Rajini and Karunanidhi, the Chief Minister

Caught at the wedding of Prabhu's son.

Technorati Tags: Rajini Chief Minister

Surya Jyotika at Prabu's son's wedding

Since the appetite for the wedding pictures of Surya and Jyotika doesn't seem to go down (The two pages on their wedding photos here and here continue to get the highest hits, of course after the one with the aishwarya and abhishek photos ), i am adding few more pictures of them at Prabhu's son's wedding.

Well, they look as grand as they would have, as their own wedding. Enjoy!

Technorati Tags: Surya Jyotika Wedding

The history of the Mallu Nairs

To understand the origin of the Mallu Nairs, we first have to understand the history of the Tamilians, the neighbours of the mallus.

Long Long Ago, only Brahmins lived in TamilNadu. They are nowadays popularly known as Tambrahms. When the English first landed on the shores of Tamil Nadu, much before they had explored other continents, they were surprised to see people who spoke a strange language , wore strange clothes , even had strange markings on their forehead and other parts of the body. So, when they enquired around (in English of course), there were few who ran away and there were few who answered "Naan Brahmin" and then ran away fearing that the English would spoil their orthodox holiness. "Naan Brahmin" in Tamil means "I am a brahmin". The English were not expected to understand this and classified this group of people as non-Brahmins. Thus, Non-Brahmins came into being and the English exploited this to create the caste system in India. In fact, all south Indians were only vegetarians at that time. A similar misunderstanding led to few people being understood as non-vegetarians and thus forced to eat meat.

Now, Brahmins consisted only of Iyers in the olden days. But, there were two "different" classes of iyers. One, who worked for daily wages and the other, who had their own businesses. The second category prospered over the years and eventually made enough money to buy and import cars from England. This group wanted to differentiate itself from the daily wage group. So, whenever they had to introduce themselves, they always said "Iyer with car".Over the next 132 years, this phrase "Iyer with car" slowly evolved to "Iyengar". Thus started the quest for dominance between the Iyers and the Iyengars.Since the Iyengars had cars, they slowly moved towards the eastern part of Tamil Nadu near the coast, where they made broad roads like the modern ECR, while the Iyers moved onto the hills close to the borders of Kerala.

Now back to Mallu nairs. When the British reached Kerala and started moving inwards towards the Tamil nadu Border, they were shocked to see two similar group of people at war with each other. Both were dark, spoke unintelligible language (they learnt later that both the languages were different) and yet, were fighting each other for control of the coconuts. So, the British started enquiring. Of course, the locals didn't know English, but were proud of their own culture and identity. Since the British (through Knowledge Transfer) from their counterparts who landed in Tamil nadu, already knew about Iyers, they assumed that all dark people in this people were Iyers. So, they started addressing even the Mallus as Iyers. This enraged the mallus a lot and they started adding "Not an Iyer" at the end of their names like Harish "Not an Iyer", Anil "Not an Iyer". Because of the accent of the Mallus and the evolving of language over time, the surname "Not an Iyer" stuck to the mallus and it eventually transformed to Nair. Thus, we have harish Nair and Anil Nair.

All you Nairs, be proud of your history and be proud of the fact that you are "not an Iyer".

Technorati Tags: Mallus Nair Tamil+Brahmins Kerala Iyer+Iyengar

Self Portrait Category for Photofriday

Submitting to Photofriday after quite a break. The category is "Self Portrait 2007". This is technically not the original photograph as it was modified from the original one taken. I was holding few candles in my hand which lit the front of my face. I cropped out the candles from the photographs and converted the picture to black and white. I also selectively brightened my eyes to give the eerie look. Many, including Vidhya have been asking me to remove this photo from my website and other online accounts, but i have decided that this shall represent my online presence!

Technorati Tags: Self Portrait night photography high ISO Photofriday contest

If America wants more oil

It doesn't need to invade Iraq, Iran or other Gulf countries in the pretext of them having Nuclear weapons, Bazookas, water-guns or firecrackers, but all it needs to do is to invade the European country of Cyprus.

Cyprus, is it a country, never heard of it or seen it on the map. Well, don't feel bad if you are asking these questions. Many do. Because, Cyprus is small enough to be conveniently ignored on many maps. How do you put a country 400*200 Kms across on a world map ? Well, by a dot. Many of us would think that printing ink accidentally spilled in the middle of the Mediterranean sea and ignore it.

If you knew Cyprus, you must be wondering what America would gain, in terms of oil, if it invaded Cyprus.Welcome to the European Underworld, governed by the governing body of the EU. A Cyprus Pound is worth more than 2.2 USD, not because of the million-odd half-naked britishers who come to this island every year in search of the sun and the sea, but because of the flourishing underground oil business.

But, before i reveal the truth, i need to take you into confidence. Not many, including Cypriots, know about this and you must never talk about this to any person named Andreas, Christos or Giorgos. Cypriot men have either of the three mentioned names only and you can be safe by this way that you don't reveal this to Cypriots. What about Cypriot women, you might ask. Forget them, they never have time outside the beauty Parlours.

The secret to the oil business in Cyprus are ... paper napkins. Yes, the very ordinary paper napkins you find on all the tables at the restaurant. Cyprus is one of the world leaders in the manufacture of paper napkins. Cyprus has brilliantly used these to "throw sand in the eyes" of the British and American Oil scouts. Indian politicians were implicated in the "Food for Oil" scam with Saddam's Husseins government in Iraq. But, they were just the scapegoats. The actual culprits were the Cypriots.

It all starts with the simple humble Bread Pakoda. Since it is an Indian dish, no one in Cyprus really cares about the quantity of these made in the local restaurants here. Cyprus exports thousands of these bread pakodas to Iraq and Iran. They are shipped back to Cyprus. No, not because there are not tasty. They were not meant to be eaten in the first place. These bread pakodas are re-processed, filled with oil, in secret plants in Iraq and Iran and shipped back to Cyprus. Since there are hundreds of Indians working in my company and other offshore companies in Cyprus, no one really bothers about the tons of bread pakodas landing on the shores of Cyprus. They just comment "Ah! it must be for the Indians, they eat all such crazy spicy stuff!" and let it pass through.

Now comes the genius of the Cyprus underworld. They take these bread pakodas to remote factories within the troodos mountains and extract the oil within them using plain paper napkins. These paper napkins are then repacked and exported to African countries. What the world sees is that Cyprus is exporting paper napkins, but the reality is that Cyprus is actually exporting illegal Gulf Oil to African countries to fund the ganglords there.

Now, you might ask, how did i come to know of this? No, I am not involved with the Cyprus Mafia. No process is bug-free. Some of the bread pakodas which come from Iraq into Cyprus somehow fell into the wrong hands, that of the caterer supplying stuff to my company and he, seeing the weird name, promptly assumed it to be exotic Indian stuff and supplied it to our kitchenettes.

In the below series of pictures, you can see the way by which i unearthed this underworld secret. As i said before, don't ever share this information with any andreas, christos or giorgos!

Technorati Tags: America oil Bread Pakoda Cyprus Oil price rise

The January 100 Rupee Quiz Answers

Finally, i got time to evaluate all the replies sent in for the January 100 Rupee Quiz. I was busy in the organization of a treasure hunt here at amdocs, the questions of which shall be uploaded very soon. This quiz got the most number of replies so far, a total of 39 people attempted this quiz. The winner of this by a very narrow margin is Sumant Sankaran with 28 points. Manan Singhi came second with 27 points. Congrats to Sumant for winning a 100 Rupee Fabmart Voucher. Sumant, you shall receive your voucher within the next two weeks.

The answers of the January 100 Rupee quiz can be seen here. The scores of the other quizzers who attempted the quiz are given below.

Sumant Sankaran:28 Manan Singhi:27 Abhishek R:26.5 vinesh kumar:25 Shreyas Subramaniam:24 Uma:22 Uttara Ananthakrishnan:22 sai ganesh:22 Arun Sivanandan:21 Rajesh Chandran:21 Anshuman/Vinayak:21 Prasanth Suresh:21 you know who:21 C.Sridhar:20.5 neha katyal:20 Venkatesh S:20 abhinav mouli:19 sudha nandhini:19 Parithi:18.5 Tejas C:18 Rajiv D'Silva:18 Shishir Shashidhar Kedlaya:17.5 uday kumar:17.5 Varun Reddy:17.5 Prasoon Ranjan:17 Srinath Sripadaraman:17 Rajimuth:16.5 anu bhav:15.5 Soumyadri Chattopadhyaya:15.5 Arnab Bhattacharya:15 Shyam Naren:13.5 Shantanu Gangal:13 karthik bharadwaj:13 Karthikeyan G:9 aniruddha biswas:8 Ajith Prasad B:7 ALEX FRANCIS K:7 anubhav chatterjee:5.5 paul teresa:5.5

Technorati Tags: 100+Rupee+quiz Quiz Monthly+quiz

New Year Party at Amdocs

It was end of January and time for the annual Amdocs New year Party. Amdocs' parties have grown bigger over the past year and like the Diwali party, this too was held at Monte Caputo just outside Limassol. The decorations were amazing, including the balloon decorations on each table resembling the Indian tricolor, as the party was on January 26th. I was compeering the show, so didn't get much of an opportunity to roam around and take some photographs. So, all the photos i have are from the events which happened after the time i finished compeering.

Well, can there be a new year party in amdocs without a Belly Dance Show? Of course not. Like the last year and every year before, Belly Dancing Show was the highlight towards the end of the party. This year we had an extra dose of dancing, a cabaret show. A cabaret show in India would have entirely different connotations, but this show was great, easily the best show of the evening with the performers doing a variety of sequences with extensive costume changes. The Belly dancing is always the last event of the evening and is used as a trigger to get people on stage to dance, as it seems that the success or failure of an amdocs party is determined by the duration and fervor of the dancing by the employees!

As is the tradition, the first song of the evening was the famous Punjabi Number and as expected, many employees including the punjabis ran onto the stage with their hands high up in the air. But, their enthusiasm was short lived. After this Punjabi number, the English songs came out and slowly turned into slow Cypriot numbers. The punjabis were outraged at this, left the stage, went to a corner of the hall and started playing with balloons in protest.

Once the Cypriot numbers started and kept on flowing, all the non-cypriots came off stage. So, the Cypriots went on stage and sat down. Yes, they sat down. No, they were not protesting like the Punjabis. That is their way of dancing. Whenever a Greek song starts playing, Greek people immediately sit down in a circle and start clapping. Usually, the person who accidentally slips while sitting down and comes into the circle has to dance round and round. Whenever he finds a vacant space in the circle, he discreetly dances towards that spot and sites down and starts clapping. Much like the musical chair game we used to play when we were kids. This cycle loops on and on until the wine gets to the head or the music stops.

It was a good, lavish party. The food was good, compared to the fiasco in the Diwali Party. Maybe our caterer wanted to make amends for that, this time. February is just around the corner and the Cyprus Carnival is about to start and guess what, we have the Carnival party coming up. Life is beautiful!

Technorati Tags: new year party new year 2007 Belly dancing Monte caputo Limassol Greek Traditional dance

Getting rich through Google Adsense

Well, I am not exactly getting rich, but I am sure earning money through Google Adsense, and lots of it! I earned close a quarter million last month and this month, the earnings have almost gone up by almost 50% bringing my earnings for the month of January to xxxxxxx ROL (Romanian Lei). Slowly, but steadily inching towards the half million mark. I know that I am far away from the million mark, but I am not trying to be too greedy. I am happy with the xx USD that I have earned this month. Maybe, i shall increase the stakes for my 100 Rupee quiz, because i should be giving what i am getting, right ?

Once again, i thank the TIME person of the year 2006 for this.

Update: Just heard that I am not supposed to disclose my adsense earnings according to the adsense terms and conditions.

Technorati Tags: earning money with google adsense google adsense Google Page Rank getting rich google adsense