My son was gaga over a week about the thing that school is offering notebooks for the weight of old books, Initially I ignored, then thought,  they are giving it to some school children who can’t afford to buy books.

For 4 KGS of old books, my son was offered a Classmate 180 pages note and a nice Classmate pencil.

It is an awesome marketing effort by  ITC “Classmate books” to enter each house of Chinmaya Annagar School students.

I still wonder, how Schools allow these kinds of activity. Earlier they resorted to buy books, by sharing pamphlets, at times forced us to buy the same book as we had two children studying in the same school.  Phew, fed up with these activities.  What are they trying to set in to these innocent young minds?

classtmate marketing @Chinmaya Vidyalaya Annanagar

Kathakali – red eyes

I am sure, you all wondered how the eyes become red, I thought it was glycerine, but later realized that it would wear of in minutes.

How do dance artist make their eyes red?

chunda seed

The answer is solanum anguivi lam a.k.a Chunda poo, they use the seed.

I was in a state of shock to see the seed, placed in the lower part of lid

chunda poo kuru – ottanThullal

I asked Ashan, doesn’t it hurt, for which he answered, You know what

” Your eyes become super cool, you need little practice to have seed under the lid. Once you remove the seed, the effect stays for an hour or so, and it becomes natural. Worried about Cataract – this is best medicine” and he laughs out loud.

There are a lot of projects which are moving in snail pace, but this process is with a deadline.

The worst part of these paid channels is that we continue to watch them with all the advertisements. Oh, OK HBO has new paid channels which boast of with no advertisements. Any more?

Earlier a lot of companies where making money, now the Government has a large share I guess in terms of taxes. Phew.

dish antenna

velachery close to MRTS station

velachery close to MRTS station

velachery close to MRTS station

Looking at the above pictures does it make any sense to you.

We where at Eliphinstone Bridge Adyar,  yesterday evening. Bragadeesh Prasanna & your truly were in a discussion about the Theosophical Society Adyar, why it is still private and why the government should take control.

Before that this a response to the post of a CBCian member who made a post A travel to think

I appreciate her thought process, before being human, can you ever think of the nature, how long will we be exploiting the natures resources.

The photos which you see are dated 22/9/2009 and it belongs to vinodvv Photography, yes indeed my wedding, portraits & events online store. All rights reserved Copyright 2013. Sorry for that self promo.

If you looked at the photos who invaded that water-bed, The place was a natural reservoir. The moment I see these people, I don’t actually feel bad, but pity. The reason is that, It is their survival and their lively hood, And the bloody thing is that they compete with them selves and have pathetic life.

Let me illustrate with an example, I had a plumbing work to be done at my home, There is a place in Villivakkam where the Jantha stands and looks out for work, If the mastri picks up you are lucky, if not…

I was unlucky for the day. I picked up a guy after all the people have been chosen by the Mastri. He came along with me, saw what has to be done, He said, he had to buy the materials, I had to give him an advance, to buy materials.

My unlucky time was that I had a 500 rupee note and no other change, I had drop my son at school, so left to school. You know what happened?

NOTHING, he was habitual drunkard, as soon as he saw that 500, his cartoonish voice balloon said, “laddu thina asaiya”

If at all, if you intend to help them, educate their children, you help them, nothing will change. It is because of their attitude.

Well about the nature, It know what to do to man. If not man know how to take care of himself

Yesterday evening 9 of us from CBC had been there at the Elphinstone bridge adyar, It was a planned one, we wanted to know its current status and how was maintained. Here are few photos

Bottom left and right – are unused Public toilet in bad shape

Opposite side view of the river

View from the bridge

Half way, a tunnel view, close to water pipes

A tunnel kind of construction for undertaking repairs of water pipe

A view of the bridge

Side view of the bridge

It is a wonderful view from above the bridge because of the construction to protect the water pipes, But have heard stories of illegal activities happening after 6:00PM, I can’t comment, unless verified. But I saw old aged men and women who use this place for a good walk.

For fun

You could get creative out here, like the photo above

All rights reserved, Copyright 2013 VinodVV photography. Yes, I do wedding, portraits and event photography apart from street photography.

1. It happened that a post on a facebook CBC group that A blog has plagiarized our member blog post.
2. Apart from that, I learned from and CBCian “Sylvian” that Google can also own your content and if needed they could use them for their own purpose if needed, that is what policy says.
3. For what you write, blogger or wordpress or any subdomain owners contribution improves ranking for the domain i.e wordpress.com or blogger.com etc

Here is what I learned, once I moved to my domain. What ever I write or the media belongs to me, all rights reserved.

Who should move to their own domain?

If you are casual blogger, occasional post and probably feel you would not make a dent in the universe, then it is a big no.
People who are trying to creating their own branding in any genre, name it fashion, photography, tech blogger etc, should plan to move.

How can you avoid plagiarism?

If you use wordpress CMS, there is a plugin available “Yoast WordPress SEO” under RSS feeds you could customize your URL, so what happens, if bots copy your content, still it points to your own domain and not his. I am sure, your design company could also write a custom plugin to solve this problem.

Click on the image to have a larger view.

So who is the content owner now?

It is you

What about your ranking for your work?

If you can write for a subdomain owner, why not for you and create own branding image.

It just happens all the time for a photographer alone. I have fought with a close friend right on Facebook and indeed lost  the entire confidence of his family. I lost him.

But the worst thing is that other professionals are not vulnerable to this kind of attack.

Why me?

A larger view of photos can be found here
This post is a continuation of  Chennai – Thanjavur Road trip No:1 – 2013

As I said we reached Karikal, had to meet a relative and from there we set out to Nagapattinam to reach Velankanni in the morning.

Velankanni is a commercial place, yet the temple didn’t sound any were near to commercial when compared to Tirupathi or other places. Devotees maintained silence and the place prevailed tranquility.

Seems like this place is the new Velankanni, there seemed to an existence of old Church in that vicinity. I heard it from an other friend who had been to both the Velankanni. I did miss to visit this Church.

This photo should give you an idea about the old shrine no 4.

Layout of the Basilica complex. 1.Basilica, 2.Nadu Thittu shrine-site of second apparition, 3. Adoration & Reconciliation chapel, 4.Our Lady’s Pond-site of first apparition, 5.Stations of the cross, 6.Stations of the Rosary, 7.Stations of the Sacraments (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

When I said commercial it is because I did see few more Churches in the near vicinity, heard a story about locals demanding work in the areas of maintenance around the Church, the locals have seen the improvements, they feel there is a lot of money. Well I can’t prove you by numbers, Could be rumor floating around the Church.

Photography was not allowed inside the Church, meaning they didn’t want distractions for the devotees. All of you would have watched the live event of the Church broadcasted on TV networks.

Velankanni amazed me with the kind of architecture and how the place has been maintained.

Wish the beaches had been maintained properly, for the kind revenue coming in. Proactively the locals around could have take little care.

Finally a suggestion If you ever wanted to take a trip to Thanjavur, take the Trichy highway, Yes the highway is extended till Thanjavur, you will be making more miles, certainly your car doesn’t have to suffer the bad roads, neither the driver has to undergo fatigue.

I am not sure about the ECR route, If there is any one who has taken this route, please do comment.
Well now there aren’t good roads to Nagapattinam. Guess we will have to wait.

For many or almost any person who live, it is about living and passing on generations to come. I read a post of a young blogger Prerna ,I am quite amazed by her thought process. I am about to answer a portion of her question – old age.

Once I was like her, liberated, lived my life, took life head on. Yes, I was the King at home, until now.

Age is catching up, I realize my body doesn’t go along with my mind. Yup, I am still young by mind.  I am about to tell you my experience, Which will surely put me in shame, at least it will be a good thought process for the readers.

My friends couldn’t believe, that my Mom and yours truly don’t get well along. She is sweet, I too love her, just that she get on to the nerves . It is because she loves me tooooo much, at all times she doesn’t want me to get hurt. I am still a boy for her.

Incident:
My kid was growing under my parent’s vision, which I didn’t like. My first son did some thing mischievous, I scolded him. She couldn’t take it. We fought over the issue. My parent left my home, Well they are at my native place now, awesome home when I want retreat, I spend some time there. Currently I have one satisfaction, they don’t get to know my pressure which I now undergo, else they would feel depressed for each and other thing and spoil their health. They are happy, they call up, talk to us. I am the one who feels guilty as charged for not taking care of my parents.

This is what happens when you don’t respect elders, why would they need to put up with you.

Remember one thing – You too are getting old, You too will have the same situation, facing your son or daughters. What you teach and behave is what your children do to you.

Yes, everybody feels insecure, when age catches up.

I will tell you about another incident of an unknown friend, She fought with her in-laws over custody of her children, she even went a head a complained at police station. People who provoked her are happy at home with their families.

What her husband and her in-laws undergo the public embarrassment did take a toll on her family life. Will not certainly share what she is going through. Some one’s misery is always happiness for public.

It should be worth fighting for, not for some small issues, Life threatening ones. Do fight it seriously. At times being submissive does means you lost the fight, at times it means you respect them, at times you forgive their ignorance, at times you teach you children how to be submissive.

Here is my take on forefathers ideas and questioning self why they did this?

I am sure most of you know what this is?   but do you know what for?

was it to drive evil spirits – hell not.

It was to drive lizards, files. The bright color made it look venomous and smell of citric acid to keep away flies.  

By the way where is the righteous place to place this, that I leave it for you to answer.

Now you may ask why place on the truck

OK, Ok the lemon and green Chilies are missing. Our Kollywood actor Vivek makes fun of this. Any guess?
People are easily associated with fear, If evil spirits are driven away for home why not for the truck. Hope you get it. BTW where is the Lizard and flies near the truck.
Either our ancestors where worried about trade secrets or lazy enough to communicate through generations