Kasi Vinayaga Mess (Vegetarian :)

I have told to many of my friends that I do not like chennai very much, But I should agree that I never told it with my full heart. Chennai is a very sentimental place for me, right from my school days I have been dreaming about moving to chennai for studies and Job. And off-course this made me move to this city from Bangalore after just spending 2 weeks in Bangalore. Some things which I like about chennai are my friends (and in general the native people of chennai), marina, Triplicane temple... hmm not a big list.

But one place which comes in my mind often even now is Kasi Vinayaga Mess. This mess is in Triplicane (actually very near to chepauk stadium). I often think that I was able to survive in chennai because of this place. During my stay in chepauk (for about 6 months) I have never hesitated to go to this mess everyday for lunch / dinner. I feel that the reason behind my love for this mess is that it tastes very close to home food and the food served here is consistently good especially sambhar and dhaal with ghee.

One may often need to wait for about 10-20 minutes to before having a meal here as meals are served in batches. This might sound silly, but never mind... and it is worth the wait. I have never stayed in chennai after 2007, but I hope I get a chance soon. Given that I have not had proper home food for about 9 months now... the very thought of home food and pictures of dosa/sambhar vadai :)) makes me happy.

tatkal ticket

Booking a tatkal ticket in irctc.co.in is always a challenge, the only hope of booking a ticket within a few mins was the "quick book" option where u could give all the details in a single page and directly proceed to the payment gateway. Looks like this door too has been closed today. The site displayed the following message "Quick book option is not available from 8am to 9 am". I somehow managed to book a ticket using the "Plan my travel" page when the availability was around 20 seats.

sometime back they blocked right click option : Not sure why this was done
Followed by having a random text image to further delay the booking time.
And now Disabled the "Quick book" option. I am not clear about the intention for doing these things, the intention doesn't seem to enhance security of the site. It looks likes they don't want internet users to book tatkal tickets.

Actor Ajit poster in madurai bus station

I found this poster in madurai periyar bus station. It reads, "we dont want a diwali without a new Ajit movie release." There is no new movie release for Actor Ajit this diwali and as usual his fans have shown their frustration by not celebrating diwali this time. I just wonder , are these people really crazy about Ajit movies ? or just showing off just to make thier names more popular so that when Ajit starts a political party, they get some kind leadership role in the party. I'm pretty much convinced that it is the later reason for why they do such advertisements. Ajit padam odinalum odalalam, aana evanuga thirunthavae matanuga ;)

finally started cycling agian

I finally bought a firefox cosmic 6 gear bike hoping that I can spend some free time in the evening going around and at the same time enhance my fitness. Well... it has been almost 3 months since i bought and i am completely convinced that i made the right decision to buy this for 8.5K, all my friends including my cousin asked me not to spend this much to buy a cycle as i would not use it once the initial excitement is gone.. But i have actually found biking more and more addicting as i get used to it .twice a weak i ride a 26kms circuit (koramangala > sarjapur road > marathalli > domlur > koramangala). It approximately takes 90 mins to cover this distance. The road between marathalli and domlur is the most difficult strech as the road is mostly uphill.

My bike has a 6 gear shimano rotary shifter, and dual suspension. The dual suspension is pretty effective and i guess i has saved me from the usual backache.

Thinking back... during our lower classes we used to cycle to school and back home along with my friends Jeyakrishna AKA JK and my junior friend Anand. During rainy seasons, the path (cant be called as road) which would have pretty big pits filled with muddy water and we used to ride right into it falling into the water several times and be sure to use that as an excuse for not doing home work the other day as all the note books would be completely wet :).
Initially thought of using my cycle to go to office, but as it would be almost 10am when i start from home, it would be pretty hot and i might need to take bath after reaching office due to sweat. Hoping to start early to office so that i can use my cycle.. will keep posted

Hello Blog

Right from school we are used to start learning a new computer language by writing a "HelloWorld" program... on similar lines i'm filling my first blog with title "Hello Blog World" :)

I read first about blogs some 9 years ago in "The Hindu" daily news paper (pardon me if blogs were not there before 9 years, I might be wrong), I could not get the purpose of it at that time.. so it was uninteresting for me. but lately I have been reading a lots of blogs (mostly when i googled for some info) and wanted to join the blogging community. I hope it helps myself to look behind and see what i have been doing/thinking.

I should agree that one of my friend karthikeyan (http://ramchel.blogspot.com/) who blogs frequently is also the reason behind my newly found interest in blogging. He is from kovilpatti near madurai of tamil nadu. kovilpatti means temple village (kovil=temple, patti=Village).