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 :)

My friends. My life. My phone

Ten years ago I would have never in my wildest dream thought that I would own a mobile phone and think about getting another one which meant two mobile phones just for me. Phones have eventually turned out to be a person's best friend. So, who wouldn't like letting the world know about their best friend and they way the friendship bloomed. So, here I am writing about my best friend and our friendship tales as a part of the Tata DOCOMO One Touch Net Phone's Share life blogger contest.

The title of my blog post is one of the topics about which I could blog and get nominated to be the winner at the Share life blogger contest being held at Indiblogger. The minute I came across this topic , there was an instant rephrasing of words that happened in my mind which eventually turned to be "My Phone - friend for life", such has been the impact of mobile phones.

The first time I handled a mobile phone was during my 8th grade, when my parents got their mobile phone, three years from then when I entered my higher secondary schooling my parents gifted me one and I was so excited at just the thought of handling it everyday. But sadly I happened to be using a post paid connection back then (8 years ago) and messages were chargeable in post paid those days and the thought of the mobile bill having arrived used to send out a chill in my spine as my mobile bill was always a four digit number.

To save my self from all these I switched to a prepaid number when I entered college and text messages (SMS) turned out to be free which meant more forwards being sent across the network. Eight years have passed from the time I got my first phone and I happened to use 7 different phones until now, but I still have that special feeling for my first mobile phone which I have still safely have it with me.

With mobile phone came a lot of fun factor and factors which meant more than just fun

• With text messaging came a whole new way in which the world communicated. There used to be days when I got hundreds of forwards and in the initial days I was so thrilled I made a note of them all - jokes, friendship quotes, inspirational messages...

• games in mobile phones grew to be more than snake and bounce.

• It turned out to be an easier way to connect with family and friends. Hadn't it been for mobile phones and social networking I doubt if I would friends with half the number of people I connect with today.

• Some of the best pictures of fun times were captured with my phone camera, making me wonder if I at all I would have ever took so many pics in my life hadn't it been for the cam in my phone.
  

• The music from my phone along with the FM in it gave me company during my long journey to college and my evening walks.
  

• Now things have only gotten better with gprs that I stay connected online via phone all the time that I am awake .. which means more blog posts.. more tweets and feel so handicapped without internet and my phone.
  

• It also contributed to the eco friendliness of the society - no more phone books, no more buying of planners or calenders, no more of bits in exam.. I've seen people taking a pic of a diagram in the phone and using it for exams...
  

• There have been numerous times when my mobile phone has been my torch through darkness. To know the date and time I reach out to my phone .. my phone sends me reminders for all the birthdays and anniversaries .. it just know all that i want and gives it to me at the right time when i need them. Truly a friend indeed.
  

That is the way I got to know and have been living with my phone. I eat, sleep, work, play, dance, blog all with my mobile phone. The first thing my hand reaches out to when I get up in the morning is my phone and the last thing I do in the night before hitting the bed is to set the alarm in my phone. I am so glad to being part of the generation in which mobile phone was introduced and is being extensively used at this rate and more..

My friend has really changed the way things work in my life all for my good, it was slow and gradual but has had a lasting impact. I am sure there would be a lot more positive impacts with mobile phones getting smarter and that I am yet to own one of smarter versions.


If you like my post, please vote for me at Indiblogger. You can click on the promote this post button to vote for me. Thank you :)

Some people Some moments # 5

My whole of last week went on pretty well .. Apart from work, I along with my friend 'D' got to meet my childhood friend 'N' and her fiance (she recently got engaged and I am super happy for her) . Though it was a short meet, it turned out to be a very memorable one(is just an understatement) for all of us and we decided on doing it more often.

Couple of days ago we also had a family friend home, he was my grand dad's friend from college and has ever since been closely associated with everyone at home as well. We dined out one evening at Eden post which continued a long chat at home touching various topics ranging from the Common wealth games that is few days away from its start, to the bad traffic rules, to wondering if the older generation was happy then or are the youngsters at present more happy to movies and family and everything inbetween ..

For sometime know I have been comfortably numb in my own confines and I know its time I start getting in touch with people. As a first step I have started going online on FB chat which I usually don't .. and to my surprise I would have chatted with some 10 odd friends in the last two days and getting to know what they are upto these days is yet another interesting part .. one of my friend from school - Hemanth is acting in movies .. Now I am really looking forward to its release :)

I have already scheduled a huge list of people to get in touch with in the coming days and gladly looking forward to it, thou' I know in most cases would first be a series of scoldings for vanishing away all these days ..

Have a great week ahead !!

Blogging mararthon

A post each a day for the next 30 days .. Yup, I finally want to try this out after reading about a blog marathon that is being conducted here.

I will be joining work in ten days and I jus' hope I could keep up the spirit of the blog marathon the entire month and always :)

THE HAPPY ME !!

I have finally got my final semester engineering results and hurray I've cleared all the papers and I'm happy to let you all know that I have successfully completed my engineering course with an 81 percentile and hence will be Shalini B.Tech. (or) Er. Shalini.

Whatta journey it has been, I probably should start writing a series containing my various adventures, mis adventures and experiences that I gained in my last few years of doing my graduate studies :)

I'm gladly hoping that each step in life is as fun filled and interesting and successful as this one or even more.

I am back and its gonna be blogging marathon ..

It's been a while since I regularly posted here .. project work, exams , time out with friends, bday parties, get togethers .. Its been crazy at my end, which I'm sure is to continue for a while jus' that I have a break of couple of days in between to take life in slow motion since I have been sprinting all along.

So, starting now its gonna be a big time blogging marathon in this space for the next couple of days .. after which it would be the regular 2-3 posts per week type of blogging :))

I jus' wanna get addicted to posting here, the way I used to be until sometime ago but twitter has been trying to woo me offlate ;)

I'm finally done with my dreadful project reviews, thou' we didn't do much for the project I got to learn a lot through experience which I'm sure would be lessons for life.

My engineering semester exams have seen their end. I'm done with it all. Will officially be an engineer very shortly .. Phew ! In between all of these there has been quite a lot of fun filled moments which im lookinh to post in the coming posts .

It was a beautiful day :)

Today was lovely , no not that it was any occasion or was very eventful. It was totally relaxing especially after one very hectic week .. the kind of break I wanted and the weather in Chennai was jus so apt ..

The weather was beautiful with slight drizzles .. not too cloudy .. I sat in my balcony enjoying the hot morning tea which my mum made reading the lonely planet magazine .. watta way to start the day.. As the day went by it only got better and more relaxing .. had some time for myself .. prepared for the project review .. me and D are already planning out for my bday .. shortlisted the places to decide on where my treat has to be ...

Late evening was fun with parents and now the last couple of hours I ve been online .. downloading the movie Might Joe Young, D's suggested me to see this one and im planning to download songs of Raavan as well ..

I would love to have more such days in my life .. Its beautiful !! Its beautiful :) :)

A beginning for a lot of things that is going to end soon...

I wrote my last cycle test (probably) that I would ever write today .. It was on Data mining .. It went on decently well ..

It is the beginning of a lot of things that is going to end soon(Courtesy : Ashish)- like the last cycle test , the last day in class ( sigh, I don' want this to happen too soon ).

The status message of many of my friend's in Facebook is the count down of the number of days left in college .. In one way I'm sad at the thought of not being around with so many of your friends at the same time , being totally irresponsible , aimlessly roaming the city, movie times in class, walking around the campus under the hot scorching sun , diwali get togethers with friends , a dozen of us fighting for a news paper , group studies, friendly chat with the staffs .. I'm sure Im gonna miss them all very soon ..

But, on the other hand I truly feel I have been here and done all these a way too much and its time to move on to the next phase .. Jus' the anticipation part of what it is gonna be like is making me feel the same way, when was put in a new class in college couple of years ago .. This turned out to be really good and I hope the future is as good and fun in every way :)

My life's happenings ..

First the good things , I ve been placed with Ernst and Young which I'm super excited about it :)

I got to read the March issue of Lonely Planet .. I for general love travelling and this was so perfect for me to while away time. I toally loved the magazine for what it is, the quality and quantity of content I feel is totally worth its price. A well spent 100 bucks every month I would say.

I along with my friends test drove the Volkswagen Polo today.. Been wanting to do it for a while now, finally it happened today. Loved the exteriors and the interiors were fine too . The driving experience was good too..

Next planning to test drive i 20 and Ford Figo :)

Apart from all these nice happenings I'm badly in want of a break.. On one hand I feel its much better if life gets busier and on the other hand I'm so in want to take a big break and come back afresh to do all my deeds.

Planning to blog hop as well, its been a real long time...

Xtremism ....

These days I have been either enjoying my time to the hilt or getting totally bugged up or slogging to get some work done ... Nothin seems to be going on a moderate pace ..

I never in my wildest dream thought I would be able to sit for 7 hours straight and work on my project .. It happened today !! not bad :)

Times have come in the last few weeks that I ahve longed to have food at home .. jus' the thought of going to a restaurant make me want to skip a meal .. But, it has jus given me loads of stuff to write for my Eatin' out blog.

Final lap of college ...

I'm jus' starting to feel the essence of the final year in college thou we ve come to the end of the pre final semester ..

There hardly is anything happening in classes these days, we ve got more of free hours than lectures, more fun than studying, projects, entrance exams ..... Well, though it is time to get all responsible there are times when you feel the pressure to be jus too much.. I jus' hope all goes well :)

Break - ing !

I jus' got back home from college less than half hour back and I'm here off to blogging and checking mails .. This feels like bliss .. the blissfulness is also since I had pani puri on my way back home treating myself to my not so successful cycle test performance . I can't remember the last time I actually spent some quality time jus' for me ... I jus' hope I could get a weekend all by myself but that looks unlikely atleast in the fore seeable future.
For now .....
I'M GOING ON A MOVIE MARATHON starting in a few mins .. I wish I could continue with this for the next few days apart from my time in the college ... lets see :)

Wassup with me ??

College is turning out to be so much fun in the final year, not that it hasn't been till now .. but jus' the fact that it is the final year is pepping up everyone's mood to have as much fun as possible , so we don' regret later for all the fun we missed.. Studying has always been scheduled for the last few days before exam .

I've been reading this book "The Alchemist" written by Paulo Coelho which I borrowed from my friend after hearing a bit of what the book is all about. It seemed to be a very inspiring book, thou it being a lil philosophical ..

When the often used quotes like " When you wanna achieve something in this world so desperately, you will always find someone to help you" (I totally agree with this one and many such lines used in the book often). These seem pretty inspiring when reading it alone as a quote but as a book , its such an irony I felt so heavy hearted while reading this book .. This has not jus' happened with me but a few other friends of mine as well ...

A few other friends of mine have left abroad for higher studies and a few of them will be leaving very shortly . It is hard to believe that they are no more around in Chennai where they are jus' a call away and tada ... all of you meet as and when you want .. *sighh*

We have our department's technical symposium coming up on the 7th and 8th of next month , where i ll be coordinating for the paper presentation event along with my friends...thats keeping me lil busy as well .

All that apart we are planning for a movie watching spree .. all old and new movies with a lot of new releases ..

I along with my friends caught up with this movie " Vedigundu murugesan" (I don think this movie requires a seperate post, so thats the reason im putting it along with a lot other miscellaneous stuffs).

I fell asleep 2 times and would have continued my sleep hadn't I been woken up by my friend .. A movie with no well defined storyline .. in fact im still wondering where the story started and how it ended .. The only entertaining thing about it was the comment we could pass ... I strongly reccommend not to watch this movie even if your totally jobless ...

You could find a lot of book and movie reviews coming up in this space in the coming days ..

This, that and a lot more ..

I have been a lil too lazy offlate , thats also the reason why I haven't been posting very regularly here at my blog. I apologize.

With too many things to think about, plan, execute .. like Gre, Gmat, placements, paper presentations ...life looks all muddled up. Me and my friend D are off to Annamalai University tomorrow for a paper presentation. I guess this is the first time in my 21 years of life that I would be travelling to my native place within a month of my last visit.

Jus' hoping all goes well !

Entering the last lap of my college life ..

I have jus' stepped into my final year of college and I'm already starting to feel a lil insecure about parting ways with my friends even if it going to be only after almost a year .. But the first week of my final year went on really well , very eventful actually.

It was my parent's wedding day on the 9th, so had dinner out with parents and grand parents . And on the 8th was my friend's bro's wedding so a bunch of us from college had been there to bless the couple ;) well actually jus another reason to enjoy with friends .. And we have our department symposium coming up in my university , that is again keeping me occupied.

This was in the metropolitan train while on my way back from the wedding .

Looks like the final year is going to be a lot very eventful :) I hope all goes well :)

Facebook quiz , the movie and my life ..

I ve kinda got addicted to these quizes on facebook of late and during one of the quiz which was about to which bollywood movie my life resembled to - after answering a series of questions the answer I got was Na Jaane Tu ya Jaane Na . Well, I hadn't watched the movie back then.

But, the answer to the quiz made me curious and even more were the comments which I recieved from my friends stating that is so true and I'm so like Genelia in that movie .. Couple of days back I decided on downloading and watching it. Well, I don' really know if it resembles my life or I would rather say 'may be it does' .

As for the movie, it was a little boring in the beginning but loved it later on. A very cute story, it would have been a lil silly sometimes but then I totally liked it may be coz it was said to be similar to my life :)

Update on my Holidays

My holidays have been going great , perfect I would say. There have been times out with my family,friends and have time for myself too :). On my first day of vacation I met up with my friend Dhruv and we went to meet a few friends whom we missed to catch up with due to exams . The next day I met a couple of my school friends Nishi and Raziya after a very long time and it feels great to be back together and share the happenings of our lives, gosh! I can't believe we've grown up so so much :) Nevermind, life is still fun :)

Spent my weekend with my parents and Monday was jus' an extension of the weekend where I was out with my parents for some personal work. We went to this Hotel called Asiana in OMR . I was totally impressed , it deserves a post by itself :). Tuesday I spent most of my time online and catching with a lil bit of reading.

Wednesday was out with my friend Ramya and we had a typical girls day out and it was so much fun, much more than what I expected it to be. Guess we should do more of these often :) Guess what, I bumped into my blog friend Vasanthan at Spencers. It was good to meet you :) and today was a lazy day , got up little before noon and today and teh next three days is karthigai deepam where we decorate our home with little oil lamps and perform small pooja at home... WOW! I'm loving my days .

Yea, I'm also done reading with "The 3 mistakes of my life". Will post the review in a day or two.

Hope all of you are having a great time too , be it work or holidays enjoy it :) After all life is short why worry about things and miss out the fun part in it.

Rant..

There are times when you feel there is no one who can understand the way you feel, thats exactly how I feel right now and I hate to explain myself too... So, jus thought of listing out the things that would make me feel happy

Dance and Music
My dream
A hot cup of tea
Blogging and blog hopping
Innocent school days ( I wasn't all that innocent thou')
flowers
long night chats with friends
Enjoying the rain
Reading a nice book on a cozy sunday afternoon
On getting up late after long hours of sleep
The feeling of being missed by your dear ones
outing with family
vacation with friends
the feeling of being pampered
When you can see your dream come true...

Wow, never thought this would work out so well. I'm feeling much better now. Will continue blog hopping don' think I would sleep anyway. Have a great week ahead!

I'm busy dating books

It's that time of the year again when most college students dust off those bulky books, lock themselves up in their rooms dating books and come out jus' to have their meal and go for exams.. My exams have started today and with it comes serious studying. I jus' got done with my practical exams *keeping my fingers crossed that I should score well*.

Have my model exams going on now, this will be followed with our semester exams.. So its gonna be a month full of exam marathon. Nevermind, I will still be able to post in my blog and drop by all your blog spaces as well as I'm done with the tedious tasks of getting the records ready.
This was what kept me away from all of you for the last couple of weeks.. Sorry about not being able to post on my MMI you can look forward to a very interesting MMI this coming Monday.
You all have a great week ahead. Catch you all at your blog space :)

Back to the daily grind

Im back to my daily routine after a month of vacation. Thou' I have not really been looking forward to get back to college and move into the hostel, the move hasn't been all that bad.

Its been fun in college for the last few days, met my friends after a long holiday. This semester is one of those fun semesters I would say. As we will be having our national level tech fest sometime around next month and after that will follow our so called Industrial visit, which is more like a fun trip.. Looking forward to all of these and ofcourse its the festival time again.

On the other hand a bad news is that I met with an accident last week in my college, when a bike hit me while crossing the road. I'm perfectly fine, it wasn't a major one thou'. I'm surprised that I had jus' a few bruises after my fall as a few of my friends who were there around commented saying they thought they should take me in a strecher, looks like I fell off badly and scared them all ;)

When I had my vacations starting I had posted my to do list for the vacation, now lets see how much of it I've actually taken up.

These are the things I have planned to do in my vacation

1. Clean my room
2. Meet up with my school friends
3. Attend the Chennai bloggers meet,get to know a few fellow bloggers (I'm excited!)
4. Start with my internship
5. Learn a new language
6. Try out some new restaurants that have come up recently
7. Catch up with all the good movies thats been released and also download the list of movies which I have always wanted to see.
8. start with my travel blog and start posting regularly in my other blogs as well.
9. Finish reading the books that i shopped in the last few months
10. Shop for clothes for my next semester
11. Go for an eye check-up ( ya, I did this today)
12. Get in touch with a few of my school pals
13. Watch lots of Travel and Living
14. Plan for a short trip somewhere to close by destination with my family
15. Prepare for CAT/GMAT
16. Prepare for business quiz contests.

Not bad, guess I ve managed to complete most of them :).

My heartfelt apologies to all my readers who had been here to read my Monday morning inspiration for the week and found none. I had to move to my hostel and had no proper internet for the last few days.. I'm so sorry. Looking forward to the coming moday where I can inspire you all :)

Book Review - Go Kiss the world

"Go Kiss the World" is a book by Subroto Bagchi, co-founder of Mindtree . It was released on 17th June '08. His speech to the class of 2006 at IIM Bangalore where he spoke about this guiding principles of life had given him the idea to share it with with a much larger audience through this book. "Go Kiss the World" talks about Bagchi's journey of life starting from his modest childhood days to the successful leader as the world sees his today. Bagchi says" This book is not an autobiography, but my learnings and experiences in life .Thay are like a plain canvas ,it is the what you gain from the book and use them in life whenever necessary is the painting you make on the canvas"



It is a very interesting and an inspiring read. It is one of those books which you can never keep aside until you've completley read it. The book is aimed at young professionals from small-town India, but I would recommend this book to everyone in all age groups. Especially to those considering Entrepreneurship as their career option. the book is divided into three parts.

The first one talks about his early childhood days , the second part about his beginning phase of his career and the last one about his association with Wipro , the birth of Mindtree and his latest designation "The Gardener". It shows how from modest beginnings he has gone to co-found one of India's most admired software services company. All three parts are equally interesting, but I personally like the first and the third part better.

"Go Kiss the World" is Subroto Bagchi's blind mother's last words to him, which turned on to become his life's guiding principle.

Subroto Bagchi is also the author of "The High performance Entrepreneur", I haven't read the book as yet. If you've given it a read, I would like to hear your views about it.

P.S. I have started my Singapore series "Tales from Singapore", your virtual visa to the lion city at Shalini's travelogue. Have a look at it and let me know your views :)