Wedding And All

Wedding And All

                         - to Chiru and Apu

Chirayu and Aparna, this is going to be a short one

No not the marriage, for nothing will the marriage outrun,

I am talking about this poem, a wedding gift you'l are getting, 

Although I know you'd rather, had me attend the wedding.

So Wedding and All, Bro !

whoa whoa whoa !

yes what a weird title I've so intelligently chosen,

but well I guess I should stop writing about this very poem,

So Wedding and All , the time has  finally come,

Chirayu my brother, a married man you have become,

And the girl who has seen it all, Missus Aparna Rao,

From now its Missus, yes Missus Aparna Rao,

So Wedding and All, hows is it going you two ?

How does it feel to bid your single life adieu ?

The Bhaiya and Bhabhiji will we have to now call you ?

Kids can officially now call you uncle and aunty ! wohooo !

Marriage is out of the way, next item is babies,how many will there be?

Can't wait to be coolest uncle that they will ever get to meet!

I think I might be going a little off topic and writing rubbish

Its supposed to be a wedding gift, so I have to be nicer I admit,

I wish you both the very very best of times ahead,

Like the wise man Vernon K Mcellan once said

"Marriage has some thorns, but celibacy has no roses",

I hope both friendship and companionship will always remain cozy,

Oh I know you won't change much, after tying the knot,

Just enjoy the amazing ride without any second thought,

For Chiru time flows only one way, live once, and one lifetime you get,

In this journey with a your wife,sweetheart and your hot brunette*

So Wedding and All, I can't wait to hear all about it,

To see all those pretty pictures, hear stories bit by bit,

I want to quote something by Mr. Robert Frost,the great poet 

"Two such as you with such a master speed" he wrote,

"Cannot be parted nor be swept away

From one another once you are agreed

That life is only life forevermore

Together wing to wing and oar to oar."

Frost refers to those about to wed as oarsman and oarswoman on a boat,

Like a 2 person team, side by side and sometimes on each others throat,

I think it makes sense, once you are agreed, in matrimony bound together,

The 2 person team and the proverbial boat of life will survive any weather,

Like I said this will be a short one,

so here's the verse I'm finally done

-Yours truly

Gokul

ps. * the wife , sweetheart and hot brunette refer to the same person :)

Goodbye Valeecha ! ( Eulogy)

Every time someone you are connected to in any sort of way, parent-child or uncle/aunt-niece/nephew  or brother-sister or cousin-cousin relationships, there is this link of family !  A link that both people feel and which you lose when the other one dies first ! It can happen in several ways, one a slow one, where you get to say goodbye but you also have the added agony of watching them die bit by bit, then there's another sudden yet one where they don't suffer, where you didn't get to say goodbye and it hurts the last time you spoke to them was the last time you would ever get to speak to them ! The latter happened with my uncle tonight (early morning in India). He died of cardiac arrest and passed away shortly after being admitted at 4:30 am in Mumbai. He was a simple man, very disciplined, very loving man ! He was generous and kind and a father figure to me.
       As I write this eulogy for my beloved 'valeecha' (Malayalam for elder father) I am in disbelief, that's it, my link with him has vanished ! Will never be able to dial his number to hear his voice in the morning on my way to work. where ever he is, I hope he rests happy.

The following is a small poem in his memory.

Valeecha I will miss your chuckle when you hear something funny,
I will miss asking you if you have had your evening tea ?
In heaven I hope there's no diabetes and no stress of money !
I hope where you are now, there is the peace of the sea !

Valeecha I will miss hearing from you "how are you boy?!"
Always worried about my health asking me to take care
As a kid I used to rub his round fat belly like it was some toy
The joy that my kids can never ever be aware

Valeecha I will miss your voice on the phone every day
Your memory in my brain is in a very special place
Space reserved for the individuals who have shaped my way
Needles to say it will never ever from my brain be erased

Valeecha I just can not say goodbye to you like this
This is happening too soon and too sudden and its totally unfair
Another loss for our family with you leaving behind an abyss
I wish Valeama gets the strength she needs to move on without despair

-Truly yours,
Your nephew Gokul

I will miss you Valeecha. RIP

Things to do before you fly for your masters in America !

Hey Guys/Girls ,
All those coming this fall , some of you might have begun packing , I know its a busy time, you have a lot of questions , a lot of anxiety , apprehension and god knows what , I am sure a lot of questions have been answered , I am not too sure anybody else has posted what I am going to be posting about, well I am computer science MS student , I came last fall (I graduated Rutgers summer 2011 and currently work at Bank Of America here in NYC and this article was written a year after I came to Rutgers on a message board used by new students looking for information), just like you guys with a lot of concerns , immunization, insurance , fees , how much cash to carry, how to carry , documents , shopping , packing , clothes etc etc..the list is endless and one very important thing which I believe should not be ignored is that you guys should recharge your batteries....

Meaning make sure you do at least 10 of the following things before you catch that flight :

1) Eat 10 of your favorite dishes that your mom makes (this is like mandatory).

2) Drink like a fish with your best friends at least 4 times.*

3) Make sure you catch up with all the relatives you care about.

4) Make sure you watch a Hindi flick with your friends in your local theater just like old times.

5) While your doing option no. 4 , make sure you buy the cheap Indian popcorn(try eating the caramel or other flavors:P) popcorn here is buttery n boring n not to mention expensive.

6) Go for a drive with your friends(you won't get to drive on the left side of the road for a long time:P ).

7) I dunno if you can do this , but I did it , try making a short trip with friends you chill with.

8) Take your siblings out for lunch / dinner if you have any or cousins. You will miss them.

9) Try and get 8 hours of sleep almost everyday.

10) For those who love Indian sweets..eat like a pig, here you will eat good sweets but not the same Indian ones u like.

11) Stop being paranoid about silly things , take a deep breath and drink a glass of cold water.Can also try option 2 again :).

12) Eat at the roadside eatery you love eating from at least twice, don't be paranoid about getting sick.If you have to get sick , the germs/bacteria/virus will find their way into your body.

13) Kiss goodbye to your desktop if you have one and love it.
( I mean it..its all going to be boring , slow laptops from now on...if you own a powerful desktop , you will find out what I am talking about, if you are a laptop person then ignore this option)

15)  If you like watching cable TV and aimlessly being a couch potato, do that too since you probably wont be buying cable here, its ridiculously expensive ! YouTube, Netflix and Hulu are going to replace that for you.

16) If your an SMS freak , I doubt you will take up a messaging plan initially wen u get here , as they are expensive , so give those thumbs a wild go..and text away to glory till you switch off your cellphone in the plane.

17) Yes I did skip option 14, this is to just check if you are still reading.

18) If hate cold weather, savor the warmth ! really, it can get cold here.

19) Used to watching EPL games on TV or at a bar in the evening with friends ? yeah do that all you can, matches are early mornings on weekends and champions league is in the afternoon, so its going to be really annoying waking up to see your team lose, but on the bright side, if they win, they set you up for a good weekend !

20) If you are still reading , then you have either skipped most of the options before this , or you have already done them. if you have skipped them , suit yourself..:P if you have done some or most of em..give yourself a pat on the back because now you are ready for a fun-filled, challenging and roller coaster ride to the US for your graduate studies..!!

Sorry for the long post..thought id just write about this since I didn't read anyone else writing about it.I am not up for arguments,debates,questions or discussion..the above mentioned are just my personal views and can be safely ignored :) good-luck and I will see you guys at Rutgers...!!!

 Regards
 Gokul Menon

*4 you are really gonna miss this, so make it count

P,S. This post should not be taken seriously, although you might miss some of the things mentioned ,at the same time I am not saying these things are not available here...

Note: this article was written sometime in the summer of 2010 for new incoming fall students to Rutgers. I posted this since I was talking a friend and our discussion reminded me of this article. I thought I should catalog it here for search engines to index and hopefully be helpful for folks out there. I did add numbers 18 and 1

Why Wayne Rooney will never be a legend for me ! Atleast not yet.

Football has always been my first love and will always be something I am always enthusiastic about. Well maybe the final season of breaking bad while its going and and the 5th season of suits, i digress..

anyways this Monday United played Chelsea at home and the entire summer's saga finally reached its focal point.All eyes were on Wayne Rooney, the guy who Sir Alex Ferguson said " has handed in a transfer requests " and the guy who now might not move to Chelsea football club. Jose Mourinho got it right !, 'this is a special football club, it has special clubs', after all clubs have fans who would boo, I have my own theory about that, I believe that united fans probably were hung over from the summers celebrations. 20th league title ! or maybe they really did want him to stay or maybe they were indifferent, who can guess the collective decision making skills of 70 thousand people, or however much of those people who cheered him. Anyways I am going off the topic again, I decided to write this to capture my thoughts about wayne and pen them down for alter reading. The title says 'Why Wayne Rooney will never be a United Legend for me !. To answer that question I need to first tell you who I consider to be legend worthy, David Beckham, , Ruud Van Nistelrooy, Giggs, Scholes, Roy Keane, Cristiano Ronaldo and Gary Neville in no particular order. notice i skipped Dennis Law, Sir Bobby Charlton, George Best, Eric Cantona,Duncan Edwards, Sir Bryan Robson and Peter Schemeichel. Yeah its a pretty damn tough list to get on, so maybe I can argue he is great, but not really that great. I will never question Rooney's commitment to Manchester United Football Club. Nope not at all, on the contrary he has always been shown amazing commitment and professional attitude, its just his antics during the summer and his weird unhappiness I question, not to mention the fact that he has also not really hit his true potential but merely shown glimpses of what he is capable of. It is interesting to note that Rooney's best performances have come at a time when the team wasn't winning (2005,2006) and when United did win he wasn't the sole contributer, so its kind of a mixed bag. It looks like he will stay on and he has a shot at becoming the leading goal scorer for the club which would be a tremendous achievement. Maybe I will revisit this topic after a few more years and rate him again and see if I think he qualifies to be a united legend.

Facebook is snooping on me

So I am writing this to collect my thoughts and memory about the time when facebook began snooping on me.. I bet someday in the near future we will know this to be a fact, but I have not yet seen facebook admit this so I will assume they are not doing this. so here's what happened

I met an old friend and we happened to discuss naruto. I mentioned to her that I recently started watching the original and she was talking about shippuden  the next chapter in the series and how she will send me a link for me to watch. The next day she pinged me the link, and I thanked her. I opened the link, checked out the site for a few mins, went on to do other things and forgot about the whole thing. Now this morning (a couple of days later) I open facebook and I see naruto posts ( posts talking / sharing naruto stuff).
This is bad, facebook is not supposed to sniff  my browsing (if at all from external websites using facebook plugins ) ! This made me remember the same thing happening last month. I was discussing star wars with some friends and then I might have googled something related when we were arguing about something silly, a few days later I see more star wars post, I was like what the hell, its almost like the Big Brother feeling, like what the hell facebook, how did you know that ? please don't track my movements like this and try to guess what content I would probably like ! its weird, stop doing it.

Tablet thief forgets to disable camera instant uploads, help me find my tablet !

if you are directed your from HN or from Facebook or simply found this somehow, here is a short read on something interesting that happened on an otherwise boring Monday morning.
 I am a software developer full time and consider myself tech literate and also like to build stuff on Django , android etc. so that's that, here's what happened.

so here is a little context, this morning I was lazily browsing my Dropbox folder when I noticed random pictures and videos of this dude, and his family . I assumed there was a bug on Dropbox and investigated further I realized they were added from my android app, (I double checked my phone and unfortunately I could see no evidence of my phone ever uploading these images and videos)

and then it stuck me , I had lost a bag in a cab during my trip to Mumbai during feb 2013 and it contained my Samsung galaxy tab. I obviously ensure I signed my Google apps from my device by going to googles Gmail activity and signing myself out, I also changed my Gmail password, but Dropbox I don't remember if I did until a month later or if its still synced (the uploads have stopped after April 27th 2013)

so now I ended up downloading this guys images which I have attached to this blog and also uploaded the videos to you tube to whose link i shall be sharing , in the hope that the world wide web and honest citizens can help crowd source and find this guys location so I can ask my friends in India to contact the authorities to recover my tablet and my old passport, YES I am moron, I had my passport in the same bag and since then have issued myself a new passport and im back to new jersey where I currently reside.

so yeah , I don't usually blog much, but using this as medium to reach out to all those living near the slums in Wadala (Mumbai) , my initial research suggests the images/videos are taken there. There are also images of this guy taking his family to Bhakti Park, near Wadala, Mumbai, India which is basically here -> view on google maps

so here goes my attempt at crowd sourcing using you-tube, blogger and other social media sites and even hacker news submissions to try and get peoples attention and see if I get lucky with someone identifying the identity of any of the individuals in this video or pictures and helping me get my tablet and passport back

although I have my new passport, recovering my old passport back helps to return it to the passport authority of india and also help close the passport missing case at the local police station where I have a standard missing complaint issue

thanks for reading

ps. Note I am not accusing the person in these images, im merely pointing out evidence that the person has my tablet (He might be innocent and might have bought it from the black market)

thanks to my friend sid, one of the calanders in the background seems to be from a company called  Shree Sidh Litho Works, Girgaon, Mumba
This could help identify the guy if he works in that company and his employer gifted him the calendar.
thanks for that sid.
HN discussion : here
the video links :-
1 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YVA7eUoCfQs&feature=youtu.be
2 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FXavFfQCa8U&feature=youtu.be
3 - http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=i8mmpCcudZA
4-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YixaILyePcs&list=PLCclPnN9j2wViznni7ZxcXFgxV4F0p9la
5 -http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=piPDwsqK5AE&feature=youtu.be
6-http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sIVwWkvVgUM&feature=youtu.be

yes he took 6 fricking videos, it takes time to upload the 1.2 gigs of videos (yeah that's right this guy was quite liberal with the video sizes he kept shooting )

images he took in ascending order of date taken:

the following pics are at this park

kapil sibals website hacked by annonymous

I usually don't cover news items, but this is one is crazy..
here is a screenshot..
I hope I am not in jail for this ..such is the state of indian democracy and constitution !
here is a full image link.

Manchester United - a way of life

Its an embarrassing day today to be a manchester united fan, beeing demolished 6-1 at old trafford is not something you see often. I write this blog post in frustration, not so much because of the loss today, but because of the usual reaction you see on facebook from fans of rival clubs who unite to slander and gloat.. I decided its high time I do some research on why this is the case, why a such a magnificent football club with such a great history gets so much hate from neutrals. My findings showed the reason is 2 fold, one the clubs recent rise to dominance led to turning a once exciting league to a boring one, although one might argue chelsea and mancity are providing the required excitement.The second reason is the fans themselves, when a club is winning almost everything in a smalls span of time, they seem to attract a lot of muppets, who inturn go ahead and spoil it for everyone involved with the club. Now the first reason cannot really be helped, it does happen that people like to support the under dog if you are a neutral and overtime it sticks. But the second reason, well it can be helped, i hope whichever united fan reads this can understand this and take my advice...

1)one thing every manchester united fan and for that matter everyone should understand is that "you win some, you lose some"

2)if you can't accept that, then you should rather skip the rest of this blog post.

3) Trash talking with your rival fans is supposed to be in jest and fun, lets not get carried away (I myself tend to get carried away), bottom line, its not personal

4) Be intelligent about what you speak or express towards the clubs players and managers, agreed they are paid ton of money, but they provide you entertainment week in week out and they work hard for it. Its not war, its professional football..so saying stuff like "sell him, or sack him" might not be the best projection of your loyalties as a supporter

5) Manchester United is a fantastic football club having one of the finest players in the game, always remember that, doesn't matter if you get drubbed a few times in a year..trust me, ive been following them for 9 years now, there have been very few such years..

6) People (including my mom) constantly ask me what drives me to waste my time on following the game, posting comments, reading articles etc..and my answer has always been simple, its firstly the sport that is my passion and secondly its the club i liked when I first started watching football, and it stuck and now its a way of life, the point i am trying to make is, whatever be the reason, if you hang on to that people might eventually get it.

7) Yes we have some rivals like leeds, liverpool and city.. and emotions can get the better of you..but refer to point 1) when that happens..

8) respect other clubs, I know this one is obvious, but sometimes we get lost in our fanatic trash talking, we tend to ignore the fact that there can be others who probably deserve it on the day or for the season

9) How to handle trashtalk from liverpool fans : just ask them to come back to you when they have won the league..

10) how to handle arenal fans : sympathize with them on how the future doesnt look all that promising

11) how to handle mancity fans : see point 9) on how to handle liverpool fans

12) how to handle chelsea fans : well this is tricky, remind them that terry drogba anelka and lampard can play on for more than a couple of more seasons and how their manager changes more than the seasons :P

13) how to handle anti-united fans : well this is the trickiest..you either rip on their respective clubs using any of the points 9-13), if they don't swear allegiance to any of the clubs, then don't waste your time, they are too scared to support a club in the first place.

that was that ..

- Gokul

United for life

India winter break 2010-2011

as i write this , i am preparing to leave , to head back to school , as my winter break comes to a end. A big spring semester awaits me , with 2 advanced graduate courses and teaching a undergraduate + grad course in ECE . This will be my final semester at Rutgers, may 2011 is when I'd graduate. Phew , this will be my last vacation as a student , 20 years of formal education , phew..! looking back , looks like a long road traveled. Doubt id want to study further, i think a Masters degree is good enough , atleast thats what I think as of now :)..

I just wanted to note down some good moments in this trip to India , notably the flight from Chicago to Delhi to Mumbai , was memorable. Then new years was quite sobered down and humble , then the Goa trip was a good one. Catching up with mom and being able to spend time with her was the highlight of the 30 day stay. I loved being able to wake up to mom yelling at me , asking me to wake up, go brush so I could eat breakfast. I loved not having to worry about laundry or cooking or cleaning my room ( i never did that back home as well :P), I loved the road side fast food , the chats , the pav bhaji's, the dabeli's, the dosas at home , the idlis , loved watching Indian television , loved complaining about the slow internet , loved the weather, absolutely loved the warm sunshine that greeted me when i woke up on my bed through the window above my bed :) !! , can't believe I will have to go back to snow !!!

now looking forward to the spring semester , the new year and the final chapter in my education history...lets see how that goes..

cheers

2010 !!! the year of the tiger !!!

according to my Chinese zodiac , i am born in the year of the tiger (1986), and this year being the 24th year since , 24 being the multiple of 12 (which is the total no. of Chinese zodiac signs) 2010 was the year of the tiger. Its supposed to be a very lucky year , but it was nothing like that. An easily forgettable year. If every 12 years is gonna be like this one , id like to avoid them. Here is hoping for 2011 to bring in something better. 2010 will I guess be remembered for my time in the states. The entire year almost was spent there , completing 2 semesters in my masters in computer science. Also working in summer at bank of america was a special time. Working in corporate America was exciting. Apart from that not much I can take from the year , which has been fairly forgettable. I will miss my grand mom and Murali mama. 2011 has a lot of things I am looking forward to , like my graduation in summer , then work from July. I will finally be stepping out of the university gates after 22 years of formal education. Good bye 2010 , screw you !!! so glad you are done !