The Big SBOA Meet Up !

A hundred or so of us gathered in the ground of S.B.O.A school and Junior college last Saturday 18th of Dec , reminiscing our wonderful memories as kids / teens in this very school. Many of them had changed so much in their looks that we could hardly recognize them, most of us are now into corporate life and taking time off to catch up with each other remained only a fantasy ... but when all things fell in place and a huge group of us met to catch up with each other and it truly turned out to be one of a day..

Food for thought !!

I can never hold on to hunger for more than an hour, post which I end up with a head ache. I'm sure that is how it is in most of the cases... Ever wondered how kids from families who cannot afford a proper square meal a day survive ?? Fortunately we have non - profit organisations catering to this need and also government schemes in schools where they provide free meal to children who cannot otherwise afford to have a proper meal a day.

One such initiative is the Akshaya Patra - school meal program. Feeding the hungry and educating the poor I believe is one of the best ways to give back to the society. When I got this opportunity to write for a social cause, I'm here gladly doing it :)

This blog post is gonna help feed another 50 hungry kids by the Akshaya Patra foundation, which is the world's largest mid-day meal program feeding 1,253,266 children everyday ... If you are planning to give back to the society in anyway, this can also be an option where you can start in a small way. I just did by making this post.



You can visit Akshaya Patra and be a part of the program in any way you can - volunteer, donate, write about them, create awareness!! You can also make online donation to support the cause. No food No good!

"Let no child be deprived of education because of hunger"

The Puppy story ...

One friday evening my friend D and I were talking about corporate life and how stressful it is sometimes when I suggested to him to spend sometime with the dog that stays two houses away from his home, since pets are a good way of de-stressing .. That was it, D went on this urge to get a labrador puppy for himself and insisted I along with another friend of ours would go get the pup the next day ..

I being so scared of dogs was never for the idea and D's parents were again not very fond of having pets at home .. but D wanted to get a male Labrador pup and name it Dino .. after failed attempts of trying to convince him to not get the puppy, we (D , D's bro , me and another H) finally set on the mission to meet Dino ..

In a days time D found out different sources from where we could get a pup and by saturday afternoon we set on mission getting Dino home .. after traveling to tirumangalam and half the distance towards North Madras all on a heavy rainy day, we met the person who we contacted through phone and finally reached the kennel to find out that the male pup was already given away and D was left with the choice of taking a female labrador pup back home.



She was a cute little thing running between our feet.. she looked totally adorable .. I wanted to take her in my arm but was scared .. D's bro carried the pup and I managed to touch her for the first time.. She was 40 days old then and was behaving herself well... she was happy to be with us, after a few mins of playing around with her my friend D decided to call her Daisy coz she was a female puppy and within a few mins the four of us along with Daisy were getting back home - reminding me of Enid Blyon's Famous Five ...

Daisy has now become the darling of the street right from kids to elders and has befriended the german shepherd (named Josh) that stays two houses away from the home where Daisy stays and they have a fun time playing with each other every evening...


Josh and Daisy are jus' so friendly that Josh climbs on the wall looking out for Daisy until she enters my friend's home...

I'm not all the scared of dogs anymore, for a matter of fact carried her to the veterinarian for her vaccination :) :)

My Graduation

It was a very important day for me in my life - 21 November 2010. My Graduation day in college. I woke up unusually early by around 5:30 am and got ready to start from home by 6:45 am to head to college with my parents.

I would have traveled in that road nearly hundreds of times or may be even thousands in the last five years, but this time it all seemed so new. There are numerous memories of having traveled in the GST road in the last few years .. sometimes with the excitement of having a good time in college, tensed moments during the placement season .. journeys when I have just slept in the college bus .. great times with friends in bus chatting , playing a game or two, teasing .. eating ...

There have been times during exams when I have not taken even a moment to look out of the bus window while I was studying on my way to college (It was studying the few hours before exams that has helped me largely), I have traveled this road early in the morning once for the house warming ceremony of our home and it was in this road I had my first long drive when I learnt to drive a car 2 years ago.

However, this time it was so different, I had a sense of contentment and a feeling of having accomplished something that I wanted to quit mid way, a course of study I thought I just did not belong to during my initial years in college. But, I am jus so glad now that it all turned out to happen in a good way with the guidance and support of my parents, friends and God - that I have finally graduated an engineer with first class :) :)

On a more simple note - After hours of traveling(which includes in train, bus, auto, share auto et all) , hundreds of movies later, with a good amount of money spent on the course and an almost equal amount spent on the food courts in our college, learning 70 academic subjects and hundreds of other non - academic subjects , 100s of tests/ exams and a lot many re-tests later, meeting hundreds of people, being in a numerous situation and experiencing a plethora of emotions later ------ I am proudly a graduate of life .

This place - SRM University gave me friends who would be around for years to come, it made me realize what I am, it thought me lessons that no courses would have, it gave me experience and memories that I would cherish a life time through ...







I love my alma matter and all the people who have enriched my last five years by just being a part of this wonderful journey :)

Monday Morning Inspiration # 99

Brenda was a young woman who was invited to go rock climbing. Although she was scared to death, she went with her group to a tremendous granite cliff.


In spite of her fear, she put on the gear, took a hold on the rope, and started up the face of that rock. Well, she got to a ledge where she could take a breather. As she was hanging on there, the safety rope snapped against Brenda's eye and knocked out her contact lens. Well, here she is on a rock ledge, with hundreds of feet below her and hundreds of feet above her. Of course, she looked and looked and looked, hoping it had landed on the ledge, but it just wasn't there. Here she was, far from home, her sight now blurry. She was desperate and began to get upset, so she prayed to the Lord to help her to find it.

When she got to the top, a friend examined her eye and her clothing for the lens, but there was no contact lens to be found. She sat down, despondent, with the rest of the party, waiting for the rest of them to make it up the face of the cliff. She looked out across range after range of mountains, thinking of that Bible verse that says, "The eyes of the Lord run to and fro throughout the whole earth." She thought, "Lord, You can see all these mountains. You know every stone and leaf, and You know exactly where my contact lens is. Please help me."

Finally, they walked down the trail to the bottom. At the bottom there was a new party of climbers just starting up the face of the cliff. One of them shouted out, "Hey, you guys! Anybody lost a contact lens?" Well, that would be startling enough, but you know why the climber saw it? An ant was moving slowly across the face of the rock, carrying it.

Brenda told me that her father is a cartoonist. When he told him the incredible story of the ant, the prayer, and the contact lens, he drew a picture of an ant lugging that contact lens with the words, "Lord, I don't know why You want me to carry this thing. I can't eat it, and it's awfully heavy. But if this is what You want me to do, I'll carry it for You."

I think it would probably do some of us good to occasionally say, "God, I don't know why you want me to carry this load. I can see no good in it and it's awfully heavy. But if you want me to carry it, I will." God doesn't call the qualified, He qualifies the called.

To read other Monday Morning Inspiration click here

Raining Memories

It always makes me smile when it rains and brings back fun memories from my childhood associated with this rainy weather in Chennai.

It was I believe when I was in my 9th grade and we were told the subsequent day to be our project sports day (On this day all the preliminary rounds for various events are held to decide on the finalists). My friends and I were super thrilled to go to school in our sports wear representing the different houses we belonged. More than the sports it is the fun of not having to learn in class rooms and chatting around with friends that makes us look forward to the day.

On one such project sports day, fortunately or unfortunately it started to rain at around 8:30 in the morning when most of us were assembled in our sports wear. The rain brought with it a sigh of gloom. Rain meaning no outdoor activity - so everyone into the class rooms listening to Math and Science lessons.

And since we were all completely drenched, we had asked permission to go home change and get back within a couple of hours.. that's when the fun started ..

We were four of us - Garima, Sindhu, Ramya and myself .. We initially decided on heading to my friend Garima's home which was the closest from school. The rain had subsidised and we decided to walk and half way through there was a sudden cloud burst and it started pouring and the closest place where we could get to hide ourselves from the rain was a small rickshaw, that took kids to school and that very moment all of us rushed to get into the rickshaw and that too all on the same side and the rickshaw collapsed .. All that we did was get up and laugh out loud ...

When we were almost near Garima's house her brother was on his way back and told us the house was locked and their mom had gone out.. After a bit of pondering over we headed to Ramya's place, had a fun time and got back to school by noon.

Every time it rains this incident pops up in my head and and so does the smile on my face thinking of the fun times we always had :)

Sweets, crackers fun and more ...

Diwali mood set in almost a week before the actual Deepavali day, when we had a pre diwali celebration in my flats with all of them getting together with lots of food, music, dance, fireworks and more ... This was the time I actually got to see many of my neighbours whom I haven't seen for months together ..

The Diwali celebration was later followed by distributions of sweets to family and friends - meaning we had to go sweet shopping a day or two and this had to happen a few days well before Diwali else you don't get anything except may be some mysore pak and laddu such was the demand for it in Chennai..

I along with mom and dad went sweet shopping at 11 pm around three to four days before Diwali to find sweet shops buzzling with activity and thankfully we also purchased crackers a few days in advance to avoid disappointment. The last year we went cracker shopping the day before Diwali to sadly find anything at all in racks.

The day before Diwali also happened to be my mom's bday and I gifted her a watch of her choice.. and my parents gave me a new Nokia E5 and I am in total love with it(review about it on a later post).

My Diwali day started on a slow pace.. After getting ready for the day had some delicious breakfast of melusu Dosai with onion and ginger chutney along with coconut chutney . This happens to be a Diwlai special item and I love it :) followed by lighting of some crackers and then off to distribute sweets to my friends and also had friends and relatives visiting home..

Evening couple of my friends came home and we bursted crackers for a while, just when we finished bursting our load of crackers I felt slight drizzles, which within few minutes turned to be a heavy down pour..

My weekend turned out to be fun as well..On Saturday evening, I had a lovely long walk around Anna nagar with friends and discovered a new place called The Soup and Salad Cafe which I am toally in love with. Great place and good food :). During this lovely long walk I actually came across a whole lot of new places in Anna nagar that I've never come across in my so many years of stay in the very place.

Sunday was lazy and the very thought of the long weekend coming to an end, made me do some useful work to avoid such thoughts hitting my head and evening had a fun time shopping in Express Avenue with parents ..

This long weekend also saw a couple of interesting activities happening in Chennai, one was the Beatles show and the other was the Extra Terrestrial show which more looked to be like a gymnastics/circus type of show I believe which I wanted to go to, but my weekend was already over packed.

Talking about the Beatles show, I remember my colleague at work Shyam who happens to be a die hard fan of the Beatlemania who was in total awe of the show. So, Shyam Adithya you've been mentioned in my blog :)

Two days into the week I am already looking forward to my weekend or rather Friday evening .. Have a happy week and a merrier weekend :)

Monday Morning Inspiration # 98

One day i was munching on delicious juicy apples and took a big bite and ended up with an apple seed in my mouth. I spat it out and wanted to throw it away.. I realized I was holding an apple tree in the palm of my hand. A little seed with the potential to become a beautiful huge tree.. A tree that could grow thousands of apples in its life time, each containing several more seeds which again giving the potential to growthousand other trees.

It is a rule of nature that only a few of these seeds grow. Most never do or are destroyed early on in their growth.

And it came to my mind it's quite often so with people's dreams also. Wonderful ideas come to our minds but they die too soon - we don't tend to the little saplings, we don't protect them as we should. And then one day we wonder what happened to our dreams - why did they never come true?

I put the apple seed on the table, and bent down to see how the light was reflected from it, this nature's tiny wonder. I wondered when someone was seriously growing apples, how many times they had to try to get a seed to germinate? How much work did it require?

Maybe it was like with our dreams: the seeds of your dreams did not automatically grow. Like planting an apple tree It might take many trys: like a hundred job applications to get that good job. You might send your manuscript out two hundred times before it was accepted. You might meet dozens of people until you met the true friend.

But if you kept on sowing the seeds of your dream, one day you would succeed. And after that others would comment you were lucky to be successful - when in fact you probably failed more often than you would like to count. But you were good at failing - you learned, you adapted, and then with your new knowlegde you tried again. And again. And again. And one day success was yours.

I picked up the apple seed again - but instead of throwing it away I took an empty flower pot, poured some earth into it and planted the seed. Maybe one day it would grown into a proud tree. I'd never knew if I didn't try.

Excerpts fromLeena Pekkalinen's story in Inspirational-short-stories . Loved the story when I came across it and thought how so true it is !!

To read other Monday Morning Inspirations click here.

Frozen Memories ...

I love pictures :) .. I love being in them as much as I love taking them, as for years to come they stand still and let you re live the moments. I loved posing for pics right from the time I was a kid but pics started becoming a part of my everyday life in the last few years from the time I got a camera phone. Digital photography is truly changed one's perception to photography and even more when it came in handy within a mobile phone - phono graphy !!

Pictures speak a million words - With the GBs of pics that I have, I can write a series of story books for years to come, such is the amount of memories each pic brings to me and I am so glad I was able to capture all the moments - happy, sad, funny serious .. all with the super cool cam in my phone :)

Re - living the times..


My first outing with my college friends to Queens land

At the engagement function of my child hood friend ...


View from my hostel window - Sunset above the SRM lake

Festival time with family ...

Heights of joblessness in class .. this is what we did most of the times .. posing for pics



That is the mat they specially made for my parent's wedding with their names in it.. found it when I went to my home in my native place ..

Cheering for Chennai Super Kings during the IPL 2010 at Chepauk stadium...

The day we all got placed - taken in front fo our college auditorium ..

Fun time in GOA ..

And my love for food photography goes with saying .. that now my family and friends know it so well that they cannot lay their hands on any dish without me clicking a pic of it ...

Thanks to the camera in my phone, had it not been for it I wonder if would be able to relive as many moments again :) :)


I made this post to go with the theme Phonography - one of the topics in the
Tata DOCOMO One Touch Net Phone's Share life blogger contest at Indiblogger.

Do please vote for me, if you've enjoyed this post :) Thank you !!

My other posts for this contest are:

My Friends. My Life. My Phone

The features I wish my smart phone had :)

Monday Morning Inspiration # 97

I came across this few months ago and thought how apt it is, if when followed keeps life simple and happy !


Health:

1. Drink plenty of water.
2. Eat breakfast like a king, lunch like a prince and dinner like a beggar
3. Eat more foods that grow on trees and plants and eat less food that is manufactured in plants.
4. Live with the 3 E's -- Energy, Enthusiasm, and Empathy.
5. Make time to practice meditation, yoga, and prayer.
6. Play more games.
7. Read more books than you did last year.
8. Sit in silence for at least 10 minutes each day.
9. Sleep for 7 hours. (or more)
10. Take a 10-30 minutes walk every day.. And while you walk, smile. .


Personality:

11. Don't compare your life to others'. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
12. Don't have negative thoughts or things you cannot control. Instead invest your energy in the positive present moment
13. Don't over do. Keep your limits.
14. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does.
15. Don't waste your precious energy on gossip.
16. Dream more while you are awake.
17. Envy is a waste of time. You already have all you need..
18. Forget issues of the past. Don't remind your partner with his/her mistakes of the past. That will ruin your present happiness.
19. Life is too short to waste time hating anyone. Don't hate others.
20. Make peace with your past so it won't spoil the present.
21. No one is in charge of your happiness except you.
22. Realize that life is a school and you are here to learn. Problems are simply part of the curriculum that appear and fade away like algebra class

but the lessons you learn will last a lifetime.
23. Smile and laugh more.
24. You don't have to win every argument. Agree to disagree.

Society:

25. Call your family often.
26. Each day give something good to others.
27. Forgive everyone for everything.
28. Spend time with people over the age of 70 & under the age of 6.
29. Try to make at least three people smile each day.
30. What other people think of you is none of your business.
31. Your job won't take care of you when you are sick. Your friends will Stay in touch,


Life:

32. Do the right thing!
33. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful..
34. God heals everything.
35. However good or bad a situation is, it will change.
36. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
37. The best is yet to come.
38. When you awake alive in the morning, thank God for it.
39. Your Inner most is always happy. So, be happy.


To read other Monday Morning Inspirations click here.