You Know Who Blogs

After a major blunder with the migration of my blog site to a new server, I have finally got the time to recover and get going again.

Happy to see the blog back online, but still many images are not yet recovered – will handle it soon (as it is my personal blog, it just took lower priority than other stuff that I am focusing on right now).

Have lots and lots of information to share – obviously on new movies, restaurants and interesting incidents.

Will write again.

Akhilesh Yadav has taken over as the Chief Minister of Uttar Pradesh.

Akhilesh Yadav is the son of Mulayam Singh Yadav, who has been the leader of Samajwadi Party from its inception. After having served as the CM of Uttar Pradesh, Mulayam Singh Yadav, knows exactly how difficult it is to run the biggest state in India, with the most number of MLAs under your command.

Akhilesh Yadav

After Mayawati came into the scene, SP had lost ground in the past five years and no one would have expected SP to score such a landslide victory this time. The comeback of Samajwadi Party in the elections this year have been attributed fully to Akhilesh Yadav. After the defeat in 2007, everyone had given up on SP and Mayawati actually still has the record of being the only Chief Minister of UP to have completed the full five year term.

All these years, Akhilesh escaped the mass media attention, primarily due to the obsession of Indian media with Rahul Gandhi.

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I love to go to movies, restaurants and stadiums. Many times I have noticed that it becomes really difficult to remember where I parked.

Once I remember being lost in the parking lot in Disney World and after an hour or so, the security staff helped us find our car. I also remember parking in covered parking spaces, where once I went floor after floor, searching for my car..pressing the remote desperately hoping the car will scream and let me know where it is. (It took me almost 30 minutes that day in sub zero temperature, which makes it even worse!)

Finally, I have found a simple, yet very effective solution to this problem. Now a days, I just take a photo of the spot where I park the car, and forget about it.

When I am done with the movie, I just check the photo from my phone and I know exactly where I parked.

Though I have been carrying a camera enabled phone for over five years now, only this year did I realize, I could use it to address this issue.

It works like a charm…as long as I do not lose my phone..so for now, I have one less thing to keep track of and am using the technology tools at my disposal to take care of that.

Let me know if you use your phone or any such device to help solve a problem that you have faced over a period of time.

Dear Sons and Daughters of Indian Politicians,

I am an Indian and I fully understand your commitment towards improving India, and following the footsteps of your parent(s). I have a humble request in this regard.

Tracking the Indian political system over the past twenty years shows a trend which is typical of Indian political families.

Many of you usually enroll in some university overseas (not necessarily complete them ), then come back and join your parent(s) party. Over a period of time, you take up a top position in your party, supporting your parent(s). Generally, within two or three election cycles (usually a 10 year period), you become the new face of the party or at least the undisputed leader of the same constituency your parent(s) contested in.

Here is my request to you…

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Went to Dewberry’s restaurant in Mylapore, Chennai last night and it was a pleasant experience.

Dewberry’s is located off Radhakrishnan Salai, opposite Kalyani Nursing Home. Dewberry’s looks like a home converted into a restaurant (and they also have a boutique in the same section). You can prefer to get seated inside or outside, we chose to sit inside, knowing that the Chennai mosquitos are trained to carry people away.

We liked the list of items in the menu (and I wanted to get each one of them)!

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It is just a coincidence that two leading democracies in the world introduce two bills around startups, one which will encourage startups and one which discourages startups.

CrowdFund Act of US is designed to help the startups by making it easy to receive small amounts of investments from individuals also, while the Startup Tax Bill of India is designed to add 30% tax for all investments the startups receive from small investors.

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It is party time for every one who is a Sachin Tendulkar fan.

Finally, after over a year of waiting and some missed opportunities,  Sachin Tendulkar scored his 100th hundred, in the one day international against Bangladesh last week.

Having watched almost every match of Sachin’s in the past one year in anticipation of his 100th 100, and having watched the match against Pakistan on Sunday, right after he scored the century, we could see a visible difference in the body language. I guess it is quite natural that the milestone and the expectations set around it by his fans like me, as well as the media, has impacted the freedom with which Sachin normally approaches the game.

Talking about the media, I cannot believe some people already listing down the remaining milestones due:

- 50th One Day Century

- Cross 400 runs in Test Cricket

- Surpassing Sehwag’s One Day Score Record

Please…give Sachin a break and let him play his natural game at least for the rest of his career.

btw, I saw a Boost commercial yesterday which said ‘Wish Sachin good luck so that he can score his 100th 100′. I guess the people in the marketing team for Boost have not yet returned from Mars

Virat Kohli appears to have all the stars aligned in the right places for him. He is just 23 years old, but already has eight international hundreds in the past year and a half.

After his magical century at Hobart (Tasmania, Australia) against Sri Lanka, and the announcement the very next day that he will be the vice-captain for India in the Asia cup, Virat Kohli appears to be in the news every where.

Virat Kohli made a wonderful start to his new role as vice-captain, with a wonderful century yesterday at Mirpur (Bangladesh).

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Finally…

I got a chance finally to write in 2012

It has been a month since I came to Chennai, but never thought Chennai would make sure I dont even login to my blog for this long.

With an opportunity to spend more time with my parents, 2012 has given me an amazing start.

The past one month in Chennai has helped me learn about so many things about our Chennai culture (most of which is applicable to culture in India), I intend to write about it as much as I can. Here are some examples:

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Just happened to watch an impressive performance of a little girl called Kavya from Virginia. She has sung Twinkle Twinkle Little star song in many different accents.

The way in which she has performed this is impressive. The level of maturity she has shown in the delivery of this song shows the amount of hard work that must have gone into the preparation.

Though the concept and most of the words have been copied from 1980s Balachandar’s tamil movie, which was refined by Revathy Sankaran in her remake of it, this kid has pulled it off in her own style with further refinement by adding Georgia accent, Russian and Italian accents.

I was so amazed at her performance that I spent some time finding out who this kid is. I was amazed by various talents this kid has. Now I know two things about this kid:

1. The kid is extremely talented and gifted. She knows how to speak, dance and sing. (Just see her videos uploaded by her father and you will agree with me)

2. Her parents are really interested in making sure she learns various things in life and also work hard enough to perfect them and execute them as per plan.

Hats off to Kavya and her parents.