Krishna cottage

This is the new Teleserial being telecast every night 10 o' clock on Jaya TV. This is an outcome of "Ada" campaign of Jaya TV.

Krishna cottage(KC) is a direct lift-off of the famous teleserial "Friends". 3 guys, 3 gals, one paatti, KC owner and his staff are the key characters introduced so far. A supposedly hilarious serial that is supposed to be complete with slap-stick, PJs and situational jokes.

Bottomline - KC is a poor imitation of 'Friends'....

One good thing is the serial's key characters are fresh faces we have not seen them in the daily dish-wash bars (if the serials presented by foreign channels are Soaps, then definitely their poor couSINs here who have same "paathira padaippu" - the cast, be called dishwashbars...) Mirchi Suchi has rendered voice for Title vocals...her typical "Sema hottu machi..." reflecting in the tune of the song too...but good! A very catchy number - Machi inga vaa vaa, majaa solli thaa thaa...

When titles are being shown, it states "Moolakadhai (Original story) - Kutty Padmini"...

So far, this is the only hilarious part I have found in the four episodes of KC..because we know the original story is "Friends" ;-)

Netnography, HINDU and a bunch of Chennai bloggers

Recently read few articles about Netnography via these links from Charukesi and further observations in this post.

And a specific observation was of great interest to me...Quoting from that post

And some questions Edward of livinginindia (or elsewhere on the planet) always has...- Why are there so many bloggers from Madras ?- And what do they write about?- And from this, can we say what Madras is like - about the kind of people who live there or arefrom there - bloggers over the world with Madras 'roots'

Co-incidentally, I was wondering why no India magazine/newspaper refers avidly about blogs (except for one occasion when Kalki - Tamil Magazine referred Teakada). Its only HINDU that talks about blogs quite frequently. References to blogs and blog software comes from Netspeak column. But nothing about bloggers or some of the popular chennai blogs.

It was a plesant surprise to see for first time, though, an article on bloggers in Chennai...Cool to see Ravages and Kribs names out there on - can you imagine? - Page 3 of Hindu...thats as good as Front Page...great going guys...

Frankly, i took to blogging only after seeing Netspeak columns. I have been trying to be regular after seeing the enthusiasm shown by bloggers like Ravages, Kirubashankar and lazygeek in updating their blogs quite regularly!(I still remember the bloggorhea, Ravages had, quite sometime back - when he posted continuously for 10 days or so...)

Hightime, common media - esp print - starts acknowledging the new type of journalism in the name of blogs...and truly exploit the power of internet, to have proper reports rather than such common 3 columnar articles on Lalu Prasad Yadav's pilgrimage...there is so much in this world to write about, and blogs cover quite a bit of them...Guys, wake up and leverage power of blogging to the advantage of journalism!

UPDATE: Oh wow, cool...Times magazine carries an article on blogs as alternate media vis-a-vis mainstream media (via instantkaapi.com in a post titled Bloggers, The Truthful Media)

Tamilnadu news media beasts

Drunken driving, and accident cases are not very uncommon. But the intensity with which the recent Radhakrishnan salai accident happened that turned upside down the lives of four young stupid a**holes and causing death of a young girl is highly distressing.
As usual, the media played an irresponsible role...Indian Express reported that the lady was also drunk, and seen dancing with the boys. What started out as a playful chase ended up in the accident. Dinamalar reported it as eve-teasing case without even analysing it properly - they had other important information...while HINDU explained that girl was not under alcohol influence, and not was seen with the boys in the car...
No one can easily forget the gory poster put up by Junior Vikatan in streets of Tamilnadu when Srirangam Marriage Hall fire accident happened, with dark, burnt bodies of the groom, and other elders. Kumudam reporter crossed all limits when they flooded Tamilnadu walls with burnt bodies of small kids in Kumbakonam fire accident as their poster material. In such a tender, delicate moment, should they get all gory and dorky?
The visual media is worse - people wont easily forget the visuals of kerala's mahout done to death by an elephant, or the mad Kerala youth who killed a man, or...Well, they are countless...
And to think, it is the same print media - esp Indian Express, Vikatan were some of the key elements that behaved with social responsibility to play a vital role during independence struggle and during many calamities...offlate, all have become nuttier...Sensation is all what you guys need, and you care a damn for what you report!!! You heartless, crude, savaged beasts of news media.
A big middle finger to each one of you!!!

Veedu vs 7% floating rate

SCV Channel - Monday - Sept 13 - 10:30pm movie - Veedu by Balumahendra

Good one! Archana had acted really well. The scene when Iyengar narrates to Archana about handling the investment. When Iyengar talks about the feature of the house, Archana's eyes start glittering with enthusiasm and starts drooping again while thinking how to put in the money. Then, numerous talks and deciding on going for it.

It was  sheer poetry - more than that, it brought back the nostalgic memories of how 15 years back, my father struggled to build a house, taking lots of pains in terms of money to house and other commitments, and the sense of achievement he had - first person from the relatives clan hailing from a remote South Arcot district village to a city, succesfully settled in a permanent job and built a house also. Ok, the house is in suburbs - so what? Own house is all that mattered. No mean achievement it was - THEN.

I remember the days when my father had to go back and forth between panchayat office, builder's home and to HDFC office for getting the loan sanctioned and money released.

Cut to today!!!

I own a flat in plum Triplicane area - 50% financed by Housing Loan Institutions. Its 3 years old, and as on date, am already with my 3rd home loan institution topping up my loan every time. Bottom line is things come easy!!!

Offlate, I keep cribbing to wife and friends that something is lacking in life, life sucks etc etc...Not just me, many people of my generation feel that way. Talk to any elders, they say, "we never felt like this when we were your age". And, I know its true! With lesser salary and a bigger family to support, my dad used to toil a lot. Now, I have a fat paycheck(well, not exactly currently - but nevertheless, scaling up is not a big issue), money to spend on anything and buy anything I may need. Have switched three mobile phones already. Jobwise, am doing a better job than what my predecessor did - not clerical, but more administrative and managerial! Then, what else is lacking?

Maybe is it because everything is offered in a platter now-a-days. Not like those olden days, like in Veedu, when someone describes about having a house on my own, might not be too enticing. Because it is not a challenging task anymore. Give it to a builder, or better buy a ready-made house/flat. Only thing to do is, take half day permission (if in IT company, not even a need for permission, just sit extra hours, browse and add to timesheet as 'knowledge building activity'), go to registrar office, sign a few documents, talk crap about how bad/corruptive Govt agencies have become, have lunch with builder and get back to office. Voila - you are the proud owner.

Now there is another class which sees this class of people get things so easily, offered on a platter. They struggle so much but the results dont come easily. It's worser than in previous periods - they won't get a loan from office like in those days, because office has a tie-up with some schmuck bank, employees can apply to them directly. They don't have eligibility for a loan because their salary isn't enough.

Are we, as a society, growing healthy? People of our class say life sucks and something is lacking, because we do not have to struggle for anything. It's a buyers market for us, and we get to choose from a wide range of loans..we are the '7% floating rate' class, and there is another class which will now take a much longer time period than our predecessors to grow up. But at the same time, they become easily frustrated with this anomaly. This is not a self-sustaining model that will balance itself out any sooner.

For a country of our size, this type of divide is obscene.

Questions you wanted to ask, but never were able to!

The man on Tamizhan TV demonstrating something for Teleshopping always wears coolers...eventhough the coolers is not the product he is marketing. Why?

The accompanying lady compere in the same show wears rings in all her fingers - both hands and legs including a golden-color metti. Why does she want to wear so many rings like nadhaswara vidhwan?

Why does Kamalhassan wear coolers in any duet shot in a foreign location? That too, only in comedy movies?

In all movie-based dial-in TV shows on Indian TV channels, all comperes want to know what the caller is currently doing, who are in their family. If they are students, the comperes want to know how they fare in their studies. Comperes also want to know, whether they have a boyfriend or girl friend, and whether they have been in or are in love. Comperes of Tamil channels also specifically want to know what the caller had for dinner/lunch. Why do they want to know all this? Will they ask for meals to be sent to them as 'parcel'?

E-Mail Post!

This sounds a bit weird...earlier I used to post mails! Now, I post using an e-mail....
Uh...oh...silly jokes apart, am trying to write this post to my web blog using email...
Hope it works...
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