கங்கா ஸ்நானம் ஆச்சா

தீபாவளி திருநாள்

அதிகாலை எழுந்து

நன்னீர் ஆடி

புத்தாடை உடுத்தி

தீபம் ஏற்றி

இனிப்பு பரிமாறி

பட்டாசு கொளுத்தி

கொண்டாடும் இன் நன்னாளில்

அனைவருக்கும் எங்கள் உள்ளம் கனிந்த தீபாவளி நல் வாழ்த்துகள்.

Navaratri (Golu) 2010

Our sixth Navaratri in Birmingham. (எங்க ஆத்து கொலு)

As usual this year also we had a great navaratri. As the photo explains, there were lots of new dolls(bommai) added to our golu (thanks to Raji atthai for sending those by post and thanks to the postal guys for handling the same with care). The hightlight for this year was two new sets of Dasavatharam, Narthana Krishnar, Veeraraghava perumal and a big kalyana set. This year Vedhika has grown big to understand as what is going on in the house and she was instumental in having a zoo.

It is just 40days after Veebha has delivered Vedanth, but she was decisive in having this year's golu as well in a grand manner. Vedhika was dressed up differently on each of the nine days with great enthusiasm. Veebha and Vedhika went to almost all our friends house to invite them.(எங்க ஆத்துல கொலு வெச்சுருகோம் , come and take vetla pak - Vedhika's version of personal invite). Vedhika did invite some of her classmates as well to this years golu.

All our friends visited our golu and Vedhika offered tamboolam to everyone who had visited and some nice gifts to the little ones.

Maama and Maami (Veebha's appa and amma) were with us this year and they really enjoyed Vedhika's dressups and our navaratri. All the guests were serverd with nine different sundals prepared by Maami on all the nine days.

Vedhika had a very busy day on this Vijayadasami. She has officialy started her Education(Akshabyasam by Maama at home),Classical Music (taught by Mrs.Vijayashree Sriram) and Bharathanatiyam (taught by Mrs.Smita Deshpande).

Once again Veebha and Vedhika has done it. Hope Vedanth joins
them in the coming years with right spirit.

Are we following things blindly?

Is it good to follow the traditions even if it does not suit us?

I do not think so... you should be happy about what you are doing in the day to day life... and if you think it is not going to bring something fruitful by doing so, stop doing it and start being practical. (i want to stress here that the traditions will not harm us in any way and i am not against traditionalism, but make sure that it helps you)

"please do not follow things blindly"

Most of us have adapted to the mordern world and doing all sort of mordern things available in the world, which is reality.

I want to stress here once more, I am not against follwoing rituals or the daily routine what we follow which is proven to be good... but I do not want to do something as mentioned in the below story.

A short story about blind followers.

A great Buddhist master had a cat, which was his true passion in life. So, during meditation classes, he kept the cat by his side in order to make the most of his company. One morning, the master who was already quite old – passed away. His most adept disciple took his place. As a tribute to the memory of their old instructor, the new master decided to allow the cat to continue attending the meditation classes.
Days passed, some disciples from the neighboring monasteries, traveling through those parts, discovered that, in one of the region’s most renowned temples, a cat took part in the meditation sessions. The story began to spread.
Some years passed. The cat died, but the students at the monastery were so used to its presence, they soon found another cat and trained it and made it sit with them during the meditation practices. Meanwhile, other temples began introducing cat in their meditation sessions. All started doing cat meditation, they believed the cat was truly responsible for the fame and excellence of their old teacher, and in doing so forgot that the old master was a fine instructor.
A generation passed, thesis was developed, which were even accepted by the academic community – that, cats have the ability to increase human concentration, and eliminate negative energy. And so, for a whole century, the cat was considered an essential part of Buddhist studies in that region.
Until a master appeared who was allergic to animal hair, and decided to remove the cat from his daily exercises with the students. There was a fierce negative reaction – but the master insisted. Since he was an excellent instructor, the students continued to make the same scholarly progress, in spite of the absence of the cat. Little by little, the monasteries, which were already tired of having to feed so many cats, began eliminating the cat from the classes. In twenty years time, new revolutionary theories began to appear, with very convincing titles such as “The Importance of Meditation without a Cat”. Another century passed, and the cat withdrew completely from the meditation rituals in that region.

Arrived in good condition.... but delayed by two days!!!!!!!!!!!!

Yes, the expected due date for Veebha to deliver the tummy baby(Vedhika calls so) was on 4th Sep 2010. But Veebha delived a gorgeous baby boy "Vedanth" on 6th september 2010 @ 7:03pm UK time. Stayed back in the Birmingham Heartlands Hospital for post delivery recovery and reached home on 8th Sep at around 7:30pm. Vedhika was too exited to recieve the baby. Punyojanam(formal naming cermony) held on 16th Sep and we have named him as Vedanth alias Rengarajan. We followed the same way of punyojanam as we have done for Vedhika. Ramesh mama family were present on that day to grace the occation. Now Vedhika is slowly stopped calling tummy baby and stated telling his name Vedanth. Our house is almost filled with guests everyday. I was on paternity leave for the first two weeks (will come to know on the salary day whether it is a paternity leave or LOP). So it was bit easy for me to drop and pick up Vedhika from school, she has started her Reception which is a full time school this september. Life is changing slowly as all three of us have to accomodate ourselves according to the new born. Toucwood, I have to say here Vedhika is cooperating a lot(atleast in the begining weeks). Maama and maami are tooooooo busy with the houehold. Think Veebha is now bit more experienced in handling the baby (i can feel that). And I am sure that she is happy expect for that pathiya sapadu. As per maami (including my amma, patti, kollu patti etc.,) the pathiya sapadu will give more strength to Veebha after three months of delivery. I am respecting that as they are following that for generations (fool proof and tested method) and definitely not going to end on the negative side.
Hope Veebha recovers quickly and start driving the Vauxhall Zafira car we have bought for her on 19th August.

Retirement and Philanthropy

When a person retires general human tendency is to claim all the money that needs to be settled by the organisation and come home with a big cheque to eat for the rest of his life. But this person decided to do something back to the organisation where he worked for his entire career with heart full of happiness. When I heard this news of philanthropy, I decided to register it here as this is definitely a motivating factor for me in many ways. "Installation of reverse osmosis water treatment plant for the entire college and hostel in around 1.5 lacs Indian rupees". He has made sure that it has become operational and water is being supplied to the college and hostel students in a weeks time. This does not stop here, he has adopted one student to fund for his/her studies in the same institution. And I am sure there are many more things that he is doing which I do not know. I am happy to say that he is none other than my father-in-law Mr R. Sridharan. A happily retired person from a techincal institution in Trichy.

He is here with us in UK now to spend his intital days of retirement.

ps: mama (as I call him), this post is not to propogate your philantropic activities, but just for our memories.

Internet (Good or Bad) – Communication made easy

Website, Email, Blog, Orkut, Facebook, Twitter etc... Today there are so many ways to express our feelings, thoughts, ideas what ever you call it. I just read an article in one of the websites (royal.pingdom.com) about the Internet numbers in 2009.

Some stats from that post

Email
90 trillion – The number of emails sent on the Internet in 2009.
247 billion – Average number of email messages per day.
1.4 billion – The number of email users worldwide.
100 million – New email users since the year before.
81% – The percentage of emails that were spam.
92% – Peak spam levels late in the year.
24% – Increase in spam since last year.
200 billion – The number of spam emails per day (assuming 81% are spam).

Websites
234 million – The number of websites as of December 2009.
47 million – Added websites in 2009.

Web servers
13.9% – The growth of Apache websites in 2009.
-22.1% – The growth of IIS websites in 2009.
35.0% – The growth of Google GFE websites in 2009.
384.4% – The growth of Nginx websites in 2009.
-72.4% – The growth of Lighttpd websites in 2009.

Domain names
81.8 million – .COM domain names at the end of 2009.
12.3 million – .NET domain names at the end of 2009.
7.8 million – .ORG domain names at the end of 2009.
76.3 million – The number of country code top-level domains (e.g. .CN, .UK, .DE, etc.).
187 million – The number of domain names across all top-level domains (October 2009).
8% – The increase in domain names since the year before.

Internet users
1.73 billion – Internet users worldwide (September 2009).
18% – Increase in Internet users since the previous year.
738,257,230 – Internet users in Asia.
418,029,796 – Internet users in Europe.
252,908,000 – Internet users in North America.
179,031,479 – Internet users in Latin America / Caribbean.
67,371,700 – Internet users in Africa.
57,425,046 – Internet users in the Middle East.
20,970,490 – Internet users in Oceania / Australia.

Social media
126 million – The number of blogs on the Internet (as tracked by BlogPulse).
84% – Percent of social network sites with more women than men.
27.3 million – Number of tweets on Twitter per day (November, 2009)
57% – Percentage of Twitter’s user base located in the United States.
4.25 million – People following @aplusk (Ashton Kutcher, Twitter’s most followed user).
350 million – People on Facebook.
50% – Percentage of Facebook users that log in every day.
500,000 – The number of active Facebook applications.

Images
4 billion – Photos hosted by Flickr (October 2009).
2.5 billion – Photos uploaded each month to Facebook.
30 billion – At the current rate, the number of photos uploaded to Facebook per year.

Videos
1 billion – The total number of videos YouTube serves in one day.
12.2 billion – Videos viewed per month on YouTube in the US (November 2009).
924 million – Videos viewed per month on Hulu in the US (November 2009).
182 – The number of online videos the average Internet user watches in a month (USA).
82% – Percentage of Internet users that view videos online (USA).
39.4% – YouTube online video market share (USA).
81.9% – Percentage of embedded videos on blogs that are YouTube videos.

Malicious software
148,000 – New zombie computers created per day (used in botnets for sending spam, etc.)
2.6 million – Amount of malicious code threats at the start of 2009 (viruses, trojans, etc.)
921,143 – The number of new malicious code signatures added by Symantec in Q4 2009.

Sanjeevini Cycling - Day 1

Mission – Cycling from Shirley to Lincoln (102 miles - 164 kms)

Days – 19-Sep-2009 & 20-Sep-2009

Hosts in Lincoln for Sanjeevini Trust – Dr.Ian and Dr.Rama

www.sanjeevinitrust.com

Cycling Team Members
Rahul Raghuraman – Enthusiastic and Energetic 22yr old
Dr.Shreeram Deshpande (Ram) – Orthopaedic surgeon, Mission Director
Dr.Seshagiri (Sesh or Giri) – Urologist, Trustee of Sanjeevini Trust.
Dr.Smita Deshpande – Surgeon, Trained & Casual Cyclist
Varun Deshpande – 13 year old, Young blood. What a spirit!!!!
Vinod Parthasarathy – Cycling for the first time in 15 years.

It was a casual chat with Giri on 12th of September at my home about the cycling event and the members who will be cycling to Lincoln. Suddenly I have a thought why should not I join the team. Had an immediate consultation with my motivator (who else? It is Veebha.) And go-ahead was a reply even without giving time for a second thought. I have a bike, but have not practiced; we thought we have another 5 days to practice. With full cheers I have informed Giri that I will be joining the team for the Lincoln cycling event.

Out of the five days we had before the event, I just cycled for 12 miles in two days. To be frank, I was a bit tensed on the day before. But still I was confident that I can do this task.

The day has come, 19th September 2009, a pleasant morning. The plan was myself and Giri join the rest of the team in Ram’s house at 8.00am. Veebha gave us a good breakfast with a nice coffee.

We started from home at 7.45 am in Giri’s Renault Espace by squeezing our bikes in the back of the car. Veebha and Ramya came down to say goodbye to us. On the way we pumped up air for our bikes in the near by petrol station. We were on time at Ram’s house. Smita’s mom (Latha Kartha) one of the support person for the cycling team welcomed us. Badri’s (the second support person for the team) car entered the compound in another 5 minutes time. Food for the day has been loaded in the support vehicle. (Unfortunately we did not take the photograph of the food box; you know it was soooo big).

Three cyclists Ram, Smita and Varun are from the same family. All the three walked out in a couple of minutes time with all their cycling gears in place. And finally Rahul the sixth cyclist arrived on his bike.

Now all set for the mission. With a quick photographic session the team started pedalling their bikes exactly at 8.55am. I still had the confidence that I am going to do it with the rest of the team members successfully. The team passed thru the Solihull town centre. 15 minutes passed, I just felt for a second that whether I have committed a mistake by volunteering to cycle till Lincoln, and immediately I said to myself “NO- I CAN DO IT”.

This is the first time I am using a geared cycle in my life, and I was struggling to understand initially what is going on with those gears (of course as a mechanical engineer I know how gears work and the purpose of gears). Still remember Ram keep on telling me to put my gears up to apply less effort to move forward. Technically he was right, but my legs did not understand what Ram told me.

There came a break at 9.15, in around 20 minutes of our start. Smita’s back tyre was flat. Ram quickly gave a call to the support team for a cycle pump. That was a bonus break for me to season myself. We started peddling again at 9.30 and cycled for around 10 miles and we stopped in a village pub at 10:15 for a quick break. To be frank I was OK. I gained more confidence as time passed. Again a quick photo session before starting from that point.

The map which we carried did not help and Ram has to take out his mobile to navigate us from thereon. Aunty and Badri were ahead of us in the support vehicle and were waiting in a calm place for us to feed us. At 11.45 we met but decided not to have lunch now and to cycle for another 1 hour before we stop again for lunch. We utilised the brake to have strawberries and some snacks, quickly we shot some snaps. I think this was the distance Ram and Smita would have expected Varun to cycle. But I did not see any tiredness in Varun’s face. We refilled our water bottles and started pedalling again.

As time passed by, I can feel that my legs slowly reduced its speed to cope up with others. I reduced my gears, this time Rahul pushed me to increase my gears and put up the speed. Wherever you find some berries, fruits, vegetables on the way, there was one person from our team to pluck those and share it with others. Yes it was Smita. Around 1.30 Aunty and Badri were waiting for us in a very calm place alongside the road to boost our energy (what else… it is our lunch time). We were ready to eat anything that’s offered to us. But to our surprise we had Bread and chenna masala for vegetarians and Bread with chicken masala for non-vegetarians, finally to finish with we had some great strawberries. Seriously I wanted to sleep after having my lunch. But our mission director has already started looking at the directions for the rest of the day in his blackberry. Gave a quick update to Veebha about the morning session and about our lunch. More than me she was worried whether I will be able to do this task, because she very well knows how fit I am.

The team had a brisk start after 40 minutes of lunch break. The team had some quick drinks break every one hour or so and rest of the afternoon went on peacefully. Every one of us other than Rahul carried water bottle with us. But Rahul carried his back bag all along the route (should weigh at least 5kgs). It has couple of water bottles, biscuits, some fruits etc., as time passed by my cycling speed reduced; Now Giri has an excuse to pedal slowly. Ram, Smita, Rahul and Varun had gone ahead a mile and were waiting on a left. Oh Yeah! There was a sign board which pointed to say “East Leak” 1 ½ miles, the destination for the first day. We did not miss to take a photograph on this left turn. After half a mile there was a huge downhill, was happily cycling, suddenly something came in my mind, oh no I have to climb the hill back again tomorrow morning, but that thinking subsided quickly because we have reached the destination for the day.

We had a quick photo session to complete the day’s cycling. Aunty did not forget to send the photos taken on the evening to send it to Veebha and Ramya from her iphone. It is time for Badri and Aunty to head back home. We unloaded our luggages’ from Badri’s car and said goodbye to them for the day.

Sheeba’s Bed and Breakfast.
A man in his late 60s, Mr.Barry was the owner of the B&B. He welcomed us and we had a quick introduction with him and right from the beginning he was keen in enquiring about the cycling trip and about Sanjeevini. Our initial plan was the team will split and stay in two B&Bs, but Barry decided to accommodate us in the same B&B with some additional beds in place.

Almost everyone needed a shower before the dinner. We decided to go out for dinner, Smita has already enquired about the nearest available restaurants. There was a church just opposite to the B&B. The clock stuck 7.00 when we started walking. We zeroed in an Indian restaurant and fortunately there were places to sit as soon as we entered. Varun entered the restaurant after confirming whether burger and pizzas are available there. Rahul joined us in the restaurant after finishing in pint of beer in the Lions Head pub.

We had some nice chat about the days cycling before the food arrived. In 20 minutes time the food were on the table. Giri, Smita and Rahul shared the vegetable supreme pizza, Varun was with his burger, Ram with his roti and chicken curry and myself with roti and tadka dal (one of my favourite).

Barry was cooking his dinner when we came back to Sheeba’s, Ram was taking some suggestions from him about the route we have to take the next morning. During the course of conversation Barry has offered some huge discount on our tariff and has offered GPB20 towards Sanjeevini as his contribution.

Back on the room, I was watching x-factor, Rahul was reading some book, and Giri was working on the PowerPoint presentation for the next day. Had a quick chat about the day with Veebha on phone and enquired about the first day of Navaratri. I do not know at what time I slept (definitely before 10pm). I heard church clock chiming every hour right from early morning 3’o clock.

contd.....