Stavanger - Norway

Norway was my next travel destiny after Gwalior trip this April. I have been waiting for a long time to run-away from this tengshn-filled IT world. No trips in May, June and July meant that I have been waiting for something big to happen, never thought that I would end up travelling to the top end of the hemisphere.

This one was to a place called "Stavanger" in southern Norway, a small city with the Size of 1/17^th of Chennai and a population of 120 K. Stavanger houses the Global Headquarters of Corporater AS, where I am designated to work for a couple of weeks. Stavanger is a beautiful place to live in, its lush green everywhere cold air blowing all the times, the place is quite windy, but you can manage if you are not as thin as me.

When I first got the info that I will need to travel to Norway, I was kinda worried, I thought is this some sort of punishment for not doing the work right , I thought Norway is completely filled with ice and I will shiver to death if I had to go there. But only when i m there I came to know that Norway is not that bad (at least Stavanger is not that bad). I never got a chance to see the ice. It doesn't mean that it doesn't snow in Stavanger. It jus means that you are reading an august-posted-blog in December (wake up ☺ ). The good climate in Stavanger is because of the hot winds from the Atlantic Ocean. So if you end up in this beautiful place in the end of august you have 2 choices to call yourself, Lucky or Extremely Lucky.

Technology and Norway

Norway has a lack of human density, for a city which can be called as one by global standards (back in India, Stavanger will not even qualify for town-status) there are very few people to live in. If you walk on the road you won't see a human being for miles. And this is a country which tries to compensate its lack of human resources with technology. Almost every shop in Stavanger has a website (bolia.com, kvadrat, deal.no, datakjeden, it goes on…). Wherever we go you will end-up finding a wide amount of automation in systems that were otherwise considered to be manual. I suppose there are very few police (I am even afraid if there are any), becoz I have never seen a police guy during my whole trip, other than the guy who was diverting traffic towards airport on the last day. It seems that all traffic violations will be billed at you residential address. Hotel check-in and check-out is automated and you are debited on your credit-card (I don't know about others, but at smarthotel.no it is the case). It s really funny that you don't find these designations in Norway which we consider to be assumed as default in India, I have listed some of there

• Lift Operator
  
• Bus Conductor - (I am from Chennai, yes)
  
• A guy issuing tickets for parked vehicles
  
• Traffic Constables
  
• Room Boy
  
• Security (Other than the guys with big guns at NATO office)
  

Norway and India are at two different ends when it comes to population, one is suffering from decrease other by increase.

Prices and Lifestyle

"Norway is Expensive", there is nothing much you can do about it. So don't try be creative to find best deals. The best thing to do in Norway with prices is to forget about it , stop converting NOK2INR or stop going out. I did the first two and it did really worked out well.

Here is a small indicative of prices in Stavanger

• Coffee = 20 NOK (140 INR vs 5~10 INR)

• Coke(1/2 lt) = 32 NOK ( 224 INR vs 20 INR)
  

• Cigarattes = 80 NOK (560 INR vs 40 INR)

• Beer = 60 NOK (420INR vs 63 INR)

• Mentos = 15 NOK ( 105 INR vs 15 INR)

• Bus Ticket (Stavanger to Sandes in a Volvo) = 27 NOK (200 INR vs 20 INR in Chennai, 40 INR in Banagore)

The prices are relatively 10 times of what they cost in India, Its infact quite simple to manage, just assume you are spending Rupees instead of Kronas, 20 Rs for a coffee: ok, 27 rs for bus ticket : ok

About the people, Norwegians are shy and nationalistic. They are not open to talk to strangers, but they are helpful. If you ask them a route to some place, they wont say " I am shy i wont talk to you",instead they do help you :) . One strange think about Norwegians is their proud feeling about their country, they are always kind of asking you about Norway, well thats funny.

To be honest, the strangest thing about Norwegians is their insatiable appetite for acknowledgment:

“What do you think of Norway?”

“What do you think of Norway’s nature, athletes, politicians, musicians and (yes, I really heard
this one:) women?”

"why one earth someone expects me to comment about Norwegian politics in 3 days"

I’m not going to claim to be in possession of any facts or statistics, and perhaps the fact that I’m not a Norwegian and that I personally knew very little about Norway before travelling here, colors my impression. However, I do think the truth of the matter is that the vast majority of the Earth’s inhabitants do not like or dislike Norway. Quite frankly, it’s not that they don’t think much of Norway—it’s that they don’t think much about Norway.

And, to be honest, I’m envious by this kind of proud feeling among people.

Nature

Fjords

Fjords are crazy formations of sea that you will find only in Norway. Fjord looks like a river but it has the source at the other end. They are a formation of sea towards the land. The complete western coastline of Norway is covered by fjords and they are beautiful.

Pulpit Rock

Pulpit rock is the destination point for any traveller to Stavanger. its a view of a fjord from a cliff top 600 mts above the sea level and a near 8 km mountain climbing track.
Its sheer fun to be on top of cliff to view the fjord, with a fear of being blown away by air.

DalsNuten

Dalsnuten is near Sandes (* a twin town of Stavanger), its a small mountain( i am not used to the word "hill", otherwise i would have called it a hill). this is a place where my mountain climbing skills are put to test and certified a "fit". Its a easy climb, i was shivering in the beginning but i was able to catchup and do it with ease later on.

Cricket for Brazillians

We found friends with the two brazillian guys Christien and Roberto who had come into stavanger to wind-up a business deal with us. We were discussing about lifestyles in our countries, prices and a wide range of things. Finally we went to a restaurant to have pizza, and we were discussing about sports, thats when Roberto quoted about cricket saying

"Oh that strange game where you hit the ball with some kind of a stick instead of kicking it..." I just managed to imagine some batsman kicking the cricket ball to boundary... ha ha ha :). Then it was hard time for both of us (maddy and me) to explain the game with little references to baseball. I was really amazed when someone asked about cricket to me, in here its a part of your daily lifestyle that you can't imagine a person not knowing about cricket.

One more amazing fact about the people there is, many of them know about "Vishwanathan Anand" more than "Sachin Tendulkar", well that hurts me badly.

Beach

Our team mates had planned a team outing on a friday . This is the funniest one, from the morning everyone were talking about this team outing at the beach, I am from chennai, this is where marina beach and few other big beaches are located and I frequently travel to the arabian coastline too, So the moment someone says the word beach , the only thing that comes to my mind is open sea with atleast a 180 degree view of the horizon. But when we went 2 the team outing at stavanger i came to see the smallest beach i have ever seen in my life, i think it should be termed as backwater rather than a beach.


Way back home

Tor Inge, our CEO was grateful enough to pick us up from the hotel and drop us at the airport at 4:00AM in the morning, just when he has a flight to catch at 8:00AM in the morning. Well i got only one word to say "Great".

I was a nice morning flight from Stavanger to Frankfurt. Back at Frankfurt we had a nice time shopping with the euros left with us. The flight back from Frankfurt was really empty , there was so much space inside. Maddy told me that its quite rare to find flights being so empty. There was a nice looking air-hostess. You can find beautiful girls anywhere on earth but these airhostess are just awesome. They look soo confident but still listen soo patiently to whatever stupid things we say. They smile a lot. There was one beautiful indian-look-alike ,who came to me asking for drinks, i ordered a coffee. She gave me a make-yourself-coffee kit comprising of cream, coffee and sugar. Just when i thought of protesting over such unconventional way of serving coffee she smiled at me broadly and moved on to the next row. Again who wants to waste the short interaction time with a beautiful girl complaining ? Damn these airline guyz might have been recruiting psycology phds.

Landing back in india was really a happy moment, and i reached home by some 12:30 am

Tok.. Tok.. Tok..

Tok.. Tok.. Tok.. I am knocking the door at home my home... its 3 am in the morning and its shivering like anything.... i m not able to remove the socks off my foot.... i m extremely tired. my mom will wake up in a couple of mins to open the door. Its been the third consecutive week of resultless work for me since i have started fiddling with that stupid software.... Yesterday evening i was training someone on the same damn thing... (Hilarious right... you don't know something and train someone on it.... )

Day by day this new assignment is growing in size. and you know what life was much easier and comfortable a couple of months ago. now its like i am running in a race, which doesn't have a deadline , neither an end point...... and the race is only with yourself... (its exactly the same...i don't find any kinda help anywhere on earth.)

College life was fun....... you know... you don't care a shit about anyone else on earth. you do a lot of things but all of them end up in no use... its like you mess up so much with everyone and walk away cool saying....." Final year eanna appidithan...." . You cant say that now....if you do they will say.... "Fresher nna ippidithan....:-(" .... you got a brand name for yourself......

Those were the days when you thought ... i should be punctual to office.... i will go to office sharp at 9 and leave exactly at 5:30. and once you joined you came to know that you will never reach office by 9 and will never leave before 9.

Life has taken a u-turn. that IT-Krishna has gone missing .... he is probably doing his engineering somewhere ... You know the better part of the joke.... i never studied in engineering... never did i carry a book to college.... but now... you will find user manuals... advanced configuration guides.... ajax research papers.... all of them in My Bag.... I don't know how i call it my bag... since all these things are here, i cant term it as my bag any more.... say its the bag of the web-server-guy. life sucks .... you cant help it...

This IT life has changed my life miserably in the past 9 months... i very much miss the days of college.....

Thalaivar veerasamy

Thalaivar veerasamy
Originally uploaded by iT KRiSHNA.

Wed 31/01/2007 14:02 31012007046 I just happened to see our thalaivar's new movie poster near my office... Enjoy his emotional expressions

Lifeblog post

Sun 04/02/2007 23:17 Hi guys i an writing this blog in my new nokia n72...

Bangalore This Time

kempfort
Originally uploaded by iT KRiSHNA.

It has been long since i had posted any travel blogs. This one is for Bangalore TRIP, a relatively short one , and of course a miserable travel back. i don't know how, but i have developed this weird affinity towards, facing hard times while traveling home, all the fun and enjoyment i get i traveling and visiting places gets lost in the way back home( Its like i m not happy to find my way home. )

This was in mid-December, i was already in between a hectic schedule. I was busy in some personal activities, new-site went live, was busy fixing up some new scripts that i wrote a couple of weeks back, etc... it was all busy times.... i really needed a desperate break and arun calls up one fine day saying that , he has an interview at some company in bangalore (*for those who dont know about Bangalore, more than
50% of the world's blue chip companies run out of here...) and said like, he s moving alone and needed a company..... "why not, with pleasure....:-)" and here we go, i got the reason to slip outta chennai one more time....

I made it to the bus stand, very earlier than arun on that day, i was like waiting for this guy to come for close to an 30~40 mins.... i m very serious about timings.... i don't like waiting for others, i will only make others wait.... he he :-) , this guy made it very late.... we fortunately found some couple who were about to sell their tickets, got the tickets.... what next, board the bus.... it was close to 10:30 in the night... i thought we will reach comfortably by around 7/8...
ITs all old memories crepping in when the bus crossed Sastha Inst., " College life was fun na.... ? i miss it badly ..." it was around 11 odd then. I pulled on the bedsheet and went into sleep......................damn,... . that driver halts the bus in 4:30 in the morning, 4:30 AM ..... :0..... imagine, i have never seen such a time in my life for more than 4 months.... and you are in Bangalore during december, just imagine the amount of chillness we would have felt.... i was shivering like anything .. my jaws were making a new music every time i tried to speak... We had to goto a place near kemp-fort, it was don's brother's home... so we called up don's bro... he guided us to that place... we took an auto... we told the auto driver, not to go very fast as we were already shivering..... never in my life i have seen an auto driver flying through the city roads... he was cruising in 60's and 70's.... atlast he stopped near some kids shopping mall.... someone had opened a tea dhukaan outside... wow... tea... tea means fun.... and having a tea in that climate is like crazy. we went to that place... i slept for some time.. had some nice breakfast made by don's anna... arun in the meanwhile slipped for the interview.... i ran through the streets a couple of times but did nothing....

Arun came back from the interview.... we headed to the shopping mall... did some jaldi-jaldi shopping.... i wont forget what arun asked for in the shopping mall.... I was desperatley searching for some toys for a 1 year old kid.... while .. he was searching the same for a 25 yr old kid ( what he calls as 'boy' ?)... amazing.... the salesman was stumped when we asked we need a toy to play for a 25 yr old..... then arun says 'boy' .... (I will give you the choice to guess who that 25 yr old kid is...?) .... forget it ... kemp-kids reduced the thickness of my credit card by a few millimeters.....

Now its time to do some routine shopping.... we stepped out with don's bro and his friends.... JP, kathir, etc... we ran thru... all city malls.... BG road... city center/.....lots of other places.... and the gud thing is ... were never bought anything.... :-) thats the spirit of shopping....

wat else... lets find our way home..... sweet home..... but how is the question... this is severely unplanned travel... i didn book any tickets, neither did arun.... i had to be in office the next day... i din have a choice.... We went to bus-stand... trying to find some unknown travels... jus to get them saying "NO TICKETS"... we were feeling very hungry... so we thought of having some food... and continue the ticket searching.... food :-).... one bad thing about karnatake... food is always worser than your least expectations.... nothing changes here... we managed to have what others called as food... and continued our ticket searching...

We found some guy who was selling tickets for some unknown travels company... i bought the tickets.... and we ended up walking some 5 kms to get to the place where the buses stop for that "unknown travel company".,... arun is one guy , who worries about comfort, quality and brand... in my travel dictionary these words never exist.... "So no matter, what he says , or whatever i feel..... i was not gonna worry about it"... and that "Unknown-travels" guy.... takes so much time to bring out buses.... that u end up going pissed off by their service.... but theres'nt much of a choice either....

We ended up in chennai by some 5~6 am in the morning..... thats all for this edition of my travel blogs.... will catch u in some other place....

'You're Pitiful' Weird Al Yankovic

My Own Video to Weird Al's New song your Pitiful. It starts off rubbish but it gets better

From Chukku Kaapi to Cappuccino

her is a mail for ward that i got some months back..... seems to sync with my life now.....

From Chukku Kaapi to Cappuccino

This blog was written because I was left with no work to do after coming back from Café Coffee day today. I always feel that blogs are written by people who have nothing else to do, but write blogs. And blogs are written for people who have nothing else to do, but read blogs. So if you have nothing else to do, continue reading.

Café Coffee Days in my life!!! I can't believe it. Six, seven years back I would never have imagined that such a day would occur in my life. Café Coffee day is supposed to be a place where high class people who didn't know how to spend the money they had, go. But now I am there... I have changed a lot since my school days.

As I said in my previous post, I never talked in English till the end of my 12th standard. May be in my primary school we talked in English a little bit... (Since girls were there in my primary school we used to talk in English... Mostly it was the "You go girl." "Miss this boy no... he is stealing my pencil miss" and "Miss this boy is pinching me miss" type of pathetic English.). Till I went to college, I never read an English newspaper. I never knew who Sidney Sheldon was. I never saw English movies. "Star movies" was considered adult material at home. I never talked to a girl. I don't feel that I missed anything...But still because I didn't have such experiences, I had to adjust a lot when I traveled beyond Cornigela, my place.

Born in Cornigela, an ordinary conservative town, even Chennai took a lot of time for me to adjust. My home town was too cool. You could watch movies for 15 Rs. in an AC theatre. You get the best food at lowest prices. You can drink water wherever you want and it doesn't affect you. Girls never wear T-shirts or Jeans. You can see girls in half-sarees. And there were a lot more things that were cool to me...My first costly experience as far as I can remember was my first Pizza.

In my 12th standard holidays I had my first Pizza. We, a group of 5 friends went to a bakery. It was around 7 p.m at night. We ordered our first Pizza (only one because it costed so much - 20Rs!!!). As the Pizza arrived one of the guys started using his hand to take out a piece. "Ley" ....The others shouted... "asingam pannatheylae. Fork kudupaanga"... We got 5 forks for eating one Pizza. Everybody tried taking out a piece with the fork. Nobody was successful. Stupid forks... As we were trying different methods, two girls came in, and took the table adjacent to ours. They seemed to be from the so called high class families in Cornigela. They ordered a Pizza. We were still trying to eat ours. Their Pizza arrived in their table. Unable to find a solution, we looked at them for one. One of the girls took out a piece with her hand and started eating it. Damn stupids we were!!! But what do we do now?? We can't go back to the hand-intake method... We are brave!!! Luckily for us the power went off... Forks were put down and everybody started picking a piece with the hand. Our sole aim- finish it off before power comes back!!! Unlucky for us, power came back immediately... We had a piece each in our hands... The girls started laughing... People around us realizing what had happened too joined them...We promised we would never eat Pizzas again. But we all did.

The first change in lifestyle for me occurred in Chennai. Chennai was completely different. Watching a movie for Rs.40 was a one time life experience for most people in my village. I had to adapt to such things since I had to be a part of the group. Otherwise you feel let out. My habits started changing. For example, you look into the glass before drinking water to check whether it is clean. I went to my first Coffee Pub in Chennai. I remember saying some time back "Loosu paya thaan Coffee publa poi mukkaa manineram wait panni oru black coffeeya 50 Ruba kaasu kuduthu kudippaan" - I did it...

If Chennai was difficult for me, how easy would be an MBA school? I was dumbstruck with the culture... The Hi's and the fundoo English speaking guys were all a great change, though I had expected it. There is a sense of hollowness when you say a Hi to somebody here. In Cornigela a smile was enough to say what you feel. There is real sense of belonging in a smile. I miss it - a smile without a Hi.

Here is an example to show how my family mindset is different from the mindset here. At the end of the first term when I went home, I showed quite a few photographs to my parents. In one photograph there was a guy who had his arms around a girl's shoulder. My mother asked me whether they were in love. I said "No". But even today she doesn't believe me. She still feels that they are in love!!! If only she comes here(...

The mind works mechanically here - after you crack a joke you do what they call high fives!!! When you meet a person you ask something like "What's up buddy?"- Only God knows how you are supposed to answer for such a question!!! You say "Excuse me" after a sneeze - What big mistake have you made to say that?? When you are ready to sacrifice ethics for grades and see even your closest friend as a competitor in group discussions, how much difference will that Excuse me make? Pretty difficult to adjust!!!

Even Café Coffee Days and costly dinners sometimes hurt. Daily my father takes a bus to reach home from his office because taking an auto would cost him Rs.30. He walks a kilometer daily from the bus stop to my house. When I think of that and the fact that I am spending Rs.50 for a Chocolate Fantasy, I feel uneasy. Definitely it is not a matter of money. The fact is that I somewhere in my heart feel that this is not really who I am...The fact that I have changed a lot hurts... I want to be the same myself, but I am unable to do so.

Started listing down a few things that have changed in my life. The left column is a list of things that were part of my life before I entered college. And the right are those that I came to know/were a part of my after I entered college.


I wish I go back to school and be the same guy I was. I know I can't. But I want to do it and live the same life all again.

Leo da Mirci once said, "I love what I do because I do only what I love".

If only following something is as simple as saying something!!!

New Cars for city police...

New Cars for chennai city police... looks awesome na...

One of the mails that i sent to groups

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Krishna Shasankar. V <itkrishna@gmail.com>
Date: Mar 9, 2006 11:05 PM
Subject: Atlast I Recharged
To: ITS <itsastha@yahoogroups.com>

Friends.... I m back on my mobile....

2~3 days without incoming messages or calls... it was lik hell...

but there wont be too much of enjoyment left for me even if i can see my self back on my mobile..

 

ya... 
if you wanted me to speak about that tiny little masterpiece of finnish engineering(my nokia 1100) which slips through my jeans pocket, i would be glad to rate it as the worst human invention after the atom bomb....

 

@My mobile steals privacy from me...

It doesnt always sound nice to make yourself accessibile to every tom and dick anytime...

With this little smart device, i hav always lost the choice of whom to respond and whom not to....

 

@Thats not all... here comes another piece of crap called the SMS...

Let me Rate SMS as the 3rd worst creation of mankind after atombomb and mobile fone....

it starts Morning 5.40.. . a cup of tea or a coffee ...... attached to a HAV A NICE DAY OR GOOD MORNING message..... and it continues.... tea, tiffin, good afternoon, had u r lunch a ..., good evening, good night, sweet dreams, chellams, sweethearts, kadalai, good night,, again at night 12:01 am sending good morning for next day.... i m sick of all these....

 

idhaey thavirey .... holidays , birthadays.... republic day, valantine's day.....

 

i i yo.... somebody stop this.... to put an end to all this Sh## , TRAI(telecom regulatory authority of india) should increse the cost of SMS to twice that of call cost....

 

 

3 days without mobile ... It was like heaven...

But every now and then i feel for people who tried to call me up on my mobile.....  

i feel like as if i have got adictted to this thing... i really hate this thing but cant live without it....

i m jealous on everyone who doesn't hav a mobile.... for you guys the world is really a cool place to live in... no commitments... always offline.....

 

friends... please put down your views on good's and bad's of mobile fonez....

 

--

Mail Signed by,

V.Krishna Shasankar [iT KRiSHNA],

Final Year ,B.Tech[Information Technology]

Sree Sastha Institute of Engg. and Tech. , Chennai

PHP Tips (Redirecting to a Page)

To Redirect an user to a new Page

use the follwoing script

<?php
header( 'Location: http://www.yourwebsite.com/redirect_page.html' ) ;
?>

 

But make sure that no HTTP headers have been sent before this code is beign executed

(i.e. this should come before the HTML tag in the page)

 

 

Joges about WIFE

I recently read that love is entirely a matter of chemistry.
That must be why my wife treats me like toxic waste.
David Bissonette

When a man steals your wife, there is no better revenge than to let
him keep her.
Sacha Guitry

After marriage, husband and wife become two sides of a coin; they
just can't face each other, but still they stay together.
Hemant Joshi

By all means marry. If you get a good wife, you'll be happy. If you
get a bad one, you'll become a philosopher. Socrates

Woman inspires us to great things, and prevents us from achieving
them.
Dumas

The great question... which I have not been able to answer... is,
"What does a woman want?
Sigmund Freud

I had some words with my wife, and she had some paragraphs with me.
Anonymous

"Some people ask the secret of our long marriage. We take time to go
to a restaurant two times a week. A little candlelight, dinner, soft
music and dancing. She goes Tuesdays, I go Fridays."
Henny Youngman

"I don't worry about terrorism. I was married for two years."
Sam Kinison

"There's a way of transferring funds that is even faster than
electronic banking. It's called marriage."
James Holt McGavran

"I've had bad luck with both my wives. The first one left me, and
the second one didn't."
Patrick Murray

Two secrets to keep your marriage brimming
1. Whenever you're wrong, admit it,
2. Whenever you're right, shut up.
Nash

The most effective way to remember your wife's birthday is to forget
it once...
Anonymous

You know what I did before I married? Anything I wanted to.
Henny Youngman

My wife and I were happy for twenty years. Then we met.
Rodney Dangerfield

A good wife always forgives her husband when she's wrong.
Milton Berle

Marriage is the only war where one sleeps with the enemy.
Anonymous

A man inserted an 'ad' in the classifieds: "Wife wanted". Next day
he received a hundred letters. They all said the same thing: "You
can have mine."
Anonymous

First Guy (proudly): "My wife's an angel!"
Second Guy: "You're lucky, mine's still alive."           

Thing You find only in Mangalore

Managalore Engleesh

The City Traffic Police is using Eggjelent engleesh par itz Safety Hoardings ... have a look at this

25 NayaPaisa

I didnt have an opportunity to use 25 Paise coin for the past couple of years.... i dont even remember the last time when any one use the denominations in 25 paise and 75 paise... Bu when i came to mangalore... i was astonished that people here still use 25 Ps and 75Ps as denominations... here are some the sample bus tickets ... (NOTE the values 325 and 375 denote the numbers in paise not in ruppees [esp for chennaitees]...)

Mangalore Nagaram....

Mangalore Nagaram....

I jus wanted to jump out of chennai for a weekend, thought of going to mangalore but tickets were not available,but i desperately needed a break out of this flyover-city, i had very few reasons to travel 1), to meet deppak 2),i want to travel because i love traveling, at last found a ticket through tatkal in some coach bound to mangalore which will drop me there at 5 am on sunday....

Sunday 4:45 AM

A Lightning of noise awakes me i turn down from my upper berth jus to see an empty seats, wow, i have reached mangalore, its shivering now, i rang up deepak he said he was on the way, i packed the stuff that i brought with me, came down, its stupid man, unbelievable i saw the railway clock , it ticks 4:45 ( the train is supposed to arrive at 5:15), for a second i got confused as if the train has stopped in some other station and it would leave to mangalore now, but i turned back to confirm that its mangalore only.... the recent hike to railways' guys is paying off in gold for us...

While getting down itself i get a message on my mobil saying that i have a meeting with my CEO scheduled on Tuesday 10:00 am, I have to be in chennai on monday morning at ANY COST... So my deadline was to take the 1:10 chn mail from here to chennai on monday morning .... so i have been allocated 30+ hours to enjoy ...

Deepaq came down to pick me up.... we headed to his place, a nicely furnished room, had chat about latest updates in both our lives, went for bath an then headed to beach (dont ask me the names), it was nice place, great beach guys i ll update fotos as soon as i get their soft copies, the beach was very close to the port , we saw a big ship crossing in front of us, dont know why I started to develop some kinda of HATRED towards SHIPS.... i saw a restaurant nearby the beach , i said we can have some dinner over said , deepak said we can have it near his office, i told we can have it here, bcoz i was very hungry, i didnt eat much during travel also... BIG MISTAKE i did, food was as horrible as ever... checkout deepaks's blog for a detailed description... We then headed to his office , INFOSYS Mangalore , It was cool man... great building, interiors, facilities.. the company was nice.... we took some snaps , he would need some for his orkut....

5 hours katham, 25 left

Then We did some shopping had some famous ice-cream, whose names i never knew, dont even know that anyone else back home will know... We headed to meet that FaztArithmetic Guy, i wanted the meeting to end in five minutes , it lasted for more that some 1 or 2 hours... man this guy ate a huge chunk of my time.... when we stepped off his office it was raining and raining cats, dogs, donkeys, and cows tooo... chalo... its has been long since i last got wet in chill rain, enjoy that one tooo... at last we found some auto to drop us in the bus stop that will take us to udippi,

One crazy thing about Mangalore... Auto-Rickshaws run on meters.. unbelievable stuff na... believe me or not this guy charged us with 18 Rs... i dont even remember last time i got a auto in chennai for less than 20 rs...

15:45 (Sat)
We took some odd bus to Udippi Which will leave us in udippi terminus, we had lunch before we took of for the bus, went to udippi beach ... (aval parandhu poonaley .... udippi beach povarey bus le oru ponnu... marakka ve mudiyaley)... went to the beach ... enjoyed the sunset in beach ... first time in my life i m having the sight of sunset at the beach .....(back in chennai-east coast its only sun rise by the beach) took some awesome snaps with the indian ocean....

19:45 (Sat)
We headed to manipal .... still dont know why we went there.... thought of finding some nice place to eat... but ended up finding that manipal is not tourist friendly place ( i mean in terms of navigation and pathfinding). We had to resort back to mangalore very quickly ... so that we can at least find some proper place to eat , its a 2 hours travel from here and the roads are the worst in the record.....

21:45 (Sat)
In the bus we found this tamil girl... aiiyo avaliyum marakka mudiaythu.... 2 hours non stop discussion.... about nothing but useless stuff... we get down and say ... bye bye
Back to mangy... now we had rush in to some hotel for FOOD... Food for survival... got one... and learnt a lesson... Kannidiga Biriyani's are the worst preparations of biriyani in the whole world... dont ever bother to try it... its that horrible....
Get back to sleep.... The next day i will have to find my way hometown....

09:00 (Sun)
We went to a place called sultan battery to take some nice snaps.... and headed to railway station.... Nothing spl on trains... Nothing Spl on train, except for the fact that i had to travel through kerala and lots of college girls are returning back to their hostels after their weekends.... Found a friend on the trains , he was a 70 year old , we discussed a lot about the young age comparing with what that guy used to do when he was of my age....

Back to chennai... Back to home... a Fast brush and a lightning quick bath... Meet the Web Master, Synaptris.com in the mirror... and get to back office... and life restarted as usual but on a different role....

CSS Forms

Hi all.. recentely i have been workin on some CSS UI for forms... CSS allows to offer better UI for User elements such as text boxes, check boxes , radio buttons ... etc... CSS also enbales highlighting the field that is being accessed by the user... say for example if the user is entering his user name , the username feild can be highlighted using CSS and lil bit of Javascript... This provides a more enhanced UI ...

There are actually two methods to get this done.... one is by applying CSS:focus style and the other is using Javascript... Ill prefer the Javascript one since the CSS:focus is not supported in my version of IE

The process is relatively simple... define two styles applicable to all textboxes.... one should be default one the other can be the one for editing mode....

.tbox {
background-color: #FAFAFA;
border: 1px solid #AAAAAA;
font-family: Tahoma;
font-size: 11px;
}

.tbox-focus {
background-color: #FFFFEE;
border: 1px solid #006699;
font-family: Tahoma;
font-size: 11px;
}

now after defing styles you have to write functions for setting and resetting the styles this is done using Javascript

<script type="text/javascript">

function sfocus(tid)

{

var im = document.getElementById(tid);
im.className="tboxfocus"

}

function lfocus(tid)

{
var im = document.getElementById(tid);
im.className="tbox"
}

</script>

Now having declared all these stuff inside <HEAD> tag... its all about calling the function in all textboxes

<input name="Name" type="text" class="tbox" id="Name" onBlur="lfocus('Name');" onFocus="sfocus('Name');">

<input name="Email" type="text" class="tbox" id="Email" onBlur="lfocus('Email');" onFocus="sfocus('Email');">

Use a simillar tag for all text boxes... thats all CSS forms are ready....

Haloscan commenting and trackback have been added to this blog.

New york Nagaram......

I dont know who told me about thing song a week back... i would have heard this song some that 200 times douring the past four days... Its in Loop on my winamp, my pocket mp3, speaker desk at office..... This is too good stuff from A.R. Rehaman.....

Here is the TANGLISH Lyrics for the fans of this song from the movie "Jilendru oru Kaadhal"....

"new york nagaram urangum naeram..
thanimai adarndhadhu..
paniyum padarndhadhey..
kappal irangiye kaatrum karaiyil nadandhadhu..
naangu kannaadi chuvargalukkulle naanum mezhuguvarthi..
thanimai thanimai oh.. thanimai thanimai oh.. kodumai kodumai yo..

new york nagaram..

paechchelaam thaalaattu pola ennai uranga vaikka nee illai..
dhinamum oru muthtam thandhu kaalai coffee kodukka nee illai..
vizhiyil vizhum dhoosi thannai naavaal edukka nee ingu illaii..
manadhil yezhum kuzhappam thannai theerkka nee ingey illai..
naan ingae neeyum angae indha thanimaiyil nimishangal varusham aanadhaeno..
vaan ingae.. neelam angae indha uvamaikku iruvarum vilakkamaanadhaeno..

new york nagaram...

naat kurippil nooru dhadavai undhan peyarai ezhudhum en paenaa..
ezhudhiyadhum erumbu moikka peyarum aanadhenna thaenaa..
jil endru bhoomi irundhum indha tharunaththil kulir kaalam kodai aanadheno..
vaa anbae.. neeyum vandhaal senthanal kooda panikkatti pola maarumae..

new york nagaram..."

Introduction to Server Side Includes

What are SSI?

SSI (Server Side Includes) are directives that are placed in HTML pages, and evaluated on the server while the pages are being served. They let you add dynamically generated content to an existing HTML page, without having to serve the entire page via a CGI program, or other dynamic technology.

The decision of when to use SSI, and when to have your page entirely generated by some program, is usually a matter of how much of the page is static, and how much needs to be recalculated every time the page is served. SSI is a great way to add small pieces of information, such as the current time. But if a majority of your page is being generated at the time that it is served, you need to look for some other solution.

Source: Apache Tutorial: Introduction to Server Side Includes

The worst travel experiences of my life.....

hi guys,

Welcome to this blog post on one of the worst travel experiences of my life.... this for for my friends marriage., it was to happen on a place named KODAD in some remote location beyond Vijayawada, the marriage was on 18-aug so I took leave on Friday , it was schedule at night , I thought like I can have a comfortable travel by train and bus on the day and go to the marriage in sharp time, but life is not always easy... it sucks... I had my leave confirmation on Wednesday evening ... I thought of booking the tickets on Thursday morning... I went to online booking ... got the tickets paid the money through HDFC netbanking ... everything went fine till a JavaScript error popped up that had crippled my transaction in the middle .... money has already been debited from my account... but no tickets.... full tension... called up HDFC and irctc... they atlast agreed to restore the money.... I had to go to Southern Railways booking office directly to get the tickets.....

Anyway I got them after long tensions..... now I had to go to office...@ syanptris... huge chunks of work was waiting for me.... something has to go live by monday... but I wont be available through weekend.... chalo kaam karo... hardwork till 1am on Friday... now i get back to home.... next morning i have train... i reached home by around 3 and then ofcourse slept...

Subhae Subhae utthe hi time hogaya 7 odd my train is by 9 odd and travel from pallavaram to the central takes a luxurious 1 hour.... run boy run....

chalo paunch gaya station in cool time but no money... my purse is empty now.... the canara bank ATM in the Chennai central wont work.... i m helpless...

Suren Sir (one of the great faculty members of my college and a good friend of mine... now he is working in some MNC ) was on his way to the staion on the same train... after hearing that i had a sigh of relief.... now i thought like i have some company to suffer with.....

We boarded the train... shared the experiences... was a lot of fun.... atlast i have found someone with time to share whatever thats going on in y life after college....

We made it to vijaywada in good time.... 4:30 or 5 pm... it was evening.... Krishna river was flooding like crazy....  We stepped out off train to the road outside.... there we headed staraight to auto-rick stand... we asked if he can take us to the bus-terminus.... he refused... we stood like stumped.... ( where ever i have went... rick drivers will tell you like it will cost more or atleast will try to cheat you... but this is teh first time that i had to hear something like this... "AUTO RAADHU...." IN A HARSH TONE.... translates as "auto wont come" in telegu....) we found some auto atlast ... but that was damn cheap man.... he charged just a mere Rs. 5 per head for each of us the distance was close to 2~3 kms....

aha ha we reached... the terminus.... but hang on teh confusion begins here.... where is KODAD... i went to the enquiry asked for KODAD (spelled like K-O-DAD) .... she said like that there is no such place there.... then she revealed the correct pronouncation "Kodhadu" (spell like KO-DHA-DU... translates in telegu like some synonym for riverside ... i m not sure)..." goto platforms 25 and 26... u might find some buses there"

No busses here again... Some bus driver ws trying to persuade us to take his bus ( his bus will not take us to kodad but will take us to somewhere from where i cand find busses to kodad.... but that place will waste a lot of my time and money). We dont have time... its SIX already.... i thought like "Marketing ke Makrketing a.... dai ... adangunga da :)"

We got a bus but were unsure whether it will take us there or not.... got in and slept.... that bus driver was sleeping too... he almost went on to crash the bus on a steep curve..... anyway hum bachgayae .... we dont have a choice... "lets believe it takes to kodhadu".... finally we reached kodadhu... we were astonished to find that this place has cars, ATM's and an engineering college tooo (ha ha .... suren knows the joke behind it).... It was crazy man.... the Image we had for kodad was a very remote village with nothing but cows and farms... but it was far more advanced....

Some of my friend's (bride's) friend came to take through to the place where we are gonna stay.... it was a place (no comments about it...) ... deepak* reached there in the meanwhile.... nothing crazy... this guy never took a leave... cameback staright from office... anyways... no harsh feelings ...
{ * Deepak works in SCM for Infosys and is currently havin his training at hyderabad}

Awesome man... marraige was over by 1 am on sat.... wished her all the best and found our way back.... my eyes were burining ... i havent slept for more than 40 hours by then....

No the return saga beging.... Morning train is at 6 AM at Vijayawada..... Its 2.30 AM here in Kodad.... We have been waiting for aroun 1 hour... no bus has crossed us.. thought like we will be in trouble if we dont get a train....I have to reach chennai at the earliest.... bcoz i need to help a friend to make his national level event live at Chennai Trade center on Sunday....

Finally we got the bus.... made it 2 railway station... by 4 odd...

We didnt have tickets 2 chennai.... I thought like we can travel in PINAKINI Express... i is by all means on the most emptiest trains.... i have travelled in it... u can sleep and travel till chennai in the general ... its that empty.... so we took a General Ticket...

now our stomach's were in trouble... no PROPER food for more that 18 hours.... after a little search we found some place which can sell us food .... had some idli's.... he asked if we need "COOLING WATER" (office memories of awdesh asking for it.... ha ha)...

Got the train... and now i came to know about the  mistake i did.... it was the worst thing i had ever done to travel in General.... the compartment got stuffed with all kinds of nonsense.... fights, fun,chaos,,, everything that u could imagine..... i dont have any chioce.... i haev to travel by it.... If i had time i would have stepped out and took some other train.... it was that crazy....

Making it to chennai was like winning a nobel prize... ui stepped in to chennai... and started jumping in happiness....

Trip to KODAD may be one of the worst travel experiences in my life.... but it also made one of our friends happy by showing our presence at one of the gretest moments in her life.... Cheers for that....

 

A Night @ Synaptris

Life seems to be easy until u find tougher times… this is what happened to me yesterday, Myself and Awdesh (a colleague of mine @ Synaptris.com) planned to stay at office yesterday night in order to implement some SEO changes throughout the website, This is a painstaking process which will involve a huge amount of work…. And this was gonna be my first night-out on office work. And the experience was too good. i would have been boring if there is no one around, but awdy gave a nice company…

After joining here, i got used to work late hours, and yesterday was really awesome, the early morning environment is too good that if i start workin like this for a couple of days , i may get addicted to these things, neways i shuldnt do that way….

By 3 am we were planning to make an innovative project for Synaptris.com, we used have one such thing in the old site, which we don’t have anymore… but we wanna start off from scrap, so that the implementation will be scalable. We will discuss more about in our future blogs…

Ek mahiney ho gaya

Donno how time passes, it feels that I joined jus now and here we go, one month is over, how gud I am after one month at Synaptris is still a question?, but I feel I have learned a gud amount of Corporate designing, campaign page concepts, SEO optimizations, mailers, etc..  I still don’t know where this learning curve is gonna take me, but my manager always tells me to head out in the direction of usability, but I don’t even know any word on usability. I still a fresher in this area maybe I ll get to know more as I improvise on my experience.

 For a non-corporate perspective, I m eating a lot these days (although awdesh is responsible of most of it), this is nothing special since anyone at syanptris will tell the relationship between Marketing Team and food.  And I am speaking a good amount of hindi, becoz of this hindi rich community around me, ever since my first semester, I didn’t have chance to speak some of the languages I like most.

Zindigi chal raha hai, cool and slow paced…. C u in next blog …