Posts tagged chennai
The great “Indian” attitude!
Feb 23rd
This happened during my Chennai visit. When we landed in Chennai, as there were no gates available immediately, we had to wait for ~5 minutes. There was this person sitting 3 rows in front of me, along with his wife and a kid, who also stood up to collect his things. When it took sometime for the aero bridge to be attached, he started murmuring. He had an obvious US accent, looked like some one from the Northern part of India. Couple of minutes later, his tone had become loud.
“What is happening? Why are they taking so long?”, his wife asked.
“C’mon dear, this is not Ontario. This is India”, he said, with the sarcasm turned a notch up! This really irked me. But the next statement was the icing on the cake.
“I thought things would have changed. They are the same and will never change over here”
When we stepped out in to the waiting lounge, I introduced myself to him and asked him casually about his native place in India.
“I am from [so &so place] in Punjab. I have been in Toronto for 1.5years now!!”, he said proudly.
1.5years?? He was out of India for just over an year and already he has started passing comments over how India won’t improve? What do we do with these kinda people around!?
[tags]chennai, india, attitude[/tags]
Limousines in India?
Feb 23rd
Yesterday I had to go to Chennai, on an official work. The plan was to go there in the morning and return back by night. Morning flight was uneventful, thought the same cannot be said about the returning flight.
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I saw the above car when I came out of the airport. Interesting! I have never seen this kind of car before in India (of course, it is not like I know of every car brand available in India!). It looked more like those looong limousines. The car zoomed past us and to add to the wound, my rented Tata Indigo broke down! The car sign looked like a Skoda, and it was AP (Andhra Pradesh) registration. Does Skoda make these kinda cars?
The return flight was scary! Perhaps, not as scary as the one I had from Italy to Belgium (a small Dakota kind of Lufthansa plane, shaking all the way, which practically eliminated all my fear for roller coasters :p), but the landing was terrific. Most probably the pilot misjudged the point of contact or something. Since it was around 11pm, people were sleeping or atleast in a “trance” state, but the jolt with which the plane landed, woke up everyone! First time I saw people screaming in a plane, for real, I mean 
The girl sitting behind me literally grabbed my hair, the person who was dozing off next to me banged his head on the front seat, woke up with a big “Aahhhh”….how I wished I had my camera with me
Sin-”bad” Adventures!
Apr 29th
This happened last month (March). March 25th was a holiday (Good Friday), so I bought a KSRTC ticket to Chennai, for Thursday night (March 24th), or at least that was what I thought I did! I actually had bought a ticket for Friday night (March 25) and I did not even notice that mistake until I went there to the bus stand!
Thursday evening, I left office by 7pm, went home, packed lotsa clothes (to wash in Chennai), stuffed my camera + other valuables along with my laptop in to a shoulder bag, started merrily to Majestic bus stand! As the next day was Good Friday, KSRTC expected lotsa passengers and had arranged for many special trips to Chennai. So, my 10.15pm bus actually came in only by 11.45pm!! Feeling relieved that I had not missed the bus, I boarded it and was shocked to see another person sitting in my seat, #14.
I told him, “Hey, I have this seat booked”.
“Really?! I also have this. See…here is my ticket”
I compared all the fields, could not find any difference! I was really irritated by then. Who wouldn’t be! I took both the tickets to the driver and told him the problem. He had one look at both the things and said I had got a ticket for the next day!! Only then I noticed it. I sheepishly apologized to that #14 middle-aged man, got off the bus as quickly as possible! I could hear the driver telling me it was possible to transfer the tickets. I didn’t even turn to thank him. Since, it was already nearing 12am, the ticket controller said it was impossible to transfer the tickets. So, I was standing there, with a ticket for the next day’s night, wondering whether to go back to my house in Airport road, or to buy a ticket in some bus and reach Chennai somehow! Unfortunately, I decided on the latter. More >
Tidbits
Nov 23rd
Here are some things that caught my attention lately. Since I don’t think these things deserve separate posts, here we go.
1) First, this Science-based story by Jeyamohan. I didn’t know Jeyamohan writes these kinda stories too!! The basic story is about how different our Siddha Medicinal system is from Alopathy and how the system that we practise now is not the true Siddha. I got to know (learnt!?) a lot of things. Interesting read. But, after having read the story, I feel as if I went through a dense medical journal (“Siddha for dummies” !?)
2) When I was looking for some interesting blogs to read (as if I didn’t have enuf already!) I stumbled on Sriram Krishnan’s blog, He is a student (Wow!) in Chennai, a nerd & more importantly, has excellent coding skills! Good to see such motivated talents. He is really in to search technologies. Though, directly not related to my current work, I got kinda motivated reading all his articles. No denying that his “How to write a search engine in 16 hours” post brought back sweet memories of how I had only an evening to make our OS, which we did as our final year project, understand Tamil Good old days. I doubt I enjoyed doing anything so strenuous lately. Professional life, for sure, takes out that enthusiasm and, sometimes, that curiosity to learn more, out of you. This is my personal opinion, of course. Let’s hope Sriram doesn’t feel like me after 5 yrs of being in the field. Microsoft/Google, if you are looking for a talent, with enuf enthusiasm/motivation & technical know-how, you’ve got the right candidate here!
PS: Rama/Prem, this fellow is good, do have a look at his postings.
3) Latest *big* thing (& here’s a going-to-be-a-big-thing! 
) in Gollywood: Dhanush got married to Aishwarya, super-star’s daughter.
Don’t you think Rajini looks more like one of those ADMK ministers?? I can’t believe this is the same person who attacked Jeyalalitha so ferocioulsy back in 1996!! More >
We need more Ilangos!
Nov 2nd
Mr.Ilango is a Chemical Engineer by profession. What he has done to his birth village – “Kuthambaakkam” – is really appreciable & impressive. Click here to read an article in Vikatan to know more.. Can you believe the village shown in this picture is only 30Kms off Chennai?  |
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