This Iyer is a little funny ...

One more year goes by without any major setbacks or incidents. With the way the world is going on these days, you are the most blessed when your life is utterly boring and nothing major is happening around, that means you have very less to worry about and that is how 2024 was, it was pretty much a routine and nothing fancy and I am not complaining. Personally this year was amazing as I managed to get my driving license in this country which is outrageously expensive and also I managed to get a car (Kia Niro PHEV - Steel Grey), and trust me, that car is a boon, it makes all of travel a lot easier and faster, we no more have to check for train / bus timings, walk to a far away train / bus station and especially during these harsh winter times, having a car is simply the best. I wonder how I lived in this country for a decade without a car and survived many harsh winters. Now dropping P to school or going to pick up groceries are all a cake walk, P is super thrilled that he has a car now....

As you all know, I am a big fan of SPB sir and I managed to collect 1000+ songs of SPB (only in Tamil) and also I updated my songs library with many more songs, and here is the complete list of all the songs that I have in my library today and trust me, there are 100s of songs which many of you would have not heard before.  Here is the complete list in PDF format.

So my blog has become just a piece of diary now, I don't post anything regularly and I am also running out of excuses on why I am not writing anymore, and there is no promise that I will be regular in this space in future. I do maintain this domain and try to at least post yearly recaps, so that I can go and read them when I get old. So how was 2023? by the grace of GOD, this year went without any major issues, both in personal and professional life, in this time and age, a year going by without any major issues is a sign of blessing in abundance, no one knows what is in store for 2024, and all I have is hope and blessings of GOD to sail through another year without any major issues, my dad and athai continue to maintain good health and me being far away in Denmark, their well being and health allows me to focus on my life miles away from home. Pranav has settled in his International School and has picked up speaking fluent english and is also good at maths, the only complaint is t...

  I am just relieved to see off 2021, what a traumatic year this had been for our planet, the wave of Covid that hit many countries, especially India was just too much to handle, the lives lost due to this is shitty disease has left a bad taste in all our minds, no words are enough to console the near and dear one's who have lost their loved one. When we were all set to give a sigh of relief, there came this new variant called "Omicron" which has been more transmittive and more infectious than the previous variant of this virus, this has put brakes on my trip to India this December and that means I could not do sraardham for my mom for the second consecutive year. This year we made an unplanned sudden trip to India during September-October as V's dad was cricitally ill and was admitted in the hospital in a very critical state, we all thought that he is not going to make it out, but god had other plans, he came home and is now doing fine and safe. Now if I think back, ...

  Oh what an exhibition of test cricket this Border-Gavaskar Trophy 2021 has been, India for sure were not tagged as favorites when they landed on Aussie soil, the One-Day games went in our favor with a 2-1 victory, but we gifted the T20's to the Aussies and then started the real test of the game, the TESTS. India were bundled for 36 (all out) in their second innings at Adelaide and with Virat Kholi departing the squad to be with his wife on the occasion of their first baby, India certainly looked depleted both technically and emotionally, to add to the misery there were some key players who were getting out to injuries, Bumrah, Jaddu, R Ashwin, Shammi all gone, India were even worried if they could pick a playing 11. Then came these youngsters Washington Sundar, T Natarajan, Shardul Thalur, Navdeep Saini, they literally filled the shoes of those experienced players and gave Aussies a tough fight. With the concluded 3 test, the scoreline read 1-1 win for both the sides and a draw a...

What a nasty year this has been, a year to forget, a year we all hope that never repeats again. I am still searching those fucking astrologers who all came in those popular TV channels and chest-thumped that 2020 would be a year of prosperity, a year of utmost happiness and joy, they all proved that astrologers are useless assholes when they don't practice the art of astrology that well, now the whole world is laughing at them, as their predictions were just upside-down. It all started ok in 2020 and then before we all could realize what had hit us, Covid happened, it took the world by storm, threw all our lives out of gear, swallowed so many innocent lives, put millions of families in a path of no return, how many people have lost their jobs, their livelihood, loved ones, even in the month of December 2020, that shit has not settled, it has only peaked, still many countries are in lockdown, economy's are dwindling down, and there is just absolutely no escape to this wrath. I a...

  This year 2020 is continuing to be the most depressing year in my life, how many lives we have lost across the globe due to this pandemic COVID-19 (Corona Virus) and the latest victim to that nasty disease is our one and only "Paadum Nilaa Balu" a.k.a SPB a.k.a S.P Balasubramaniyam. When he released a video from the hospital saying that he is getting admitted due to "mild" Covid symptom, I was confident that he will pull through this and will be back on track to enthrall millions of his fans with his golden voice and even till last 2 days, his son SPB Charan posted a video that his dad was doing fine and he has started to take fluid diet, and all of a sudden yesterday we got a news that his situation deteriorated and he is now in a very critical stage, even though I was optimistic that he will pull through, and he does not even have to sing for us, all I wanted him to come out alive and lead a normal life, but unfortunately GOD decided to keep him next to him or p...

Ah once again ....!!! Just like how we have never heard about the term Tsunami till the time we were all impacted by that, this Covid 19 caught us by surprise likewise. From where the hell this came and hit us all? Was this a bio-weapon like many countries speculate? I don't buy the statement of this virus has came from the BATS, damn, BATS were around for millions of years, and this virus could have been emitted well before and it's strain could have been well known and we would have had a medicine for that by now. This pandemic really caught us all off guard and literally changed the world we are living in, social-distancing has been the norm these days and lock down of borders is the new geography. It is definitely a life changer. The number of people who have died because of this is alarming and our heart goes for the deceased and their families. A special mention has to be made for doctors, nurses, public health workers and researchers who are risking their own life...

I am not going to start this post with any excuses, by this time, all my readers would have been diminished as well, I am just maintaining this blog just to put a recap of the year, hahahaha. Ok,  by the grace of GOD, 2019 has behaved well and it was a quite and peaceful year. Pranav turned 3 years and has started to speak, true to this saying "குழலினிது யாழ்யினிது என்பர், மழலை சொல் கேளாதோர்", I am enjoying every bit of his talks, it is just a bliss. I cannot thank god enough for giving me Pranav in my life. Professionally 2019 has been a terrific year with zillion things of learning, I am so glad that my technical expertise is getting diversified as I grow in my career, starting from Development for 11 years, Performance Engineering for 6 years, Infrastructure/Cloud Architecting for 6 years, it has been a very good technical journey, God willing, I would continue to stay on the technical side as long as I can. Personally, life in Denmark has been relatively cool and c...

Crazy-Easy Mohan I have penned this on the day he passed away and did not want to post it that day itself as I cannot digest the fact that a genius like him his no more. I don’t think anything would be enough to talk about some of my mentors and for sure Crazy Mohan sir is one of them. OK before we dive deeper, I am not a cine personality, I am not a stand-up-comedian, but I have earned the name of a humorist by doing many off the silver screen performances. I was with Humor Club and has done many shows with them, I am always someone who does not come to be in the limelight, for variety of reasons, but I have worked with some of the greats like Crazy Mohan, Sve. Sheker, Mouli etc. Now on to the main topic – I was shell shocked when I learnt that Mohan sir is dead, it took a very long time for me to even digest that news, during my Humor Club days he has presided many many functions for us and I have got many awards from him, after seeing me perform and my witty on-lin...

One more year comes to an end and once again I did not keep up the promise of blogging frequently, but I am sure my readers are used to that now. Ok, 2018 was honestly a great year professionally, probably the best year where the learnings I had was more compared to the last 10 years. I had to move out of India this year to improve my technical skills and aslo get some good exposure, and my move to Denmark did not disspoint me a bit, I would continue to be in Denmark for another year or two before I head back to my base Chennai. Personally also this has been a great year where I had the opportunity show my 2 year old son some parts of Europe and also this was my wife's long stint abroad. Settling in Denmark was a bit tensed but it was still ok. Got a bicycle for my own, which was my childhood dream, whenever I asked for cycle to my dad he use to ask me to get 1st rank in school, but those days I thought that was too much of an ask for a bicycle and hence he never got me a cycle an...

I am a little confused and perplexed over this Metoo trends on twitter, I know I cannot say all of what I wanted to say on twitter so I turned on to my blog where I am the boss and I can say whatever I want with utmost honesty, of course I could well be taken for a roast if this link circulates on SM. Ok, I know this is truly emotional and extremely sensitive (at least in India) and we as Indians are extremely famous for "emotionally reacting to things", and to cite few examples, we ran to the roads for Nirbhaya, Aarushi, Jhallikattu, Demonetization etc etc, and what happened? After screaming loud on social media we all went back to our own lives to hunt for our own bread and butter, basically we "motivated" some of the folks who were agitating and comfortably went back to our "white-collared" jobs, because, we have a living and we have a family to take care. "Me Too" is no different here, all the rants I see on twitter like "Power for...

Off late, I have been thinking of the good old days of my life where there used to be these abundance of joy in the little things of life and today when I sit back and think, it pains to see that my son is not going to enjoy any of these joys as they never exist anymore in my country, may be there are still some traces of these in the remote villages of India, but in cites these are dead long back .... I think kids born in the 70's are the most luckiest is what I think, because this is the generation which has seen life before the technology storm took us by surprise. These are some of the great times which happened in our lives before we all grew up and started to chase money. School days ... I used to take this old 'Jolna Bag' to my school where the only way to carry that is to put its long handle over the head, and that too on certain days where we will have 'practicals' we should carry our record books and that will put more stress on our heads when w...

So, 2017 is going to come to an end and I should admit that this year was not so great on the professional front as I have been doing the same role, same technology and a kind of mundane started to settle in, but ... but ... but ... 2018 is not going to be that way, now that I am getting out of my current role, I am all set to do some super tech work in my next assignment, though I am yet to choose what I want to take, but whatever has lined up, all of them seem to offer a meaty tech role for me. Ok, other than this, 2017 was pretty OK OK year, Pranav turned 1 and we got many of the religious rituals done for him, especially that ear piercing function was a big one. Pranav is getting naughtier by the day and it needs some extra patience and stamina to keep up with him, and I certainly lack both of that, so going to work on my fitness and patience coming year. We as a family welcomed our new member Krish Sundar who was born on the 3rd of October 2017 for my cousin Sundar and R...

Well, I am penning a post after a very long time, this time I will not promise that I will be regular and will write more posts in the coming years, but the kind of incident that happened wanted me to blog so that I can hear reviews and feedback from many folks who have gone through that and who are going through that. So one of the biggest dreams of an average Indian is to get a house, as place that he can stay on forever and call it a home, in many cases I have seen that folks buy a house or rush to buy a house just to announce the outside world that they are now a proud owner of a property, though they take a lot of care in investigating the legality of the place, authenticity of the documents etc etc, none of them actually visualise the con's of getting an "apartment" or a "gated community", the initial euphoria that kicks in when you sign the sale agreement, blinds all the hidden horror it would tag along with. I too live in a gated community, and I o...

Oh whattay brilliant year 2016 has been. Personally this is the year I would never forget because this is the year which brought Pranav to us. He was born on August 2nd 2016 at 2:23 PM in Seethyapathy Clinic, Mylapore. He was weighing 2.6 kgs at the time of birth. I felt as if my whole world was just decorated with scented flowers, he was the sunshine myself and Vidhya were waiting for, he was the change we were praying for, he was the love we were searching for, we were so thankful to GOD for bringing him to us. Professionally this year has been marked with lesser number of abroad travels as Vidhya was carrying, I would want to have my professional carrier to be like this, very less travels, so that I can spend a lot of time with Pranav. Learning wise this year was super awesome, added many technologies to my resume and also glad to be getting in to development ways. I honestly take steps to update this blog regularly, but I just have to blame myself for not keeping up my wr...

I know I have almost abandoned my blog these days, but every year end I return here to rewind my life and kind of record the events of that year. I always make good effort to write more blogs and rekindle my story writing skills, but in the end, I don't make time to sit and write, as simple as that. Professional ....   Year 2015 was a very good year for me, both professionally and personally. Doing varied roles and still sticking on to the technical ladder is something I consider as a boon, I still feel that I have many more years of technical work left in me and I am in no hurry to change to the managerial ladder anytime soon, for all I can guess, I may not even be on that ladder in my career. The kind of technical stuffs that I get to do in my company may not be the cutting edge but I have the scope and opportunity to do whatever I want, that assurance I have here. Next to Chennai, I have made Copenhagen, Denmark as my second home in the recent past, like Chennai, h...

When the whole planet is debating if we leaving a better place for our kids, how many parents did wonder / debate if they are leaving better kids for this planet? Today's younger generation is extremely scary to deal with, and today's parents are extremely ignorant on their actions, be it working couple or couple where the wife is a home-maker, they don't look to mind their kids. This may not be a "common" picture across the board, but this scenario is the "majority" in many families.   How many kids today who are between their 6 and 16 years do these following - "Ask sorry", "Say thank you", "give-up and move-on", being sportive", "accept defeat"? It would be hardly 1 or 2 out of 100 kids. Kids these days are extremely arrogant (again, not all kids, majority of them), they don't want to accept defeat, they want to use "tears" and "tantrums" as their weapons to get their things do...

Madras, what a lovely name, I still use this name whenever I go abroad when people ask me "Which part of India you belong to", and yes, still it is very well known and famous when we say Madras, rather than saying "Chennai". This brief post is a tribute to the city I was born, brought up and the city I live in, and hopefully the city where I wanted to die as well. I am not sure about the other cities in India, but when it comes to Madras, the population here has a lot of emotional bonding, after all we are the folks who gave a "teary" send off to our beloved "meter gauge " train when it was all converted into "broad gauge", so this particular city is just more than a place in the map, it is more like a DNA in every "madaraasi" Born in the year of 1977, I was fortunate to do all my education and some years of work in Madras before my career took me to various places. Mylapore is the area where I grew and still continue to...

அந்த எதிர்க்காற்றின் குளிர்ச்சியை தாங்க முடியாமல் ஜன்னலை மூடிவிட்டு அம்மா கொடுத்து அனுப்பிய மப்ளரை தலையில் சுற்றிக்கொண்டான் ரமேஷ், அவனின் அன்றாட வாழ்க்கையின் சராசரி பயணம் அது. தேனீ தான் அவனது சொந்த ஊர், அம்மா தேனியில் தனி வீட்டில் இருக்கிறாள், வாழ்கை இழுத்த இழுப்பில் மிகவும் நடுங்கியும், ஒடுங்கியும் போனவள், கணவனின் மறைவுக்கு பின் நான்கு சுவருக்குள் அடைந்து கொண்டவள். அவன் கண் முன்னே அவனது தந்தை வெட்டி கொல்லப்பட்டது இன்னும் அவன் மனத்திரையில் பசுமையாக ஓடிக்கொண்டே இருக்கிறது. இவனது பால்ய பருவம் சினிமாவில் வருவது போலவே மிகவும் செழிப்பானது, கண்ணுக்கு எட்டிய தூரம் வரை இவனது தந்தையின் இடம் தான் அந்த ஊரில், அவனது கிராமத்தில் கணிப்பொறி வாங்கிய முதல் ஆளும் அவனே, பணத்திற்கு என்றும் குறைவு இருந்ததே இல்லை, அவனின் தந்தை செய்யும் தொழில் என்னவென்று அவனுக்கு ஒருநாளும் புரிந்ததில்லை, அந்த வயதில் அவன் புரிந்து கொள்ளவும் ஆசை படவில்லை. மனிதன் நாளையை பற்றி கவலை படாத ஒரே பருவம் அவனின் குழந்தை பருவம் தானே. அவனின் வீடு எப்பொழுதும் மக்கள் கூட்டம் திளைக்கும் ஒரு இடமாகவே இருந்தது, அனைவருக்கும் விருந்தோம்பல...