Vasanth's think pad

NoSQL at Twitter (NoSQL EU 2010)

2011-01-10T00:11:00.001-08:00

Thought of sharing this for a long time. A very nice case study on NoSQL usage at Twitter. With such an humongous data; Facebook & Twitter's obvious choice should be and is NoSQL. Facebook has started using Hadoop for messaging. And this case study shows the various DBs that twitter uses for its specific needs.

All business including Enterprise should re-look at their Database needs; check out their DB performance especially the load and understand if NoSQL will suite their business requirement and switch over at the ideal time. NoSQL is not an complete replacement of any SQL DB. It has its own limitation and so an analysis is much required in switching over.

NoSQL at Twitter (NoSQL EU 2010)

View more presentations from Kevin Weil.

Introduction to Facebook Application development

2011-01-08T01:05:00.001-08:00

It was long due to publish this presentation on my blog. I prepared this to present at the 2nd edition of Facebook Developer Garage, Chennai edition. I also happen to be the organizer of the event. Let me know your thoughts.

Introduction to Facebook Application development

View more presentations from Vasanth Kumar.

My first communication with Anu (finally!!!!)

2010-07-20T09:19:00.000-07:00

In the last few months there were so many enquiries from my friend to check if I have started to speak to Anu. In fact there were few who called me just to know this. And to be serious i didn't know why should I call Anu and what should I talk about? When everyone around me spoke in the same voice explaining why should I call Anu before marriage. Couple of their explanation made sense to me. One of their point is... since Anu has to come down stay with me in my house (along with my parents.. in Indian tradition parents stay with son as a joint family) after marriage, I should talk to her before marriage and make her comfortable being with me. Just for her to get rid of new environment syndrome. And their second point is... how would I be comfortable sharing the stage to a stranger on the event (marriage, reception). Both were valid and now i have no justification why i shouldnt call Anu.

So roughly after two months from my engagement, I finally sent her my first message (sms) through my mobile. Thought I should record that conversation as-is without editing and here it is...

Jul 14, 2010 9:19:21 PM
Vasanth: Good time to talk? – Vasanth

Jul 14, 2010 9:22:49 PM
Anu: Hey will call you back after 11.15 pm. In a team meeting right now.

Jul 14, 2010 9:26:05 PM
Vasanth: OK catch u

Jul 14, 2010 11:14:49 PM
Anu: Are you awake

Jul 15, 2010 3:08:43 PM
Vasanth: Sorry! I slept. Thought ur phone will wake me up.

Will be busy in meeting btw 4 – 7 pm. What time is good time to call in the day?

Jul 15, 2010 3:19:12 PM
Anu: Hey I knew you must have slept and would hav been busy in d morning. My shift hours is 2.30pm – 11.30pm. I got this shift hours coz it is convenient for me to start on Friday night and return on mon afternoon to office. Will be free after 11.30 pm. Give me a call if you are awake after 11.15pm tonight.

Jul 14, 2010 3:54:09 PM
Vasanth: Will try to be awake. Else will call you @ 12:30pm or 1pm tomorrow.

Jul 15, 2010 3:54:55 PM
Anu: Sure. Will wait for your call.

Jul 16, 2010 1:50:18 PM
Vasanth: Sorry! again didn’t call u J

Jul 16, 2010 1:51:55 PM
Vasanth: Going for lunch. I think u would be traveling

Jul 16, 2010 2:42:46 PM
Anu: Stop saying sorry J There was a power cut at my pg so I came to office at 8.30am itself and preparing for Information & Storage Management certification. Thought of going for lunch at 2pm by then our manager had an informal discussion and just completed. Call me anytime later when you are free.

AND THEN WHAT??????????

Finally I called her up the same day @ 6.30 p.m. and spoke to her for half an hour on some serious subjects :)) Man, thats why I keep saying I dont know what to talk!! :) May be next time i should talk a better and lighter subjects :). Between, only later I realized that it took us 11 sms communications to get on to a phone.

P.S.: Radha, Have to say Sorry! again :). Hope you don't mind publishing our conversation on this public forum.

Facebook Garage Chennai edition, what went?

2009-04-01T06:06:00.000-07:00

Good! Finally got to write on the recently concluded Facebook Developer Garage, Chennai edition which happened on March 15th 2009. Wow! We were pleasantly surprised to see 50+ developers / tech enthusiasts get together, discuss, demonstrate their facebook apps, present topics on Facebook development. It was such a cool gathering, rightly named a Garage. Kiruba as usual :) took the lead in opening the doors, a welcome note announcing the event tag as #facebookgarage for tweets and then followed a brief introduction session.

Then Mukund Balasubramaniam, CTO, Photon Infotech (the company that I'm working in) gave a key note first by welcoming the participant here (by the way as I said in my last blog, Photon Infotech is the Venue Sponsor for the event) and spoke about the Facebook development and Photon's association with Facebook app development and other Web 2.0 developments.

Then there was a quick poll by Kiruba on how many of you think Poke me, Poll me, Movie contest kind of apps are Spam? and the garage started being lively with lot of answers. Then started the presentation session, first by Thomas Jestin who won the French Facebook app contest, demonstrated his app. You know what! he ended his presentation by saying "Facebook will take over Orkut in India", what do you think? I'm in; but yes a long way to go.

Kiruba put forwarded a question to the participant on monetizing apps on Facebook. How good the return will be in the future! Then there was a general discussion on the new Facebook profile page, and the impact of Twitter on the profile. Then there was a question on Twitter taking over Facebook among the Social networks, for which there was a mixed response as expected. I'm a die hard fan of Twitter so you know which side I would have been. Then there was a discussion on Facebook privacy policy and Mukund was in for the topic quoting a example of how the privacy policy affected bringing in some apps for a Life Science projects, which Photon Infotech is currently developing.

Then Varun Krishnan gave a quick talk on Facebook on mobile. And about the recently released Facebook API for iPhone. Then he demonstrated one such Facebook app on mobile. Reminded me on the quote "World is so small right in your hand!"

Then we had our other special participant Philip Urech from Swiz (came all the way to attend this session) presenting us his experience on how United Nation used Facebook as the medium to create awareness on Nuclear disarmament. Isn't it cool to know! It demonstrates yet another time how Social networks were being used for Noble causes apart from having fun :). Then I & my team mate Manikandan demonstrated the power of Facebook Connect with live example(what else than Techcrunch's comment section, which was the first adopter of Facebook Connect). And as a take away from the garage, we also showed the code snippet, procedure to embed Facebook Connect in blogs & websites. Honestly, we just prepared the presentation while the event was already on. At the same time most of credit should go to Manikandan, he did amazingly well in explaining things.

Then came an electrifying presentation from Mukund, explaining the different Facebook development options we have from languages to pick to APIs and deep into cross domain issues and how Facebook handles it well and about the Facebook new event model. It was such a comprehensive presentation covering most of the topic Facebook platform to Facebook Connect.

Oh! Its already 4 hours and the time passed unnoticed! It was supposed to be a 3 hours event. That shows the deep involvement, interaction among the participants during the event.

Finally Kiruba & I gave a Thank you note and the participants responsed with applause for organizing the event. Kiruba displayed a book "Throwing sheep into the boardroom", a find of the day. Thats in my list to google out.

So, the Chennai edition of the Facebook developer garage officially closes down. Had one of my great day :) Thank you all.

So, Am I done for the day! No, I then headed up to the Chennai Tweetup covered well here in Srini's blog.

Look out for more photos & videos on the Facebook event page here

Facebook Developer Garage Chennai edition

2009-03-09T07:54:00.000-07:00

I have been keenly following BarCamp, BlogCamp & other such events for quite a few years from now, may be just before I started blogging. And I should say, The Knowledge Foundation being one of the main organizers for these event's Chennai edition's is keeping up the momentum all these years with some or the other event round the year. In mid 2006, I & my friend were discussing if we should participate in Proto.in 2006 edition to showcase couple of business ideas that we had that time; but somehow we couldn't able to make it to the event for various reasons, primarily among them being a higher priority tasks that came our way to work on. These Camps which are typically organized in an unconference model attracts Tech enthusiast, geeks, bloggers from across India.

Knowledge Foundation along with Social Media Group is organizing first Facebook Developer Garage, Chennai edition on March 15th. And this time, not only am I going to participate in the event but also being part of organizing the event. I had discussion with organizer of The Knowledge Foundation and my company (Photon Infotech Ltd) management and could quickly able to get permission to host this event in my company. A special thanks to Photon management since they took very less time considering and approving the request. Its show the great level of support they have for such events & initiatives. Photon Infotech Ltd by itself is a pioneer in Web 2.0, Open Source, Social media, SEO consulting & services space. They have sound knowledge on Facebook app development and so there's more the reason why its ideal to host the event from Photon facility. Also special thanks to Kiruba(from The Knowledge Foundation), it was much easy communicating with him and getting the event hosted from Photon facility.

Looking forward to the event. Hope to meet fellow facebook developers & those interested there.

More information on the event...

Event
Facebook Developer Garage, Chennai edition

Where
Photon Infotech Private Limited
(Right next to Arvind Theatre)
No. 2/102, Photon Towers,
Old Mahabalipuram Road,
Karapakkam, Chennai - 600096
Venue map
Photon on Google map

When
Sunday, the 15th March 2009. 2.00 p.m. - 5.00 p.m.

Hosted by
The Knowledge Foundation, Social Media Group & Business Blogging

P.S: I suppose, I'm the first to cover the event :)

Updates:
Official Event page

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=56407852791&ref=ts#/event.php?eid=56407852791&ref=ts

http://wiki.developers.facebook.com/index.php/Current_events

Wait a minute! Technically, what am I good at?

2008-10-28T22:13:00.000-07:00

In the initial part of my career (that's almost last 9 years now), I was predominantly working on System side programming using C, C++, Perl in UNIX based systems. I should say it was one of the most satisfying part of my career as a developer. Days that I still remember, cherish and share with all my team mates who worked in the latter part of my career. Ask a C, Perl developer why he enjoys coding that too on a linux based systems to be precise! Then came my Web career with or without choice. When I decided to start my own company I didn't have much choice than developing web based products & taking up web based projects primarily because web products are the easiest of all to market and web space had & still has plenty of opportunities to unearth and explore at. Having started working in Web products, starting by learning whats Web 2.0 features, RoR(!), PHP(!), web services, APIs, social networks, etc. I started liking web space, primarily because you can quickly develop products and see the results for yourself visually. Thats the self satisfying part. My first lesson was to create simple webpage without any annoying colors, images & primarily sticking to white background and bigger font thats using headers as much as possible and separating styling out with a separate css. As I learned more, we started adding more Web 2.0 features like Tag clouding, blogs, forum, wiki, embeddeding external services, then SEO, Social Media and recently to much deeper topics like OpenSocial, oAuth, OpenID, and yet-to-get-to-my-brain areas like Semantic Web! :) Thats a relatively good transition and I think I'm happy now that I decided to move to web space and could able to explore this big world. But yes, if I continue to be a developer I still would love to be a system side programmer. Anyway! so, whatz next? After all these, I could only manage to be a half baked System side programmer & a half baked Web programmer :), so may be I should stick to Web & explore more than taking up something unexplored! But again I'm not sure if I'm right in sticking to web space! but would love to be that way until I wake up one fine day, have a different thought :)

P.S: All these while, I forgot I'm a Project Manager now. How did I get there! Will blog about it next!

My first try at online movie ticket booking

2006-08-30T20:08:00.000-07:00

We never used to purchase ticket online mainly due to the fact that most of the movie we watched until now were planned at short notice. So, we end-up purchasing the ticket mostly in black & occasionally at the counter. This time there was a huge expectation for Vettaiyadu Vilaiyadu (a tamil movie)... as there was always for kamalhaasan movies in chennai and this time the director of the movie is none other than the much talented Gautham Menon, so there is less to tell you about the expectation, the movie created. Being a chennai'ite i was also one among the most eager'ed to watch this movie and so i tried to book the ticket for last weekend which was the first weekend after the movie release... but to my dismay my broadband connection was not sufficient enough to even open their home page. All my tries to enter the website were in vain. By the time i managed to enter their website, I was surprised to see all the tickets booked for that weekend. This made me wonder how come the administrator & the developer's behind the website were less bothered on page loads and in general the load of the site as such. The initial load of the website in bringing up the first page was very high since they are trying to retrieve all the information about the show availability at one strech. Either they have to make a better strategy or if they want to stick to their design... they have to put in high performing servers to balance the load.

Anyway without loosing hope, i tried to book ticket for this weekend as booking for this weekend opens today... but again i couldnt able to even reach the first page of the website. There is no point in blaming my broadband connection since there will be lot of people who will be trying to book through their dial-up connection and it is upto the site administrator to manage the website load. Finally, my friend thought the website is hopeless and went directly to the theatre to book the tickets in-advance for friday show. For me, it was one another bitter experience at our booking sites... earlier i had a bad experience in our railway ticket booking site www.irctc.co.in. but we don't have any other option than to appreciate its purpose for now.

** the website i was refering here is that of Satyam theatre, Chennai (may be)reachable at www.thecinema.in. But at the same time I should frankly admit that, other than the time taken to load the first page... the look & feel (cum) the logic of the entire site is cool.

A day out in ECR

2006-08-17T04:25:00.000-07:00

I should admit ECR* is a very beautiful/scenic road to drive-thru, but i never expected to spend most of my day just in that road stretch. Yes. Senthil, a college friend of mine planned to treat us on August 13th for his up-coming marriage. And i gave him an idea of spending a day in a resort since the climate in chennai started to dip and so we thought it is a good season to start pondering in resorts instead of our usual get-together / treat venue's like restaurant, mall, cinema hall, etc... which we choose earlier to avoid exposing ourself to chennai heat.

Somehow... When we planned the trip we didnt expect a tough day ahead. We started our plan by zero'ing on Golden Sun resort as the venue for our trip. Golden Sun is situated 3 kms before Mahabalipuram. The resort is both economical and at the same time contains all the facilities that we expected like swimming pool, restaurant, Volley, TT court & a beach front. And all these comes in just 200 bucks, which is way less than a single buffet meal in reputed Star hotels. In my previous visits, I never used to book the resort prior and so did i even in this trip. But to all our surprise... atleast to me, when we reached the resort and enquired for admission, we got a bad news that the resort is blocked for a party. I was initially very confident in getting admission to that resort since i thought the resort is less visited by people for it is geographically located far from chennai. But all our predictions went wrong and we didnt have a proper Plan B to switch-to. And only alternative plan we had was to go to Sterling Resort which is situated right in the town of Mahab's. But when we enquired, they said they charge 400 bucks per person. Damn... it was twice our planned amount and since it was Senthil's treat, we preferred not to put a huge burden on him. And we started enquiring more resorts on our way and found Silver Sand resort to be much cheaper at 30 bucks per person for admission. Since we were already in Mahabalipuram, we finished our lunch there (Yes.. it was already noon by the time we managed to find a resort :) ) and returned back to the resort. I should say it is a cool place in the context that we had almost everything like football, volley court & a beach front for just 30 bucks. Most of our gang spent their time playing Volley ball & some ventured into the sea. Some even stayed in the sea for almost 5+ hours continously. And coming back to our volley ball court, people started pulling each other legs for their world class stroke, which at some instance even reached the corners of the resort. Somehow, the match drew at 5-5 game points and both the team were happy. I should say it was rather a funny game than a serious one, even though there were some who keenly followed the scores. After the game, the remaining gang also ventured into the sea and were there for the next hour or so. And then we had hot coffee relaxing in front of the beach. Ofcourse, coffee came for an extra 20 bucks. But having a coffee in front of the beach relaxing looked a must & thats why we went for it.

Alas... it became one of a notable trip to remember in the days to come (Or) at the least it will be remembered whenever we think about Senthil's marriage treat.

* ECR is East Coast Road that connects Chennai with Mahabalipuram.

I'm feeling Office sick

2006-08-15T08:09:00.000-07:00

Office sick !! Ever heard about it ? Some might ! It's very similar to 'home sick'. For those who stay far away from their home... used to think & miss their home alot & they will be very tempted to return back to their home at any cost. That temptation & loneliness is termed as 'home sick'. And similarly, let me add 'office sick' as a phrase to the dictionary by synonym'ing it with a person who long-for working at office rather than from home given the situation that he spent all his career until then in an office environment and is in trouble to get used to work from home. So having explained what is 'Office sick', let me use the term directly for the remaining part of this post.

So, When i started thinking why I'm feeling office sick and how to recover from it, the very question came to my mind is what did i have special in office that i miss at home. Is it the infrastructure? the air conditioner? the snacks? or the colleague? Even though colleague came last to my mind... i probably think it was them who i miss in my day to day activity. I somehow had a comfort feeling when i had someone next to me while i work @ office. On an average i used to work 12 hours a day when i was in office... but out of which i lose 4 hours in coffee, lunch, snacks, chatting, etc. And again in the remaining 8 hours i should admit honestly that only 6 were productive hours. But at the end of the day... how along we slog doesn't matter & we all have our own targets to achieve for the day and achieving that is what matters. Somehow I managed to achieve all my targets @ work for the last six & half years. But now... when i do my own business @ home, I slip many targets even after knowing well that achieving those targets will directly benefit me. Not sure... now many days do i need to recover from it. Probably it will be overcome in the due course when the business heats up (or) when we move into a proper office space.

Are Mutual funds subject to market risk ?

2006-08-01T09:51:00.000-07:00

Whenever we hear this statement in the radio or probably a TV... we ignore it or the pace at which they announce this dialogue in the ad forces most of our consciousness to ignore it. I have little faith in the market analysis & report most of our fund office come up with solely due to the fact that market analysis they do is only based on the market environment as on that particular day and there is a high probability of deviation that could happen in the days that follows it. So, Should we really consider these reports as the basis for our investment. My reply based on my experience is 30% in favour of it and 70% against it. And that too the reports that came pre-May 2006 proved a total failure in its projection due to the Stock market melt down in the mid-May. I was one among the losers in that crash.... (or) should I ask did anyone survive the crash ? the questions goes even to the fund managers & Stock gurus. I bet everyone had a share in the damage. Again there is no point to blame the FII's for the situation because it is an expected move from them and from any foreign investors let it be in the Services, IT, Automobile (or) any sector you name it. They have less indian values and they are here not to build our nation than to just extract the most benefit out of a growing nation. If they can move their jobs from their own homeland to come here to benefit from our services, why not they move one day from here when our economy saturates (or) when the inflation increases and when they find our market non-conducive for their services industry. Anyway coming back to our business, there are ample reasons why an analysis may go wrong. Starting from a drop in oil price to a increase in dollar rate, every minute entity movement in a market determines the trade. But, I'm not here to say that analysis is completely wrong. The analysis may be correct as on the published day but no one can forecast genuinely on what happens in the days to come starting from the non-conducive environment that currently exists out of Israel-Lebanon crisis to the bomb threat in British flights. Each of these factor determines the movement in market and all these cannot be exactly predicted. So, let me finish by stating that analysis may stand invalid at many occassion. So, if an analysis of a fund manager (who has 10-15 years experience in this industry and who posess an MBA or equivalent from a reputed institution like IIMs) can be proved wrong then there will be very less eye brows raised in proving a common man's prediction wrong in this volatile market. So, then the whole business of the Mutual Fund industry is questioned and i thereby finally conclude by saying that there is a big risk in investing in Mutual funds and the risk is just less than a yard distance from the risk taken by directly investing in stocks. As far as the stock investment, you just need to know the company where you are investing plus the prospect of that particular sector and the possible factors that will influence that stock. Just learn the basics before investing. Happy investing.

The winner of the FIFA World Cup 2006 issssssssssssssssssss Itaeeleeeeeeee

2006-07-15T10:20:00.000-07:00

Wow !! what a great turn around. You know what... I almost stated 8 teams as my favourite to win this World cup in my last post. But to my complete surprise... the team which was not in my list ... yes the Italian has won this championship. First of all, I should appreciate their tactics. They marched very strongly from the very start of Round 2. Cannavaro is ofcourse one of the well deserved Captain to lift this year's World Cup. Hats off to his defence all through the World cup games.

This tournament was notable for the number of yellow and red cards given out. Players received a record-breaking 345 yellow cards and 28 red cards, with the match between Portugal and the Netherlands accounting for 16 and 4, respectively, by itself. It was not a big surprise for many to see an europian side to win this tournament in an european soil with a comfortable number of support. But, I still feel bad for the Argentine side who I think even out-did the brazilian, Spanish & Italian sides in this world cup. Hard luck they sent Requelme & Hernan Crespo to rest in the last 15 minutes thinking that they have already won the match. But to everyone's surprise... German bounced back and won that quarter final. Having the like of Messi in the substitute chair for most of the tournament should make one wonder what a strong contingent they have floated in the field. Have to say that i was totally moved by their exit in this tournament. My big cheers to the Argentine team in this world cup. They indeed deserved a win in this tournament. By closing this post, once again my wishes to the champion of this tournament Itaaaaleeeeeeeee.

It's football flu spread all over

2006-06-23T06:15:00.000-07:00

Highlights on the last day of Round -1 in Football World Cup 2006:

I was very much expecting Czech to move to the next round, but felt bad for they got disqualified in the first round of this world cup. Worried... bcos, I may not be able to see Koller, NedVed & Rosicky further in the game. A small mistake in their match vs Ghana has taken them to this situation even though Petr Cech did his best to help Czech, by blocking lot of goals from i should say an alltogether makeover'ed Ghana side. Even though they played well in the match vs Italy, at the end of the day... goal only decides a team's victory and failure. Hard luck Czechs.

Brazil is slowly re-gaining their touch and both the goals of Ronaldo (in their match vs Japan) made his critics silent and pushed him along with Mueller as the leading over-all goal scorer with 14 goals in his cap in World Cup matches and the highest goal scorer for his country "Brazil" surpassing Football legend Pele's earlier record. All the best brazil for the days to come ahead in the game.

And next comes the Argentine, famous for their Latino short-passes hoping to surpase European long passes. And ofcourse one of my favourite footballer in this world cup "Riquelme" his their to act as the backbone for Argentina. And having star player like Riquelme, Crespo, Lionel Messi, Saviola at their dispense.. they look to be one of the strong contender for this world cup at this situation. And their exhibit of team effort in their match vs Serbia & Montenegro also needs a special note here.

Spain also needs a special mention here for their splendid display vs Ukraine and their great come back game vs Tunisia. What a disastrous match it would have been for Spain haven't Raul hit a late strike and what a relief it was for the Spaniards when Fernando Torres came up with a splendid goal and later turned a penalty into a goal. Raul "the all time lead goal scorer for Spain, who was once considered to be the best in the world in the likes of Zidane, Ronaldo, etc." comeback in-form is seen as a relief for an already strong Spain force.

And last but not the least, the host Germany also has a good chance of winning this world cup for having shown an un-commandable exhibit of talent in their first round of this on-going world cup 2006. Having the likes of Miroslav Klose (the leading goal scorer with 4 goals as of now in this world cup), Lahm, Ballack, Podolski, Jens Lehmann, this strong team is a clear contender for this world cup. All the best Germany.

And ofcourse, not to mention... England & Netherland also are in the race to lift the 2006 world cup (or) atleast move till the semi finals. The star studded side "England" with Beckham (whose performance in the round one till now looks eye catching), John Terry, Lampard, Gerrard, Rooney just need a little more touch and team work to make it to the finals and lift the world cup. At the same time with the likes of Nistelrooy, Robben, Persie in their side, Netherland also has a pretty good chance. Not to displease the swedish fans... Sweden also looks good with experienced Larsson, Fredrik Ljungberg, Allback at their dispense.

Having all said, what a glorious games are ahead just before moving to the next round of this thrilling world cup 2006. I can't resist and am nervous in-deed with Spain & Brazil has my favourites in this world cup. For watching a game without having any favourites is like eating a banana with its skin. Worried not to mention Argentina as my favourite -- after seeing their performance till now-- but i cant keep choosing too many teams as my favourite team so stopping now with Spain & Brazil. But my best of luck is there to all the contenders.

Get-together at Hogenakkal

2006-04-26T06:03:00.000-07:00

contents to come...

A short trip to Pillayarpatti

2006-04-26T06:02:00.000-07:00

contents to come....

Get-together at Munnar

2006-04-10T03:17:00.000-07:00

It was way long since we (College mates) went out for a long trip after our college days. Even though we were in touch by having short get-togethers frequently in & around chennai, our impending wish was to have a bigger trip... offcourse... away from chennai. This time, when 11 of our batch mates met in Dhabba express for a short get-together (organized by Nagaraj), Sathish initiated an idea of getting together for a long trip. Excited by the idea, many voiced in favour of it and quickly suggested many spots... of which our favourite spot 'Kodaikannal' was rejected only due to the fact that it was our last get-together spot indicentally. The next in our list was Munnar... even though many heard about it but don't know much about it. So, people went on a fact finding mission to know more about Munnar. All searches to Munnar in google linked it with Periyar Dam (or) Thekkady. But, since our friends are working in different sectors, getting leave for couple of days is itself a big deal. So, considering the fact that the trip can only be for a max. of 3 days (due to unavailability of leave for few) we started devising a schedule (initially it looked like a tight plan for me) having Munnar alone in mind ignoring the idea of bundling thekkady into our itenary. So, we started the plan by booking the To & Fro tickets.

Even though it consumed a considerable amount of effort/time in devising the plan for this trip, the plan looked very simple after preparation. After booking our train tickets to dindigul, we blocked our accomodation for 3 days and 2 nights in Las Palmas hotel. We were 12 people and on an average they charged 400 rupees per day per person on a three per room sharing basis. the rooms were in deed very comfortable. Our overall plan was to travel from chennai to dindigul through train and then board a pre-booked Tempo traveller waiting for us in Dindigul station to continue the remaining journey from dindigul to Munnar and vice versa plus use the same van for sight seeing purposes. We initially considered a lot of other commutation options and finally zeroed down on this option. Good that our choice was later found to be a wise one after completing our trip since it saved us lot of time, money and it was also found comfortable since a considerable slice of our travel time was spent in train (and train travel is generally considered as one of the most comfortable one, only due to the fact that they provide a berth to sleep).

Since Munnar is a small & pretty town, our plan of spending 3 days there was found enough to cover most of the sites in & around munnar. Frankly speaking, there were only few spots in Munnar. So, a plan of 3 days & 2 nights in Munnar is more than enough for any kind of visitor. More than spending time in visiting spots, we spent them in freaking out with our college mates. As i said earlier, it was long time since we got-together and so, it was natural to spend more time in chatting and sharing our life experience's since our college days. Notably on the night of 4th March, when everyone gathered in Nandha's (& his room mates) room to chat, people used the opportunity to lecture on their life experience with their half conscious mind and a special note should go to Sunder for almost submitting a white paper on the topic "My life experience: Volume I" :-). I have specifically indicated 'Volume I' since after loosing patience, the rest of the team have to pitch in quickly to stop Sunder's lecture half way through.

In short, the trip was unforgettable and almost comparable with our last trip to Kodaikanal.

Time to start a blog

2006-04-06T02:04:00.000-07:00

Not sure how serious i'm in creating this blog & maintaining it. But the days ahead will only reveal the actual truth.