What would 4 KG of old books fetch?

You must be thinking what kind of post is this with this type of title.

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

Nature Vs Man – perungudi, Chennai

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

Velankanni – extended trip no:1 – 2013

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.

Chennai – Thanjavur Road trip No:1 – 2013

      

 

Photos are in random, you can have a larger view of the photos here 

This is the first time I started later part of the day for a trip, usually I start by 5:00 AM just that I had to pick my in laws from Railway station and they too where joining our trip. We started around 9:00 AM. Here is what the plan

1. Chidambaram temple
2. Kumabakonam lots a lots, wanted to see at least one
3. for sure the Big temple at Thanjavur
4. And for the large shrine at Velankanni  at Nagapattinam

that was my bucket list for 2 days. They say it takes 5 and half hours of journey to Trichy by road, and I heard the route to Kumbakonam was bad, Chidambaram route i.e the ECR was dangerous. So finally deviated from our Chennai – Trichy toll road to Panruti and all the way to Kumbakonam. But on the way, we realized that all temples would be close and open only at 4 PM so we drove down to Thanjavur

Just before I forget, let me tell you about the roadways, On the way Kumbakonam, Panruti was a nice place, village where awesome sight, green, greener & serene. The roads where bad that it woke up the passengers at sleep when a pot hole was hit. My average KMPH reduced from 80-20 KMPH. I was wasting lot of time, PETROL and my effort in driving

The very view of the temple from the road side was so huge that I realized it would take a minimum of an hour to see the temple site. True it took that much time.

My experience on the temple

The Brihadeeswara temple also called as the Big Temple is true sight which would gasp your breath, sculptors and the vastness of place with well-balanced space between temples of worship. It was peace when you look at the Nandi and the Lingams placed around the main shrine. By the way there are awesome paintings on the walls, few faded but still it was a feast for eyes.

I sure missed the Thanjavur Palace, also called as Maratha palace it is in close proximity of the Brihadeewara temple. But time was running out. We had to reach Karikal the same day, had accommodations there, so started from the Brihadeeswara temple i.e the Big temple of Thanjavur at 5:30PM. When we where at Karikal it was 10:00PM 

Will post things about Velankanni in the next post, till then take care watch this space.

 

What Chennai means to me as a Photographer?

This post is a part of an initiative by Chennai Bloggers’ Club; a Facebook community for like-minded bloggers. Around 30 odd bloggers are writing about, What Chennai Means to Them.
This tag was before taken up by Jothi Vel Moorthi – http://jovemac.blogspot.in/ Who says “who never blogs ” fortunately he does blog occasionally like me.

Mera Bharat Mahan. <3

How I got interested in Photography ?

Photography is my passion now my livelihood. I have faint remembrance of yashica electro 35 a range finder, film camera which was a proud and prestigious possession of my uncle who had just returned from gulf. The best part is that very few camera owners knew about the working technology. Most of them flaunt by taking few clicks of their relatives,friends and soon on. Finally when they are broke would sell them off.

I own one such vintage camera after my marriage. My father in law, who was a proud owner, never sold it nor gifted it to me or rather say that i forcibly took it from him for the love of photography.

For my 1st son’s birthday I bought a Olympus sp 500uz power shot type camera which was slightly better than the point and shoot. That marked the end of film rolls at my place. What I loved this camera was the macro shots and manual controls which a dslr has but had to dig in to menus to get the right settings.

When my 2nd sons was born I was still hanging around with my Olympus, a colleague brought a canon 1000D he took few photos of us. The picture quality and the results prompted me to buy the Dslr.

So I bought my canon 500D been shooting since 2007.

I always wanted to set out early in the morning for my photo shoots. Learnt that I had to kick two of my bad habits

1. Smoking cigarettes
2. Consuming alcohol

The side effects of late night alcohol consumption is that, if you tend to wake early you have bad head ache, yes I meant the hang over. Were as for the Cigarettes, if you smoked early morning, you know what happens, Nature call you first. lol.

Now I pass the blog tag to

VJ Eshwar, Loves to write a lot but fails to print the publish button

Reaching God’s Own Country

In the recent times, I have traveled by car from Chennai, TamilNadu to Thrissur, Kerala. For sure an unplanned trip to unavailability of train tickets had forced me to take my car.

The travel had helped my family to rejuvenate, healthy debates to long family conversations & plans for future to avoiding disasters.

Now to story, What I love about the road trip?
Of course it is the roads and road side scenery.  It is those broad and almost safe roads from Chennai till Salem, after which few developments on roadways, all the way till Coimbatore. The only feeling is that we pay more tax and still continue to pay whopping toll fees.

Once you reach Walayar, for sure you know that you have stepped in to God’s own country. Your car which was skimming on a buttered roadways at high speeds finally sees a narrow lane, filled with potholes, some patched and dangerously brushing buses which slide on the opposite side of the road.

Your average speed drops from 60 to less than 20KMPH.

What people of Kerala and it politicians have to know and understand?
Infrastructure, road developments & Power i.e Electricity. If Kerala starts to understand and even puts in 10% of the effort of what TamilNadu and Karnataka have been doing. They can make progress. I am sure the future developments will be bound to happen to Kerala after the much saturated neighboring states. For sure Kerala and its people will probably feel that pinch later for their unplanned developments in the State. Well for sure, Tamilnadu is feeling that pinch for every 2 hour power cut daily in the Chennai city, While Kerala seems like heaven for a scheduled split power cuts of half an hour in morning and night, for a consolidated one hour power cut in the state.

From Chennai to Coimbatore, I could reach for lunch in to day’s road conditions, for sure if Kerala thinks about infrastructure developments, I can make it up to Palaghat There is lot more to read in between the lines, Chennai – Bangalore 6 hours, their future developments could be just 2 hours. It means business.

16 kids, 9 Men, 9 Women @ MGM Resorts

25th of December last year we had been to MGM resorts for lunch, So this time we decided to have a get together at their resorts. It was a one day trip.

What I liked at MGM resorts?

1. The beach, well not that clean, for the guest area it is clean
2. The rooms, and their service. Liked it very much

Why MGM resorts doesn’t deserve to have families as clients

1. Awful bar and its bartender, for the size of a resort like that, it should be big. The Chennai City has much bigger bars. Trust me this place is so so crowded, The attitude of the bartender is like “we are free loaders”.
2. The children playground is good and decent play area, hope they don’t mind cleaning up the rust.
3. The food, last year’s lunch made us to stay, this year they are loosing all the nine families.

 

VinodVV Photography

Photography table top set up shared

Two days ago there was a power failure at my locality, I knew it was regular 2 hour power cut, so I had to kill time or rather make it creative.

Now for the set up
My room was dark, Things I had

1. Canon EOS 500D
2. Canon 18-55MM F3.5 – 5.6
3. Canon speedlite 580EX
4. Cactus wireless trigger
5. brown carton box
6. small table
7. tripod
8. Wireless remote
9. incense

Let me start from the table, I placed the brown carton box on one corner and placed Canon Speedlite 580 EX inside the box along with Cactus wireless receiver attached, placed the incense before the box for the smoke

Now on to the camera, attached Cactus transmitter and mounted on the tripod, framed the scene, set the camera in manual mode, Aperture F9, shutter 1/125, Don’t forget to set the lens auto focus to off, and try to focus on the edge of the box. One more thing on the camera you need to set up for remote control.

Check the Cactus wireless and transmitter are in sync, try trigger the transmitter while the Flash is turned on.

Move to your position and trigger via wireless remote.

P.S:

1. If your face is getting bleached i.e over exposed, try to move little further away or decrease the flash power
2. The brown box did a wonderful job of warming up the smoke.
3. A tap on the box triggered the dust, It was in dust for a long time.

Don’t meet with an Accident

It just happened that while traveling on DLF lift from 8th floor, I had to over hear an interesting conversation, the lift stopped at 6th floor 2 ladies stepping in.
Lady1: My husband was picking up and dropping her on his two wheeler
Lady2: Hmmm…n imagine the speed breakers and nasty roads
Lady1: I don’t mind that, He could have told me that he has been dropping her.
Lady2: Lucky that both escaped with a scratch.
Ting- The lift stopped at 4th floor. They both got down.

I couldn’t stop laughing at the conversation.

So what is the learning.

While traveling with a Girl friend drive slow, and be safe.

LOL.

Maruti rating has got to do with JD Power

For a month I have been researching on buying a new hatchback, had a Mahindra Renault Logan petrol GLX for 2 and half years and finally gave up on Mahindra’s marketing strategies of reducing the pricing of car. Imagine what happens to early adopters is a big middle finger.

My criteria was responsive, economical, spacious for 2 adults and 2 kids, good mileage and little occupy little space on parking.

Cars I had in mind where, Hyundai i10, Hyundai i20, Fiat Punto, Chevy Spark with gas, Maruti Alto, Maruti wagon R, Maruti Ritz and Maruti A-star.

The real battle was between Chevy Spark with gas and Maruti A-Star Vxi.

No rants out here. Maruti A-Star finally won my family’s heart, and I was happy that I did have to shell out much on the accessories. The deal had sun film control, PU steering grip, PU car seats, Car body cover, Pricol Remote locking and under chassis painting.

PU – imitation leather.

Finally had to give the feed back when people from popular vehicles people call me up, I said my rating was 6/10 for Maruti. The person who call me said it was a problem, check the rating which I have attached as image. I said Maruti has their rating system for which I will not respond. I had my own rating system were 6/10 was actually good.

These are marketing guys gimmicks. I have a feeling J.D Power satisfaction report has got to with Maruti rating system. Where every customer responds with 8/10 naturally J.D power will have to be biased towards Maruti. Check the link below

http://www.indiacar.com/jd_power/default.htm

check the "customer satisfaction index" for 2008. You will understand what I am referring to.

P.S: I believe Chevy Spark will do better in coming days. I received a call from Spark guys and they wanted to analyze on why they lost a customer. I told them about resale value, mileage. It was indeed a call I didn’t expect. I love their "Chevy" car design, interior, responsiveness and handling. Just that, this time it didn’t work out.

tags: Photography, Chennai, Cars, Maruti, Hyundai, Chevy, Fiat, JD Power, Customer Satisfaction

maruti a star

maruti rating card