Perfect Storm? Chennai, Tamilnadu

Wad di 'ell iz gowin on ? Rain, flood in Chennai and Tamilnadu. Satellite picture

Chennai, bulls eye?



I haven't seen a hurricane or cyclone or a storm formation so perfect as this one in India. This is current, look at timestamp.

For more recent you can hit
Weather.com

Did we eat Beef?

I landed up in this article, about how ancient Hindus ate Beef.

As I was going through the article, I also came across the following para.

"Over a period of time mainly after the emergence of Buddhism or rather as an accompaniment of the Brahminical attack on Buddhism, the practices started being looked on with different emphasis. The threat posed by Buddhism to the Brahminical value system was too severe. In response to low castes slipping away from the grip of Brahminism, the battle was taken up at all the levels. At philosophical level Sankara reasserted the supremacy of Brahminical values, at political level King Pushyamitra Shung ensured the physical attack on Buddhist monks, at the level of symbols King Shashank got the Bodhi tree (where Gautama the Buddha got Enlightenment) destroyed."

This ringed a bell in my head. This sounded more like the author in one of my earlier post

India - The True India
India - The India Today
India - The Question

in September 2005.

The authors are different. But what they say concur.

This just reiterates the facts mentioned by Phulgenda Sinha, the author of the book "The Gita As It Was - Rediscovering the Original Bhagavadgita".

Aravind Samy today

I read somewhere that he is the CEO of a big BPO.

I always thought he was more interested in business than movies. Iam sure he made millions more in business than in movies.
Cool.

hmmm...what did I do this weekend.

It was a cloudy saturday.
Took some pictures of Saravanan's new acura and ourselves.

WAW. We took some 130 pictures in like 5 minutes. After a long editing process, here are some of them which survived.

http://planetvimal.com/gallery/

Went to Indian Food Festival at Richmond Convention Center.
It was lot of food, and very little cultural activities :)

"It's fall here in USA"

Anyone wants to take a guess on who my all time favorite in Hollywood is?
I've given a 'Da Vinci Code' clue ;)

Update 1: As nobody has broken my code, Iam providing another clue.

The Rajini Factor

Chandramukhi crosses 200th day.

The pressure is now on Kamal Hassan. His Mumbai Express bombed. And he hasn't given a huge success in recent times.
Will 'Vettayadu Vilayadu' be his answer?
We will know.

Also in the Chandramukhi function the producer Ramkumar mentioned that the movie is going to be released in Tokyo, Japan in the International Film Festival on October 23 and 28 as a special show.

Also when Rajni was speaking at the function he mentioned that Aishwarya Rai was considered for the role of Neelambari in Padayappa and also for a role in Baba(The role was later modified to fit Manisha).
But looks like Rajni is trying to get Aish in his new movie 'Sivaji', directed by Shankar.

Also, not that Iam tooting my own horn, but my blog has successfully crossed 1 year :)

In other news...
I did some shopping this weekend at Need Supply Co and Nordstrom.

I ended up buying a pair of Jeans, a pair of shirt and a pair of shoes.
The financial damage has been estimated to be around US$800.00

Shopping at this rate, I think I will end up filing for Bankruptcy :(

Reema Sen

After a long thought process, I have come to the conclusion that Reema Sen is and will be my all time favorite.

Do not even try to think why, You will never get an answer, at least from me.

Day 48

Today is my 48th day as a vegetarian.

When I started this, I didn't have any time in my mind. I thought I will take it easy. But somewhere in between, I decided I should be a vegetarian for at least 48 days.

You might ask why 48 days.

When I was young I remember reading that in our Tamil tradition, 48 days counts as a mandalam. It's just a time period. I did not know the significance of 48 days at that time.

Few days ago, I was curious about this 48 days mandalam, described in our Tamil/Sanskrit literatures.

What I found was quite amazing.

Apparently it is something to do with our internal body(biology) clock. In west, they call it as Biorhythm.

History of Biorhythms

The clock starts from the time you were born.
You can find your state of clock at any time by using Biorhythm calculator. Here is one such calculator.

Now I have decided to go 53 days at least.
After that, I don't know.

May be I will start to eat meat.
May be not.

Keira Knightley's Domino

My favorite actress, Keira Knightley's movie Domino is releasing this week. Gotta watch it on first day.

"Bond, James Bond"

Meet the new Bond.
Daniel Craig.

Martin Campbell will direct CASINO ROYALE, the 21st film in the 007 franchise.

"Shaken, not Stirred"

45th day as a Vegetarian.

Kashmiris slam tardy aid response

"With only a trickle of aid reaching Indian earthquake victims, angry Kashmiris were blocking roads and demanding relief."

CNN

I thought this rescue and relief operation will be a significant event in the history of J&K. Whichever government(India or Pakistan) does the most for the affected people in J&K and PoK respectively, will look good in the eyes of the kashmiris.
This might even change the mindset of the common kashmiri. It is imperative that Indian government does everything possible to help the victims, even if it means going 'out of the way', literally.

Any mishap here can end in a bad PR and can be very detrimental.

Quake: Militants suspend violence

In the wake of the killer quake, the Jehad Council, an amalgam of 14 militant outfits based in Pakistan-occupied Kashmir, has announced temporary suspension of its operations in the ravaged areas of Jammu and Kashmir.

Salahuddin asked all the constituents of the council to direct the militant cadres across the state to halt their operations in the affected areas and extend possible relief to the victims

http://us.rediff.com/news/2005/oct/10quake15.htm?q=tp&file=.htm

...and once the victims recover, to resume their militant activity killing the same victims.

This weekend is long weekend for me.
Monday is holiday, Columbus Day.
So far this has been...hmmm...what can I say, a very lazy weekend.

Saturday did some shopping in Nordstrom, at the Short Pump mall. I was shopping for some Jeans and Shirts.

I rented and watched 3 Tamil movies.

Aiyar IPS (one of the worst movies mankind has ever produced)
Maayavi (was ok, a different movie little bit)
Englishkaaran (a pretty descent movie, different story)

Will have to watch another movie Chatrapathi.

Then it was like 3am when I went to bed. And slept almost the whole day on Sunday. Wokeup at around 4 pm on Sunday afternoon.

I was watching Sunday Samayal in Sun TV. I noticed that the commercial for Sakthi Masala has changed.
Usually Kushboo will come in that commercial, and today I saw a different girl.
Well...I guess everyone knows why this change was made.

Kushboo has got herself into a bad PR situation.

I don't know what else will change from now. Remove her from mega serials ? I don't know.

Khushboo's sex comment takes political tones

A remark on pre-marital sex and virginity by South Indian actress Khushboo has set off a major controversy. Now, the issue seems to have taken political colors with a Dalit party tacitly backing protests against her.

http://us.rediff.com/movies/2005/oct/06khush.htm?q=mp&file=.htm

Ok...this is where it gets dirty.
What was a simple social issue, is now storming into a political issue.


Editor-in-Chief of The Hindu, N Ram said that whether or not one agreed with Khushboo, 'the intelligent and experienced actress' 'forward-looking' views needed to be respected.

Crap.

For everyone's sake, 'forward-looking' is not about losing virginity before marriage. It's about how to develop the one earth and world we have and make it a better place to live.

How tough is it to get that into the head?

The beleagured actress has virtually been left to fend for herself by the South Indian Film Artistes Association (SIFAA).


Since almost all the film artists are in one political party or the other, or having their own party, eh...you can understand that they are just trying to save their own ass.

I feel sorry for Kushboo. Once a social issue becomes a political issue...eh...you are pretty much f**ked up.

The Kushboo story

I wrote this comment in my friend's blog (Echo). It was a nice little story, so I decided to present it here again, in its original form.

Let me tell you something.
Mr. Host invites Mr. Guest to his house warming party.
Guest, buys a nice little painting, which he thinks will go good in Host’s bedroom.
Guest, goes to Host’s home and gives the painting.
Host appreciates it and he starts nailing the wall in living room, to hang this painting.

The guest sees this.
He will say one of the following three things:

1. "No man with a sense for art will hang this picture in living room."
2. "Don’t hang the picture here, hang it in your bedroom."
3. "If I were you, I would hang this picture in the bedroom."

Let’s analyze the above.
(1) is basically insulting the Host. You are literally saying either that Host doesn’t have sense for art, or he is an idiot. Definitely NOT polite and NOT respectful.
(2) is like you go to another persons house, and tell him what he should do in his own house. Definitely NOT polite and NOT respectful.
(3) Is like saying, if it was my house and if it was my painting I would hang it in my bedroom, but hey it’s your house and your painting, you can do whatever you want with it. Definitely polite and respectful.

Things might have changed in India now, but I would say, most of the people in India would have said (2).
Here in US, almost everyone would have said (3).

So does that mean people in US are more civilized than people in India?

If kushboo had said:
“I don’t mind having pre-marital sex” and
“If I were an educated man, I would not expect my wife to be virgin”
(similar to (3))

then that is polite, civilized and respectful.

But Kushboo said:
“No educated man could expect his wife to be virgin”
(similar to (1))
That’s like saying, educated men who expect his wife to be virgin is stupid, or uneducated men doesn’t know anything and he is ignorant.

If an educated girl, who moves in upper class society, behaves this way, what can you expect from poor uneducated people?

This is my opinion.
And that’s just me. Everyone need not be like me :)

So we will agree to disagree and move on to next debate ;)

NOTE : Seriously... Iam running out of stuff to blog :)

Will evolution be able to explain this?

Rebirth: Girl tracks old parents

http://vimaln.blogspot.com/2005_01_01_vimaln_archive.html

Who are we?

Evolution vs Intelligent Design vs Creationism

Evolution is the process by which populations of organisms acquire and pass on novel traits from generation to generation, affecting the overall makeup of the population and even leading to the emergence of new species.

Intelligent Design (or ID) is the controversial assertion that certain features of the universe and of living things exhibit the characteristics of a product resulting from an intelligent cause or agent, not an unguided process such as natural selection.

Creationism or creation theology is the belief that humans, life, the Earth, and the universe were created by a supreme being or deity's supernatural intervention. The intervention may be seen either as an act of creation from nothing (ex nihilo) or the emergence of order from preexisting chaos.

How did we come into existence?

Did we evolve, learning and adapting to the forces of nature?

Are we the products of an experiment by superior intelligent beings, who designed us and make changes to us and other species making us learn and adapt to the forces of nature?

Were we created by God, as said by all religions?

Shibuki - Platinum is the new Gold

Platinum Guild International commissioned a superlatively beautiful platinum necklace to follow in the footsteps of last year's sensation "Aqua". Featuring 158 gms of platinum and 5.52 carats of diamonds, the "Shibuki" (meaning Splash in Japanese) is the second jewel commissioned by PGI to take its inspiration from water - the very substance of life.

Created by Yuka Kobayashi of the Kuwayama Corporation in Japan, the delicate strands of platinum rise up to represent water gushing out of the ocean. The use of diamonds adds to the feel of fluidity, reflecting in the light to look like brilliant droplets of water. This truly unique piece has been specially designed thus to convey platinum's values of purity, rarity and eternity.

Designer Yuka Kobayashi said, "It is very exciting to be involved in the platinum Aqua collection. The splashes shining from the reflected light of the sun were expressed by setting diamonds amongst the platinum to create a sense of different textures,"

This one of a kind piece, is worth US$100,000.