop there on our way back from school, drink some water that we were carrying, and if anybody got some little money from home on the pretext of buying a pencil or eraser, we used to buy some snacks from the little shop nearby. Keerthi’s house was pretty close by and I and Prakash waved goodbye to him and proceeded towards our houses.
We pedaled our cycles in slow motion till we reached the slope that leads to the railway gate. The gate was closed as usual and we crossed all the four wheelers waiting for the train to pass and the gate to open. We ducked down the gate, pushed our cycles below it and were almost near the tracks. It was then I heard it and I knew I will. I could see the engine at a distance. Then within seconds the Bangalore bound Lalbagh express crossed by, its siren seemed like a perfect example for the Doppler Effect. We stood very close to the tracks, just to feel the power of the speed in which the train traveled, ignoring the dust rain that the train would spill over both of us. Lalbagh express was considered one of the fastest trains originating from Chennai after Rajdhani express during 1996, a period when Chennai did not have the Shatabdi Express.

2004, 3:30 PM, Chennai
I saw myself wearing a white and blue uniform, holding the handle bar of my old Atlas cycle, a big bag stuffed at the stand just behind the seat. I was actually traveling to Bangalore in Lalbagh Express and when I looked out of the window as it crossed the suburban Villivakkam station, the scene just flashed for a second.
Almost eight years had flown by. I had left Chennai in 1997 and did not return before 2003, except for the occasional visits. Even now I had not moved to Chennai. I had become a Post Graduate student and was working on an academic project at Electronics and Radar Development Establishment, Bangalore, which came under the Defense Research and Development Organization of Indian Ministry of Defense popularly called as DRDO. To visit my parents in Chennai or to report to my college at Vellore, it was this Lalbagh Express that I traveled mostly.
Every time I traveled, I would go back to those olden school days and wonder, if at any point of time, did I have a very little clue about me taking this train very frequently, or making me feel a little bit nostalgic. I really do not know if nostalgic is the right word, but something very similar to that.

2005, 7:18 AM Chennai
Time flew and I almost forgot about Lalbagh express and in general the trains, though about hundreds of train passed right behind my house. As I told earlier, it had kind of struck chord with me and the noise of the passing trains never really bother me. It was to such a great extent that, I was surprised by guests who kept asking us if the train sounds continued all through the day.
I was now working in a software company. The proverb “All roads lead to Rome” had become something like “All engineering colleges lead to software industry” regardless of the engineering branch of course.
When the option of taking train or bus to the office training center came, I naturally chose the train. I took the 7:18 AM bound for Chennai beach and my fellow colleagues used to join me at different stations. Since the training session was for a fixed schedule, we got the 6:40 PM return train from Thiruvanmiyur MRTS station, come to beach and used to take the next local bound for Avadi or Tiruvallur. Even when there was a 15 minutes of time between the connecting train we used to grab a dosa from the newly opened Saravana Bhavan in the Chennai Beach station. It was a time, when we knew the money we were spending was earned by us. The best part was when we were made to run with the last piece of dosa in our mouth by the train horn. Those were the times, when we kept our ears open for the horn. If we missed the train, we had to wait for almost an hour for the next one to come.

2008, 7:00 AM Chennai
Two months flew by happily. Fixed working time from 9AM to 6PM. The train journeys. Everything came to a stop, when our training got over and we were posted to projects.
I got used to the new routine, a routine that I hated more than the job. A company bus at 7:45 AM and I never knew the time when I will be starting back for home. I was lucky if I reached home on the same day. The traffic jams, the honking and the cloud of poisonous gas surrounded me, and I kind of got used to it.
Now after three years, there was one more change. Trains were back in my life. My office building got shifted to MEPZ Tambaram, close to Tambaram Sanatorium railway station. I had to take two trains, but that never bothered me. In spite of the crowd, it was comfortable. I could never imagine traveling the same distance by bus. I never came across Lalbagh express, because I never had the chance to leave the office so early to reach Chennai Central by 3:30 PM; still I had trains around me. I will be doing injustice to myself if I do not mention about Navjeevan express, which I took during all my undergraduate years. I will make up for this by writing a separate post on that. I am really confident of filling three more pages when I talk about that.

Today, 7:00 AM, Glendale
As the security at my office wished me “Good Morning”, I came back to reality. A quick journey triggered by the train horn ended there. Be it MRTS or the MetroLink, both have struck a chord in my life.

Glendale....

Glendale.. What does it sound like? A fairy tale location? A remote village in England? Nope. There might be one, but what I am talking about here is my new home. My home for the next one year. Glendale is a city in California (there is one in Arizona too), very close to Los Angeles and Hollywood.
Glendale is a cute little city. This is called as the Jewel City or Jewel of Verdugo, because this has a jewel like formation to the Verdugo mountains nearby. The climate here is very pleasant, not much cold, not much hot.
For people who have heard or tasted Baskin-Robbins ice-cream, this city is the birth place of this world wide famous ice cream chain.
I have just started exploring this place, and will surely write more about this place. And writing about this topic as my first blog this year makes a lot of sense. Doesn't it?