men in blue reaping rich
the brand new men to join the men in blue are the Indian hockey players and they more or less did a justifying act to show that the game they play deserves rightly to be called as the national game of the country with a series of win this year.the victory in challenger trophy followed by today’s win against Pakistan in the finals of the afro asian games, surely this year has seen the revival of hockey in the country.the other popular men in blue too had a great year with a place in the finals of the cricket worldcup.so it did turn out to be a good year for the Indian sports with sania mirza,leander paes,anju bobby geroge roping in laurels to our country.the end of this year will see Indian cricket team touring australia and next year the Olympic games in ATHENS…lotsa sporting actions…and lot’s more to look forward to.

here it is…
Next only to matches between India and Pakistan that sets the Indian crowd going bang…bang…are the matches between India and Australia and so after the forgettable worldcup final,here they are to fight out for supremacy.Indians have notched up 284 with the fall of 5 wickets .after sehwag’s quick departure laxman and who else but tendulkar built the total steadily breaking the partnership record held until today between Azhar and Sidhu and the best part of the match that was really entertaining ,was the highly useful quickfire 44 runs from yuvraj and the little cameo played by agarkar towards the end of the match.south Indians celebrated diwali last Friday,north Indians yesterday and Indians today…two centuries and the high voltage performance from yuvraj and agarkar…another diwali bash!?!?

when I see nothing but ‘c’
my trysts with computer language ‘c’ goes like this…
in my eleventh grade when given an option for choosing the core subject,without an ounce of doubt I wanted to opt for biology but a couple of decisions finally made me to sit before a monitor in the computer department of my school, when I was dreaming myself to be looking into the microscope in the biology laboratory . for one thing I never had any inclination to learn this subject and another I was a computer illiterate then, not that I have mastered it now, but am far better off than conjuring up a couple of slides in the ppt. with these thoughts and a high confidence that I am never going to learn the subject I attended my first computer class and as though my worst fears were coming true, I sat blinking at the black board ,wondering what this c++ means and pondering why it is not just c+ or c- - or z++. managed to scribble down some notes and left the classroom thinking really hard about the subject and felt it lacked the charm.as days grew into months I slowly but steadily started to have a grip on it but the same thought that I had in my 1st class kept crossing over my mind…”what is the practical use of c???” and “what is the use of learning to write a program to check if a given number is odd or even???” .i scrambled on and managed to finish two yrs of c++ at school and I entered into the college scenario, only to find myself writing the age old programs to check if a given number is odd or even and the only difference being that this time around it was in foxpro .In the second semester ,there I was struck up in even and odd in unix and finally into this sem,u would have guessed it, the same old even and odd in ‘C’.huh…what next?…why can’t the syllabus prescribe projects and other harder tasks using these languages than grazing around the ‘school based’ computer programs forever.

life is spinning around
just when I thought that this semester is nothing but a break before the next semester ,say something like a holiday, things are really heating up. Assignments, assessment exams and audio recordings are really pounding on us.on Monday we have to submit a public relation plan and take up an exam on audio production and then record a radio drama. tomorrow I will have to go to college to finish recoding an ad spot, complete with music and sound effects.these activities are very interesting but for the host of other classes I got enrolled in assuming the semester to be less taxing.

Ferrari and schumi riding high

the curtains have come down on this year’s formula 1 racing with the showdown in suzuka and the outcome…hmm…I have a good reason to celebrate…ain ’t I ?.not a great way to round off and claim this year’s championship though for Michael Schumacher but at the end of the day, a gleaming schumi’s face told the story.he has won the driver’s championship…he has set a new record…he has proved himself to be the greatest out there in the racing circuits…he has proved that he has some more yrs left in him to compete in the fastest with best.what marked out this years racing is that unlike the last year ,no single team or driver claimed supremacy over the rest of the herd.this ensured a more interesting finale in the last couple of grand-prixs.so it’s time to say good-bye to f1 for the moment… guess Indian cricket team’s upcoming Australian tour will keep us busy…

agni - really hot
agni is the intra college cultural fest between college of engineering guindy,AC tech & school of architectural planning and the very same agni is the reason for my absence in the blogging scenariofor the last couple of days.two days of fun and enjoyment filled the air of anna university campus and I loved every moment of it.i stayed up late into the night to watch light music,fashion show and other competitions which makes students go crazy with excitement.guess what my good pals lakshmi and meera who are bloggers too ,along with me formed a team to participate in dumb charades in English and fate had it that we landed up in tamil dumb charades and we won the first place too.another sweet outcome of the fest is that my department which is relatively new to the college notched up many prizes , carving a mark atop other departments.hey ,am patting myself and my dept.
p.s-found some time to peep into IIT’s techfest shaastra.have to thank suds for the inviatation.

college musings
when luck finally decided to stand by our group…
this is kind of a follow up on one of my earlier post about audio recording.We are seven in a group and we were supposed to produce a musical programme. twice the recording was cancelled due to technical problems and non-availability of the studio and finally on one fine day we entered the studio ,our spirits as low as it can be. the first reason,the recording started around half past 5 in the evening and by this time we were exhausted after a tiring day at college and the second reason we never had any enthusiasm to produce a musical programme.with these thoughts we entered the studio and to add to our dismay the background sound track didn’t get recorded and so we started all over again.all that we wanted was to finish the recording for the heck of it.this is something which is not characteristic of our group because we strive hard and we are a determined lot…not this time around though.with the last bit of energy left in us we lumbered on and managed to finish the recording with no proper sound effects,no coherence and sound of giggling and murmuring were recorded too.needless to say,the programme was a mess or so we thought.the d-day arrived[yesterday]…the time for reviewing the recorded tapes in the class by our professor and we dreaded it .the first two groups whose tapes were played didn’t fare well and the third group managed a better show and then came our group.we listened to the tape with our heads ducked in under the desk,our ears closed and all seven of us apprehensive about the reaction of our class mates.the initial part of listening was over without any drama and then came the time to announce our grade.we waited with bated breath and there it was gleaming on the black board against our group number a “B-“.we were thrilled and we took a flight to the seventh heaven.it isn’t a grade to be proud off but it is far better than the “E” or “F” we were expecting.guess something magical in our recording to make our prof. Grant a grade “B-“ .

plunging into the magical world
after a long gap ,am back to do something that I have always cherished doing - read books and novels and just about anything worth flipping through that I get hold off.exams,assignment and classes never gave me quality time to read books and that's when I decided to just put everything else in my life on hold to read novels. they make me forget my worries and provide the much needed change from looking pathetically over bulky books of symbols and theories and essays .so here I am all set to be charmed by the 5th book in Harry potter series "order of phoenix".Am off to "hogwarts school of witchcraft and wizardy".Where is the broom stick???

it’s the festive season…
come the month of October ,it’s time for celebrations and time to have real fun .first in the line of the festivals is the ‘navarathiri’[nine nights] which usually starts at the end of September .to my sis and me it means loading down boxes and boxes of dolls from loft and eating sundal.my whole family turns into engineers and architects to construct the five steps on which the dolls would be arranged and to make the ‘golu’ look beautiful we set up serial lights.once the steps are set,we have a brain-storming discussion over the arrangement of the dolls.when I was young my mom used to dress me up as the Indian gods and goddesses and I would go to each and every house in my apartment and invite them to visit our golu. Worser still I would be walking on the streets dressed up as ‘Andal’ or ‘valli’ or ‘saraswathi’.i can imagine the looks on the faces of onlookers. The lucky part of this was that I was not alone in the ‘divinity disguise’,my sister and friends too formed a part of this ‘gods army’. At the end of each day we sit in the uneven cement flooring of our apartment and we would count the number of gifts , unwrap and eat loads and loads of sundal packets .finally we return back home dazed with our tummy full and slump on our beds and yes ofcourse rightfully return the rented positions back to the lords.