Lalettan at Pulimoottil Silks

When the biggest superstar in Mollywood and – if some surveys are to be believed – the most popular Malayalee makes a public appearance in your neighbourhood, you can ill-afford to miss out on the opportunity to glimpse the man. More so when you are a die-hard fan.

Lalettan arrived at the inauguration of the Pulimoottil Silks showroom in Palace Road, Thrissur, a few days ago. Thanks to an ABVP sponsored vidyabhasa bandh, what ought to have been a working day, ended up being a holiday. Which meant I could go and watch Lalettan cut the ribbon!

Yes, that is indeed a picture that I snapped on my mobile camera. You can’t see Mohanlal in that (why the hell did I buy a Nokia 6020 which only has a useless VGA camera?), but at least you get an idea of how popular he is in this part of the world!!

Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM)

The quest for a true religion ends!

I have always asked disturbing questions alluding to the meaning of life and the ultimate purpose of human existence. I have always been fascinated by the fact that there is just one true religion in this world (Christianity, Islam and all other religions claim to be the only true one). In my quest to find the truest religion and the real God – and thereby find the answers to all the doubts and concerns that have troubled me over many years – I stumbled onto Pastafarianism!

I have always been worried about one thing – what if I am following the wrong religion? The religion that I was born into tells me that I would be condemned to Hell if I follow any other religion. Since all other religions also say the same thing (more or less), I have been desperately searching for the ‘real’ religion that would lead me to Heaven and save me from His wrath! After all, just being born into one religion did not mean that it was the religion.

But at 8:46PM on the 5th of January, 2006, the Flying Spaghetti Monster revealed Himself to me over the Internet. My search has ended, and I am blessed! In this modern age, how fitting is it that He choose to reveal Himself through the medium of the Internet. While most other religions and Gods still depend on books and other outdated mediums of communication, the Flying Spaghetti Monster uses state-of-the-art technology – He even leaves his imprint in our DNA strands – and clearly establishes Himself as the only True God!

The image of the Flying Spaghetti Monster – a careful look reveals how our DNA structure is so very similar to His spaghetti-shaped body!

Seeing the intellectual and moral anarchy of this world, the Flying Spaghetti Monster chose Prophet Bobby Henderson to spread His message in this world of heathens, and thus take Pastafarianism to every corner of this wide world. The Prophet, being well-versed in the latest Internet technology, set up the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster in early 2005.

The Pastafarians are a small community, and still searching for legal recognition. This would mean reservation in educational institutions and other government organizations, and special minority rights. Religious discrimination against the Pastafarians – one student was not allowed to wear the religious symbol of Pastafarians, an eye-patch, to school – is a serious issue which has to be dealt with.

I am sure the Flying Spaghetti Monster has ways of His own, which we mere mortals seldom understand. Only He knows why He made men as rich and poor and black and white, and would reveal His true meaning to us in our life with him in Heaven. He would spread His message to every corner of the world, and those who don’t believe Him, will obviously be condemned to Hell. Praying 10 times a day (not more, not less), will elevate a believer to His Heaven – complete with beer volcanoes and a stripper factory.

I no longer worry about the identity of the ‘real’ God or the ‘true’ religion! RAmen!!

PS: If you can’t make anything of this post, take the help of this article on the FSM in Wikipedia.

AGM of Ashvattham – Dec 24, 2006

Orkut is the preferred platform for the Hari Sri alumni to keep in touch, but I cannot upload more than 12 photos on my Orkut album. That hardly left me with any choice, but to upload the rest of the snaps from my digicam here. Once the ‘official photographer’ comes up with the proper photos, I will upload them all on the Ashvattham forum. Here, I am adding the ones that you may not have seen on my Orkut album.

The boring part of the function gets underway; Abhi and Praveen are chatting away merrily

Don’t go by the number of vacant seats, most of them got filled up later on

The teachers, students and some empty chairs

The B-gang: Paachu is desperately trying to keep NB’s hands off him!!

I refuse to comment on any photo that features me 🙂

Preethi thinks she is smart, but Johnny[the owner of the hand in the white shirt] is quite obviously smarter

Vishnu decides to borrow a shirt from Govinda

We all know that it is Vivek on the right-hand side. But if you manage to identify the long-haired stranger on the left, I will give you the samosa on Anand’s plate in the photo below. 🙂

Anand, don’t worry! You can have that samosa for yourself, because no one has managed to guess that it is Rammohan’s brother Raj with Vivek in the photo above.

Noufel, you are actually supposed to fill up that form and return it at the registration desk, not stuff it in your pocket and take it home! Manu is looking tired after his all-India ‘study tour’. He has conducted exclusive research in Shimla on the melting point of ice, and in Agra on the degrading effect of polluted air on marble.

Anand doing what he does best

Abhi is receiving an important phone call, while most of the others are either turning back or chatting amongst themselves, while the function is still going on. 🙂

A careful look will reveal my head in the crowd, and hence I refuse to comment on this photo as well.

Too bad that it had to end, but then that is what all good things do!

Back after a hiatus

It has been a long three months since my last post here and I am not even sure why I haven’t been posting all this while! Let us just say that I needed a longish break so that I could come back fresher and better. Let me get started all over again in this brand new year!

New-look blog

If you have been here before, it will be hard to miss the change. Thanks to the upgrade from Blogger beta to the new version of Blogger, this blog now has a few more useful features. On the right panel, you can see the Archives (all the old posts sorted out in reverse chronological order). Click on the little arrow to see the complete list for each year and month.

You can also find Labels, which sort the posts into different categories, so that it is easier to locate posts on a specific topic. (Surprisingly, a blog that claims to blabber on philosophical issues, has the highest number of entries under Cricket!) At the bottom of the page, you can find a link to the older and newer posts. And yes, green is out and blue is in!

A blurring computer screen

No, there is no hardware malfunction! The title is just a hyperbole to suggest that computing is happening at lightning speed these days. There are a couple of reasons – the recent computer upgrade and the broadband bandwidth rise.

I finally decided to dump my grandfather CPU (Intel P-III) and the SDRAM and the PATA hard disk that came along with it. Instead, I got a brand new configuration:
Processor: AMD, Athlon 64 X2 3800+ (Dual-core)
Motherboard: ASUS, M2N-MX
RAM: Corsair, DDR2 (533Hz), 1GB
DVD Writer: LG, super-multi
HDD: Seagate, 160GB SATA

At the same time, BSNL Dataone has upgraded all existing users from 256kbps to 2Mbps connections, which is nothing short of a dream come true! As if that was not enough, the free data transfer limits have gone up from 1GB to 2.5GB (for the Home500 plan). Download speeds of over 200KBps, no more waiting for videos to download on YouTube, and less waking up in the early morning to utilize the free download time! As BSNL says, truly, 2007 is the Year of Broadband.

But not everything is perfect in this world, is it? My OS shows a registry error at times (which I am trying to fix now) and the Dataone bandwidth does fluctuate (bandwidth is pretty poor in the peak hours). Nevertheless, this is the best start to a new year that I could possibly have dreamt of.