I was just sifting through a few of my previous posts couple of minutes back and even before I realized, something came in as a wonderful surprise. My first post was dated March 10th ‘07 and that means It’s been exactly one year that I started rambling on WordPress. It’s been a wonderful journey all along.

WordPress has been one beautiful tool to rant and rave at my whims. It gave me the reconfigurability which Blogger didn’t match ( and I believe it still doesn’t !), the flexibility that I could deploy when required, the aesthetic appeal that I wanted to personify on my space, and Oh yes the always responsive support team that I believe none of the other competitors of WordPress are even close to! Be it the stats page or the widgets corner; the lucid variety of themes or the anti spam Akismet utility, the going’s been fabulous.

On a different note, Blogging has got me on an altogether different front. It’s been a wonderful medium of expression of my thoughts not just to people who know me but also to those totally unaware of my existence. It’s got me up in the Networking platform and thanks to this I’ve got to know quite a few interesting people and more so their perspectives. I feel it’s also one of the reasons responsible for the change in my outlook per se.

I preferred not blogging on the latest sizzling topics or contentious issues just because that would mean something else encroaching into my space. Something that would undermine my real virtual presence. There’s been a downside to this too but then at the end of the day when it comes to personal satisfaction hits or stats are no match. Just the sheer pleasure of someone reading what you right out of your fickle mind works wonders in making things better. It’s been great getting to hear your version of the story from the other side of the wall on most of my posts. Thank you for that!

I’ve always believed in looking back at the way things evolve and in giving credit to myself however small be my achievement. To be frank , I was totally oblivious of the fact that I’d soon be reaching the one year mark till a few minutes back. I’d bought myself a domain name and hosting space from Znet just to experiment on my coding prowess yesterday and what do I find today? Looks like all of this was choreographed just like pieces of a puzzle falling in the right place at the right time!!

From today I’ve decided to stop blogging . Blogging on this space! srikanthperinkulam.wordpress.com would soon cease to be the platform where I would live virtually. Things need to change. Transition, thrill and adventure is a must in life and just to fall in line with that funda of mine, I Quit. Quit, to move on with things from a different perspective. It’s sad to see the end of my year long journey here. But there’s always that pot of gold at that fag end . Something else more interesting beckons !

Thus, with the power vested in me I officially declare Spiky V1.0 to be stalled, deprecated and no more active.

http://srikanthperinkulam.wordpress.com is now http://srikanthperinkulam.com/blog

Catch me on Spiky V 2.0

Everythingz the same except the name!

Srikanth S Perinkulam

We keep having these so called Personality Development sessions quite frequently at my workplace. Not that it’s a compulsion , but I see to it that I attend most of these. The main reason being, it so happens that the person delivering the address, mostly is someone who’s experienced in a particular field or way too elder to me. More than the topic, I majorly be there to get to understand and see how he/she expresses his/her thoughts in that timespan. Well, there have been quite a few instances when I got knocked off just few minutes into the session and there have been a couple of those beautiful sessions wherein I’ve got deeply involved. Here comes the factor of how you relate to the topic in hand and how effectively the person communicates it to you; but before we go further I’d rather let you know that this post is not about effective communication, but just a light cast on how attending these sessions may help you from a different aspect and get you know facts that you’d be totally oblivious of.

A few days back I needed some information on organizing adventure activities, so I’d contacted a person by name Sandeep. Sandeep’s been into native adventure stuff for more than fifteen years now and besides organizing these events he’s one of the lead anchors for a flagship personality development organisation. He keeps giving sessions on Team management and Effective communication skills now and then and it is one of those sessions of his that I got to know him.

One of the reasons why I related to his school of thought during that session was, the way he co- related his real life adventure experiences and activities with team building and effective communication. In that session, He happened to bring out one particular experience of his in one of the tribal settlements in Andaman. He’d been there as part of group to help them out with navigating through the settlement. Tribals as we know, are pretty secluded in their outlook and they take quite some time to learn to trust an outsider. This particular group of which Sandeep was a part of, had to cross a certain part of the forest manifested with wild elephants to get to a secluded settlement. It was primarily a research team with not many having exposure to wild life.

One very fascinating aspect that he’d brought out was that the tribals used their olfactory senses to judge the presence of elephants in their vicinity. You’d be surprised to know, they could in fact correctly identify the presence of the wild animal at a distance of almost 1km!! It took quite some time for me to digest that fact but what he says makes absolute sense. We so called urban people have lost track of the power of our various senses. I personally , cannot identify what major ingredient is missing in a particular dish even if it happens to be one of my favorites and I’ll probably take years to earn back that olfactory power even if I stay amidst the tribals for a year and for all you know, I’ll be doomed even before I start sniffing an insect yards away .

They say you need to know your opponent much better than you know yourself. Sounds perfectly logical but how good a judge would you be if you’re not able to judge yourself properly .

Moments before I hit the bed yesterday night, I got a call from one of my friends.

Me: Heylo…

Browmith: Dude! Where’ve you been ? We’ve been trying to reach you right from noon.

Me: Oh! is it? I was a bit occupied in a session.

Br: Session? What session? Today’s Saturday!

Me: Oh Yeah! There was a small meet at Microsoft and I was invited.

Br: Microsoft? What the heck were you screwing at MS? And they… INVITED you?

Me: Hmm..not really invited, but my presence was required there. [ Wish I could see the expression on his face then ]

Br: WTF? Why would your presence be required anywhere? [Huh!! lesser mortals! ]

Me: Well , About 75 folks were meeting up there to discuss on a few issues.

Br: Bugger! what are you talking? and where the heck does MS come into the picture?

Me: Lemme explain! There was a bloggers meet there and MS was sorta sponsoring it. Forget it! You wont get it anyways!

Br: Huh! Whatever. But what did you have to do there? You went all the way there just for that dumb meet? So is that all why you were REQUIRED by MS! Should have guessed! haha

Me: Moron! I was there for a reason!The Indiblogger team wanted a volunteer to act in their skit…

Br: What has a bloggers meet got to do with a skit?? Dude, you in your senses?

Me: Huh! Believe so. They just wanted to portray something on blogging et al.

Br: OMG! You in a skit? Geez…

Me: Yeah! Helps at times ! But wait..why did you call?

Br: GP told me you were not reachable for quite sometime. So just wanted to know what was keeping you aloof! And know what? He did tell me about MS thingy. I just wanted to hear it from your mouth !!

Me: Heylo! Heylo! ….Dude, can’t hear you . Catch you later.

For all of you who don’t know Br, he’s a hardcore anti MS nerd. I met him during one of my visits to Hyd in a bus. He is one nut case who needs to be wherever there’s limelight and he’ll do anything for that! But for this, he’s a pretty good guy

Ah! and the bloggers meet? It was actually good being there. I got to meet quite a few people from varied qualifications. Had two cheezy pizzas for free ( GP.. You around?) . On a serious front, it was a great networking platform! Thanks to the Indiblogger team and Balaji for having organised the event!

Ever thought how good it would have been if you were able to portray your documents in a much appealing format rather than the normal linked form? If you could portray a totally different way of representing your documents?

I was scouting for something on those lines when I chanced up on this site. Looked pretty interesting!!

Have a look at the document below. Check the Book view mode- looks real cool

Had a tough time integrating the post and the page together. Finally had to give up. That should explain the dual post

document.write(”);

var scribd_doc = new scribd.Document(2194749, ‘key-21rsrum9pvbeqnvcf02h’); scribd_doc.addParam(’height’, 500); scribd_doc.addParam(’width’, 450); scribd_doc.addParam(’page’, 1); scribd_doc.addParam(’mode’, ‘book’); scribd_doc.write(’embedded_flash_2194749_17rttg’);

My cell rings at about 5:00am . As I’m already awake by then, I recognize the person at the other end to be Gaurav Saxena. Just a wake up call he says! Gaurav’s been one of the most active members of Hydventura and today morning he’s taken the responsibility of spoiling everyone’s sleep just to see to it that things go as planned ! A few minutes later I get a call from him informing that he just had a bad fall and would not be able to join us for the trip. A pity that that he couldn’t join us!

The earlier day we’d planned to start off from Infy campus by around 5:45 am. Nayan and Gaurav had arranged the Swaraj Mazda and Venkatesh happily donned the responsibility of being the treasurer for the trip. The group had decided on the route that the vehicle would take to pick up people as close as possible to their residence. As planned, everyone was ready at their respective pick up point more or less on time. We reached the city limits at about 7:15 am and from there started the three and a half hour journey to Nagarjunsagar.

We’d arranged for a quick breakfast right in the bus to avoid getting delayed any further. Gaurav and Co. had made arrangements for Bread-Butter-Jam, Frootie packs and Water. I’d got Chips packed from Hot Chips. We also had Haldiram’s namkeen and biscuits doing rounds . Having spiked our energy levels we decided to have a brief introduction. We were 15 of us ( Gaurav having dropped ) , and not many of us knew each other prior to this. It was quite surprising to know we had an amateur photographer (Gourav Bhaduri ), Ace advenurers ( Abhishek Tiwari , Aishwarya) et al in our group.The only outfoscion in our first Hydventura trip was Chaithanya - Sushyamala’s bro. As with any group outing we decided to play Dumb charades. Sandeep Sarda made the whole activity lot more peppy with his gyan and out of the blue thinking . By the time we’d reached Sagar, it was almost 10:45 am.

We’d decided to finish the NagarjunaKonda visit before lunch. The next launch ferry was at around 11:15. The launch was a Diesel boat capable of holding about 300 people. The close to 45 minutes ride and the beating sun did go a long way in helping the vendors sell cool drinks and other snacks. The ride was more or less monotonous and at times it was frustrating to move at that slow a speed. Yashawant and Nayan had a different experience though.They had kids who’d come for an excursion teaching them telugu! Reshma was no less in getting gyan from kids on the other side . Things travel teach you !

We reached the island by around 12:30pm thanks to the delayed start of the launch. Being given 1hr to get back to the launch, we started walking towards the Museum. The stupas and the Altars were pretty impressive. I’d been to the Museum a few years back so it wasn’t really that enthralling to me. But it is a must watch , for first timers. It gives you a brief glimpse on life in the early ages.

Done with this we moved over to the strategically placed canteen. From here you get to see the vastly spaced out reservoir totally devoid of any urban representations. The blue waters, seemingly flowing onwards to meet the blue hued sky and the rocky lands at a distance is a sight you need to see with your own eyes to admire. Truly breath taking! With a brief photo session here by our ace photographer,  we hunched back to the launch point.Again a 45 minute ride on the reservoir waters and we’re back to the main banks. About 2:30 pm now, All we needed was some food ( For thought ? ) ! We walked towards the closest hotel and ordered Thalis for everyone. I’m still not sure what to give credit to - the relishing meal or the gnarling rats in our stomachs. But whatever be the case, we did have one good sumptuous meal !

It was about 4:00 pm now and we decided to move over to Ethipothalla falls. The 12kms drive took us about twenty minutes to get there. I was initially very keen on visiting this place but only the moment I was there did it loom on me that I’d actually been to this place before. The water then in the falls was pretty murky and the whole experience was pretty bad. But believe me, this time it was far far better. The flow was pretty good and the waters much cleaner. Varun , Sandeep, Abhishek Ramakant and Abhishek tiwari had brought their shorts and hence moved over closer to the falls. The stones were pretty slippery but why fear when we had an 80 year young lady to help us cross it ? Most of us finally made it close to the falls when Suyshamala slipped over the algae and got her dead cells on one of her toes chipped out. It wasn’t a big hurt but then she couldn’t continue standing in the waters, so she had to get back to the other side. Just a few moments after we finish cleansing her wound, Aishwarya took the next seat . Thanks to the old woman who stepped on her feet while she was getting back to the safer side . Venki got so tempted by the crabs there that he asked the woman if she could catch some for him. How good would it have been had the woman accepted!

This falls is truly a must see if you’ve come to Nagarjunsagar. But wait! There’s more to Ethipothalla than just the falls. There’s a very small temple right beside the kutcha path to the falls. Next time you’re there be sure to catch a glimpse of goat and bird legs hanging by the tree branch at about your shoulder’s height :- ) . Divine Sacrifice huh! All of us finally got back to the vehicle with two hopping females giving company to the ever present monkeys there .

We now had to find a small clinic to nurse Suysh’s wound. About seven kilometers from there we did find one and got the wound dressed. All of us had tea at a small tea stall and then moved over to the Broken bridge of Nagarjunsagar. But the moment we were there , we realised they’d blocked entrance to the bridge and we couldn’t move any further. Fortunately we found something else much more interesting. There was a temple right beside it and the path down the temple was really inviting! It was a rocky terrain and finally when we managed to reach the bank, it just loomed on us what good a decision we’d taken to come down there! Venki, Sandeep, Varun, Gourav Nayan and Yashwant tried their hands on Stone throwing while Vairav, Chaithu, Aishwarya , Reshma and I ventured into the slippery knee deep water flow.Slippery it pretty much was but not really dangerous. Chaithanya and I ventured almost half past the river flow. The sheer force with which the waters gush across you sort of revitalizes your fatigued body. Vishesh soon joined us along with the other folks. Spent quite some time here and finally left for the city at about 6:45pm.

The way back was pretty funny and interesting. We decided to play Truth or Dare to while away time. The peppy questions being put forth and the more so the answers made things all the more interesting. Chaitu with his cat walk, Gourav becoming a goat, Yahswant farting like an elephant and I enacting a cabiree were a few of the dare events . Thanks to Nayan, Vairav and Reshma took revenge on each other with their mock proposals All in all it was a wonderful time ! We then stopped over at a roadside restaurant at Ibrahimpatnam and had a decent dinner. It was almost 11:30 by the time we reached the city .

The trip was definitely worth the money spent. It was great getting to know people and we did get to have a wonderful weekend! Do have a look at the pix in my Picasa.

I’d ordered the Solaris 10 DVD from a third party agent a few days back. It did avoid the hassle of downloading the code from the website and burning it on to a ROM and the service by Rainbow Computech was pretty good. I got the DVD delivered to my home in three days with regular updates from them regarding the shipment. Wish the install was as easy as this! 

First things first. I’m a quasi noobie    when it comes to installing Operating systems. So my experience would tell you what not to do when installing an OS  :-)  .If you are still contemplating on installing solaris with XP as a dual boot, be forewarned, you’re entering lukewarm waters. It’s real sad that I sound so very negative but I’m really frustrated with how things have turned up. Just Imagine! You have that cutie pie OS right in your System but still can’t use it. The worst part being that you still don’t know what to look for where and Google ain’t helping a bit.

Thankfully this time I backed up vital data on my disk before I ventured into the forest. I honked the DVD drive out and forked in the DVD. Rebooted my system and initiated the DVD boot.  Quite expectantly, the installers GUI failed and I had to navigate through text mode installation. Thanks to my 17″ Extra Wide LCD monitor, I had to keep altering the image display to have a look at the command statements in each and every screen. Finally when I make it to the partitioning screen, the lord starts demanding- Open Solaris 10 needs to be installed on a primary partition alone. I had installed Win Xp in the primary partition and had a couple of other drives similarly configured. Gutsy Gibbon was hatching golden eggs in the extended partition . Looking at the screen, I initially was in the mindset of formatting one of the subsidiary drives and making it the primary one to cater to Solaris’s request. But then the installer was not making things any easier. The only option it gave me was to totally erase the drive and create solaris partitions. It just wanted full control on the drive! . Probably there was a customization menu somewhere but as the monitor was as such giving trouble, I gave in too. Having taken full control over the drive the installation crooned it’s way to 100 percent completion.

It finally spitted out the DVD and reboots. Ah! and what do I find?It asks me for the login. Login? I wonder - what login? I remember it asking for root password but never in the installation did it ask me to give a default login. I understand Linux installations have this default login name. It varies for each OS but I never tried looking for the default login of OpenSol. It just didn’t strike me! So there ended the Open Sol saga- part one. leaving me with a lame hard disk with no OS to work on. How far can a noobie go with CUI  ? Finally , I gave up and installed the bland Win XP again. Moments later I realize, Microsoft ain’t any good. It overwrites the previous MBR with its own setup. Sigh! Wish people came with a sweet heart! Now I have Win xP on a primary partition and the lame OpenSol on another!

Today,  curiosity got the better of me and I restarted the OpenSol installation. Thankfully, the installation recognizes the previous setup and asks me whether I want to upgrade the OS. Jubilantly, I configure it to do the needful and the upgrade starts. It goes on and on and on and finally it gives me a status - Upgrade Complete. Aye Sir, Me is on cloud nine . I let it spit the DVD out and am eager to see the aesthetic OpenSol Splash grub menu. Someone rightly said,  never expect the expected. Screw Him! The System reboots and what do I get to see? Welcome to Microsoft Windows!!!  I’m at loss of words.

Open Sol is a wonderful OS and I’d love to work on it. Accepted, there’s something that I’ve missed out during the installation that led it to screw me but on a second thought- Can’t the installation be made any simpler? Can’t they provide a much better partition management tool? Johnathan! Are you listening?

I’ll be back a few days later when I have some time to make my hands greasier . Till then  - Amen!

 Today, I’d been to Hari Hara Kala Bhavan to watch a play called Five Point Someone.  It was based on Chetan Bhagat’s first novel with the same name and is  EVAM’s first debut performance in Hyderabad. And oh yes! It’s the first ever play I’ve watched live .

I’d blocked four tickets on saturday evening for the show but later had to cancel two as Adi and Abhi had to drop out.  Though the show was scheduled to start at 3:30 pm , it had to be delayed due to a few technical glitches. In fact it was a wonderful stroke of luck for me . I was caught in a traffic jam at 3:25pm  and made it to the theater only around 3:55pm. Suysh had luckily arrived a bit early and purchased the tickets well before I was there!

I was a bit taken back to see the crowd in the theater. To be frank I never expected that huge a crowd .  The theater  was almost full! It was all probably because of the wide acclaim of Chetan Bagath’s book. The play started with a warm welcome message from EVAM and soon started unfurling with intricate precision. As I was quite aware of the theme, I spent most of my time watching the players enact the scenes.The way they brought about various scenarios was truly fabulous! Evoking emotions is something that comes only with diligent practice and I wonder how many days they’d rehearsed the whole play to put up that stupendous a performance! It was so very arresting that I lost track of time .

All in all , this was one weekend well spent! 

On a different note. EVAM is a Theater corp. started by a few MICA alumni. They conduct plays frequently in Chennai and would be coming back to Hyd sometime this May. Eagerly looking forward to their next performance .

7:20 on my watch and I’m still at home. The bus halts at the stop at 7:24 , not a moment late. Sigh! This was one of those days when I wonder how the driver manages to be right on time everyday. Thanks to my fast paced walk, I almost made it to the crossroads. Had to run behind it for about half a kilometer.. but still Spiky made it!

Sweating and Panting, I occupy seat 24 and by sheer instinct open the window. The bus jerks along and a few minutes later it happens to take one of the flyovers. Still staring out of the window and worried about certification and all that crap I keep gaping in open space.

Well, I’m not alone in my thoughts. The Oxford International school bus seems to be moving at almost the same pace parallely and there’s this cute kid for some reason crying silently. For no apparent reason I get back to my senses and give her a fake smile. She manages to reciprocate that and even before I do anything else, her bus overtakes mine. She turns back and keeps looking at my bus wide mouthed.

At the next crossroads we happen to come face to face again and this time she takes the initiative of smiling and then waves her hand. I wave back in a kiddo fashion :-)  .This makes her more ecstatic. She beckons her friends and says something. All of them then turn towards me, then gape at each other and giggle like nuts.

Boy! Wish I could capture that Kodak moment.There’s a lot that we tend to forget in this mad race called life. We happen to miss out on those subtle nuances , things that could make a world of a difference to you and more so, people around you if experienced in the real spirit. But then who cares of nuances? Everyone’s behind making himself a part of the bigger picture. A picture called Success, Promotion, Recognition and oh yes! that mirage which they call LIFE. Pathetic!

Ah! So what about my certification? It’s gone with the kid!

Have you smiled today?

The 1.5 hr travel back home in the traffic is taking its toll. It was fine for the first one month, but of late I’ve realized there’s nothing much productive that I’m able to do once I’m back and whatever little I can force myself to, isn’t really helping me.

This month seems to be a bit demanding. I’ve got to pick up on .Net , complete an internal certification and oh yes, there’s the french certification exam too. Besides, I’ve got to avoid sacrificing  my personal time come what may. After all , that’s one thing that keeps me motivated .

From yesterday, I’ve started tuning my body clock.  I get back home by around 9:00 pm , have my dinner by 9:30pm and hit the bed by 10:30.  Morning by around 3:30am I’m all fresh to get up and get things started. And thanks to my motion sensitive grey cells I also get to have a 1hr catnap on the way to office! With no much disturbances that early, my work gets done quickly. Things are working just great and hope it continues .