Giri = Hill, Valam = circumambulation. Hence Giri Valam means circling the hill and Arunachala Giri Valam means circling the Arunachala hill traditionally done on the day of full moon. This is a monthly ritual at Tiruvannamalai , a temple town about 185 Kms from Chennai – and that’s the place I was at ,yesterday. Five of us were on for this trip – me,coni,sathish,anand and sathiyaraj. Seena and Sidharth were interested in coming.. but seena ditched it coz we were going by bus and nt a car. So I left home at 3.30 in the afternoon and boarded a bus to koyembedu from pallavaram. Anand n coni we already waiting @ the bus stop !! Sathiyaraj was already @ Koyembedu- he was standing in the Q to book tickets for the bus. It took , may be 45 minutes to reach there and satish had come promptly. Sathiyaraj was still standing in the Q – it was really really long, he had already moved till the counter and quit the Q without buying tickets.He had started it all over again from the rear of the Q !!! after may be half an hour , we got the tickets and boarded the bus coded “PP P”. The bus then travelled back through pallavaram,we knew this would happen, but if we were to board @ pallavaram- no seats would be left in the bus and we would have 2 stand for 4-5 hours!! We didn’t want to do it. The jorney was long.. the bus went on and on ….I was left with satish sleeping on my shoulder , the other friends on a three-seater to my right , coni’s radio with all signals out of reach and the pasengers sleeping . But through the window – was the beatiful moon ..wow. the entire disc illuminated! It was Jus me and her !! It was so amazing to keep staring at her!! Generally when guys do this,‘the SHE’ would walk away but this time, I was not snubbed .. this lady was coming with me all along… wonderful! Actuallt there were a lot of trees on the side of the road- trees with no leaves and left with branches alone, tall palm trees , dense ones!!…. And seeing her through those trees… it created a million patterns …as though dressed in different costumes!Sunk in dreams with this beauty , we reached our first stop .. at Dindivanam. It was 8.15 then. It was a lonely shop.. nothing to be seen for almost a kilometer from there! And wat stuffs did we get at the shop…. Brands that nobody wud have heard of.. see this - “Yellow Diamond Chulbulie” and “Rmans” mineral water. Yuk!!

But we had some natural stuffs there! This is anand eating “thenga” from the “elani”.

1 ½ hours from there, we reached Tiruvannamalai. We ate at a “kai yendi bhavan” there…. The place doesn’t have a good hotel to eat at.. If u were to enter a big hotel , it would only suck your time and money with no quality, so we opted to eat at the road side shop. It was 10.30 when we were done… we walked along.. and traditionally we stopped at the “erattai pilayar koil”( the twin god). Its believed that one has to pray here for a sucessful girivalam. We then proceeded to the Raja Gopuram, prayed there , and started to walk …. There are 8 Lingams – facing 8 directions around the Raja Gopuram and these are the major temples to be visited although there are atleast another 100 more temples through out the path. The first temple was that of east facing “Indiralingam” ….to be prayed for a heathy life. This lingam was placed below the road level…may be it has gone below the ground level due to modern buildings ..but still the gopuram was at par with today’s ground level.. I would inspect this the next time I go there. We walked a few more kilometers from there and by this time we had got a little tired .. satish wanted to drink tea… after hawking for it.. we found one. Had tea and started to walk again.

The next lingam is about a kilometer from there.. It’s the Agni Lingam – the only Lingam that’s on the Right hand side of the walking path. Hmm.. I later realised that this is the lingam for my “raasi”.This is the smallest of all the 8 temples.I guess, Tiruvannamalai actually represents AGNI , with four more temples around india each representing the other 4 boothams.. I m nt sure about this… but this is wat anand told me… that makes the temple more special ..So we sprinkled “Agni theertham” from the tank there!( A advise from anand: Never wash your legs there. Though most of the people do it there…we are not supposed to).. We walked further and it was exactly 12 now… we were sweating profusely.. We stopped again at this Sugarcane juice shop!!!

What would I call that juice – heaven?? Man…. I ve never had any other juice more quenching than that.. But we could afford to rest… we continued to the temple of “ Yama Lingam”.

As hinted by anand previously – It was pretty crowded!! People wanted to live looong !! Yama Lingam is worshipped for long life !! Next was Niruthi Lingam , the fourth lingam followed by Surya Lingam. This had a hanging vilaku(light) above it to symbolize the sun. we had crossed 7 miles by now…. We actually did something called “ Nandi muga Sevai” , when the mountain is viewed from a particaular spot- it looks like “Nandhi”.I forgot the spot actually ..but one cant find it by casual observation… I could see it only after Anand intepreted .Then was Varuna Lingam – the one for Coni’s sign.. Walking still further.. we visited the Vayu Lingam . By now ..satish got exhausted .. he sat opposite to this temple..relcutant to leave without rest.. but a few minutes of convincing.. he started to walk again !!! next was Kubera Lingam – the lord of bucks!!

This had the biggest crowd of all .. we stood in a Q to catch a glimpse of the lord.. It seems to be a common practice to fire coins on the lingam .. most of the people in the Q did !!! Kubera was the 7th.. we had one more to go and that’s “esanya lingam” the one for satish’s sign! and coincidently that falls outside the girivalam route!! We had walked almost 12 out of the total 14 kilometres now!! We had to stop again .. this time for Lemon Soda! This is anand..with lemon soda!!!

It was 2.30 now and I was the most exhausted of the five now!! My eyes had got red and I was getting sleepy too…sathiyaraj had taken lead long time bak and he was not with us!This is the tired ME…

and jus there we found this “Iduku pilayar temple” .

(the photo has come pretty bad … the following a picture taken by Velachery balu ….a popular photographer @ chennai..he has taken a clean shot of the temple)

Its belived that one must worship the Arunachala Hill from this spot. There’s a unique worship procedure at this shrine.There is a a small opening between two pillars . Enter this opening facing the hill and come out the other way without showing the back to the hill. Those who do this will get rid of future births. This is the symbolism behind Idukku Pillaiaar worship. I found this info on Agasthiar Magazine! We then proceeded to esanya lingam temple…. And We found this on the way

.. a small boy was sleeping on a bed of thorns!!! That sure is a painful way of worship! Eeks… a few minutes from there … we reached the Windy Esanya Lingam temple… Coni n I saw a “sangu” infront of the god… I asked him why and he too didn’t know why !! Some reading on the net and I found this -the temple is actually inside a crematorium . And “Sangu” is a blown upon death of someone! Hence the presence of the Sangu! We had seen all the lingams .but the pilgrimage is still not over.. One has to stop at the starting point ! 2 kms from there.. we were back at the raja gopuram passing thru the eratai pilayar koil !! It was 3.50 in the morning.. we had taken 5 hours for the walking… but it wasn’t over yet. Worshipping the lord inside the temple would culminate the pilgrimage in style.. so we didn’t want to go back.. but the temple would open only at 5.30 !! we had to wait for 1 ½ hours… We slept there.. where??? On the road side!! See .. this is me ,coni , sathish and anand sleeping with a Sidhar!!

There was previously a dog sleeping with us.. see this !!

We had to stand in a Q again to see the lord!! Sathish was still tired.. while we were standing in the Q .. this is wat he was doing !!

finally we got into the temple.. got a 20 bucks darshan ticket n bypassed some 2000-3000 ppl standing in the normal Q ! It was six in the morning !! after worshipping , we came out ..fully exhausted!I got a picture of the raja gopuram in full lights!.. we then went to anand’s Kula theivam temple – a typical Nagaa style temple (something u wud find in sithambara rahasiyam or Vidathu karupu) ..I took this snap there!I

wanted 2 take more photos… But I ran out of charge.we atlast caught a bus to chennai!!! All 5 were flat n we didn’t talk much .. all I knew was.. we sat in the last seat of the bus ( the one that acomodates 7 people) and crushed a guy sitting by the window by faling on him while asleep!!

That was the end of the trip — Over n out!!

I have been hunting for this movie for quite sometime .. and Jus found it in HariKrishna’s Hard disk.. The movie is about the early days of the personal computer industry – majorly depicted as a Digital War between Microsoft and Apple. I ve seen most of the Apple videos on Youtube , the 1984 Apple Key note presentation, the popular Apple advertisement , Boom videos of Jobs and a loads of others. Its very interesting to watch this movie if you are a computer buff and had delved into this rivalry enough. In the initial years of my college, I did know Microsoft and Apple were on the opposite sides, Apple always complaining about Microsoft stealing their GUI n etc., This movie is one of the best depictions of the rivalry. Hmm.. It was released in 1999 not as a commercial movie but as a docudrama. It starts with the shooting of Apple’s famous Advertisement , the one in which Apple shows how it plans to smack the Big Brother, IBM. From there , the movie shows a series of events to what led to the computers of the 90’s.This is the presentation and the Ad.

Steve Wozniak, the inventor is Apple I computer and co-founder of Apple is in narration mode , he describes about Jobs – how he was during the college and things they did together.. He says about how he , Jobs and his girlfriend dressed up like ppl from Alice in wonderland for a bunch of kids to make small time money and about steve being to Ashrams in India and doing really strange stuffs. Parallely , Gates ,paul and Balmer are at Harvard , with their attempts on building a computer. Balmer explains how Bill loved to play poker!

Hmm.. then Jobs are Woz have built a small personal computer which they showed to group of computer enthusiast .. the people are amazed and Steve and Woz end up getting orders for 50 of those.. right there! Only after that Woz realizes that all the company he worked for – HP , had first rights(intellectually ) to whatever he did. Woz has to show the computer to HP , who might adopt the technology and eat away the whole personal computer market. Jobs is pissed off at this point … Woz then presents the computer to HP only to return and say “ They hated it “ !!! .. The movie also shows Gates getting caught for over speeding and how he and chris went for a drive an bulldozers and bumped onto paul’s new car. I m not able write this like a story … Coz .. Its real, I ve read abt this stuff, seen in bits and pieces and all the events in this movie are so familiar.

There are a couple of stuffs I want to write about – The computer fair at San Francisco in 1977. It shows a formally Steve Jobs anxiously waiting for the fair to begin, when the doors are open every one rushes in directly to Apple’s Stall and Woz says “ Its practically being like a Rock Star”. Gates had his “Altair “ stall jus opposite to Job’s.. and the movie shows the stall absolutely empty with nobody!

The other one is when Bill visits Apple . Jobs notices them coming and remarks to an employee “ We have culture , they don’t “ . Jobs then invites Bill and introduces the macintosh team… Gates finds this weird Pirate flag at an employees desk ( as well on the outside) and asks what its about .. the employee explains that jobs used to say “Better be a pirate than to join the navy” .. Jobs then takes Bill to show something amazing … he says “ the ultimate , insanely great fusion of art and science “ and unveils the Macintosh !! Gates enquires how the mouse works and when an engineer tries to answer.. Jobs stops him in a rash tone “Enough ! “… There is a small conversation after this in which jobs says “ IBM. They are history , They are 1950s , they are ice America , a bloated enemy in a crumbling castle”… This part was so well shot ,I loved it — the background score is great, the situation is tense … It shows Bill gates on a Jealous Mode , thinking constantly from the inside .

Bill convinces Jobs that they could work together , and Apple ships are 3 prototypes of Macintosh to Bill Gates. All these converge to the climax of the movie… Bill and Blamer are at Huge Apple’s conference waiting behind the screens… The whole of the audience cheering up for Steve Jobs while he continues to talk.

An apple employee walks to bill and bal and says “Steve thinks IBM is the enemy , He doesn’t get it .. you guys are “ .. Copies of Windows had started to surface by the time and they had started to realize the similarities. Steve continues to address the employees and Introduces Bill to them as “friends at Microsoft” .Steve then shows up the preview of the ad on the giant screen , depicting IBM like the Nazis or something. The employee stands behind bill ..points to the giant screen and then to Bill conveying Microsoft are the enemies ! Balmer gets the pulse of the situation and asks if they had to be there.bill replies “Sometimes you deal them. Sometimes you fold them. Now’s not the time to fold.”

Immediately after the meet, Jobs too realizes that Windows has those similarities with Mac.. The argument unfolds .. I love this part …. Steve and Bill taking one on one…

Steve(S):I obviously made a mistake. I made a mistake.I trusted.I believed.Family?Maybe a Mafia family.You turn your back, and you get whacked.Our guys come back from Japan with this NEC……and it’s loaded with Microsoft programs.Your Microsoft programs.They’re almost identical to ours.

Bill Gates(G):There may be some similarities, Steve.

S :Similarities? Similarities? Try theft.

G(explains): Steve, all cars have steering wheels……but no one tries to claim that the steering wheel was their invention.

S: We have a contract, you and I.

G:Well, you should read it more carefully.

S:What is this?This is like doing business with… …like, a praying mantis.You get seduced and then eaten alive afterwards.

G: Get real, will you?You and I are both like guys that have this rich neighbor… …Xerox……that left the door open all the time.And you go sneaking in to steal the TV set. Only when you get there, you realize that I got there first.

I got the loot, Steve! And you’re yelling? “That’s not fair. I wanted to try to steal it first. “You’re too late.

Gates and Balmer walk towards the exit …

Steve says:We’re better than you are. We have better stuff.

G: You don’t get it, Steve.That doesn’t matter.

I love this part… It splendid to watch .. the director had built it up so nicely and any computer dude.. who knows Microsoft Vs Apple is naturally attentive to this part of the movie… The movie then traces back to 1997 when Apple and Microsoft have joined hands for a Editor program..and end there

Hmm… I loved the movie… I ve heard so much about these stuffs and to see them visually !! that’s a Digital Treat I would say !.. If are a computer dude… you can watch it once.. if u know more abt this rivalry … definitely worth watching more than once!!

There are scenes in the movie where Jobs is shown like a dude and bill like a nerd.. and bill always keeps worrying abt Apple ! I… was not pleased with those scenes particularly.

I jus transferred more than 20 GB of movies from Harikrishna’s Portable Hard-Disk and the first movie I saw from them was “Escape from Alcatraz”.I ve loved movies of the Escape and Robbery Genre – The Cube,Shawshank Redemption , Ocean’s movies , that Kim Basinger’s Robbery movie( nt able to recollect the name) and others. Wikipedia absolutely didn’t suggest the plot of the movie- It had very little information regarding it. Hmm… as a practice I attempt to watch movies as if I didn’t know anything about it .. In real sense .. I would mostly not behave like a smart ass when watching movies .. Coz there are a few movies that require you “not to guess the next scene” – if you do that, you ll loose the whole punch of the movie. It happened with illusionist for me… The moment the police officer would start to think of how he was fooled, I was able to connect the whole sequence of events before they flashed on screen…. Primarily comes after watching movies like usual suspects! So… at the start of the movie, I completely forgot abt the “escape” n “jail” movies I ve seen!

(The movie is inspired from this book of the same title)

The movie starts with the bringing of Frank Moris (played by Clint Eastwood) into the Prison of Alcatraz . Since the prison is situated at the middle of the sea, A small ferry takes people in and out of the Island – Frank arrives in a boat and is taken up the hill by a small van.

He is then taken down to the basement for checkup and then sent to a cell. All these depictions seem to be exactly the same as it was done in the prison ( Most of the sources on the internet suggest that these scenes were very close to what was happening inside the prison). When Frank morris is taken from the basement, the security guard operates a series of doors to enter further into the Prison. The scene was shot exactly to highlight the maximum security level at Alcatraz. There are scenes in this movie which one might find in other prison movies too. Frank is troubled by another inmate , who constantly threatens to hurt Frank physically. This almost happens in Shawshank Redemption , the lead get beaten up by an opponent gang. Frank then learns about how tight the security is… The guard : Prisoner ratio being 1 : 3 unlike other prison which would have the ratio as 1: 11 or more! A character in this movie grows a small mouse like the one in shawshank redemption grew a sparrow! Frank gets to work in the library, so does Andy in Shawshank! However , Alcatraz is very old movie – was released in 1979, and shawshank in 1994 !! So,Its my mistake of viewing the movies in inverted order .. kept feeling Alcatraz is inspired from Shawshank!

I would get down to the hacks they use, that’s what all are interested in.. Frank realizes that the climate is affecting the Prison’s walls, he says
“The moist air corrodes the concrete. The salt is rusting the metal.” .. He teams up with three more people , he first starts to dig around the prison grill using a nail clipper, later devices a small digging tool by welding the handle of the spoon and the blade from the nail clipper. He plot is to reach the roof top through a chimney.. they end up using fan motors for unscrewing , mix up concrete and paper from magazines to make a hollow head, one of the team guys used to be a barber who sticks hair to that head(not shown in the movie) . Since painting is allowed in the prison, they use the colors to give a realistic effect to the fake heads. They dig up holes in their cells covering them up using painted cardboard (made from paper n concrete).
On the day of the escape, Frank and two more guys manage to sneak out the cell and climb up the chimney, the fourth fellow who ends up coming late misses the attempt. They sneak up to the roof and descend to the shore of the island. From there, they escape in a raft made out of raincoats!! In reality, no one knows if they actually reached the city because its believed most of the inmates who attempted escape were drowned in the cold sea. But the escapes of these three men are regarded as one of the biggest escapes of the century!

In all , I would say  the movie was  great .. You Just have to forget the title that  suggests the inmates eventually  flee the prison and  if you watch the movie  like the smart ass- you are guaranteed of  Zero Thrill!!

“A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.

A robot must obey orders given to it by human beings, except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.

A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Law.”

Well, if you are a robotics freak or an average movie buff, u would have figured what I m talking about !! Those are The three laws of Robotics written by Isaac Asimov !! I have been in love with robotics for more than a couple of years now . If you are a robotic Dude in India , TRI workshops would be no stranger stuff ! Well… I ve attended them too. I ve attempted to construct a few and completely constructed a few.. My first bot was a crappy line follower that failed to follow any line! The problem with all these bots is that , u r not sure if they would work well all the time.. the manual solderings would come off screwing the whole circuit !! But these are integral part of building bots for amateurs (hmm…. Especially the ones who don’t use Lego Kits ).

Wall Climbing robots have been of some interest to me. There are a whole lot of labs attempting to build such bots. The most common inspiration for climbing robots are the Lizards. The robots exactly mimic these animal climbers. One of the famous robots built is from Stanford university. Its called the Stickybot and this is how he looks!

He’s got four mechanical limbs and a body that’s morphologically the same as a Lizard ! When the bots are mimicked, they jus don’t do it by the physical appearance , the Mechanism of Climbing is also recreated !

This is MIT’s snail bot - constructed to test the mathematical models of snail’s locomotion. It can climb, slime ,and slathered vertical walls.

Till recent years only two types of adhesion mechanisms have been used .. one is the magnetic adhesion.This is limited to situations where the surface is magnetic . The other type is “Suction Adhesion” , this involves the use of cups and small pumps to create vacuum inside the cup. This method is disadvantageous. Firstly , it takes time to generate pressure inside the cups , secondly , it can locomote only on smooth surfaces. If the cups cant stick to a completely flat surface, then the cups cant generate sufficient pressure inside them and would fall off the wall! These are a few robots that have been built on this concept ..

This is BIGGALO (BIG uGly And LOud) , a pneumatics based robot constructed at University of Victoria.

Finally, it relies on Environmental pressure ! So, the calculations would work only on earth and cannot be used for an application in space! However the “Gecko” mechanism is the most exciting of all ! They work on something called the “dry adhesion” which is far more different from the Suction Adhesion mechanism.

The Lizards have millions of tiny and fine fibrillar hairs under their foot. Each of these consist of a small hair of 5 micron length terminated by hundreds of nano-fibers.The diameter of these nano-fibers are jus 200 nanometer making the contact area very small. Moreover these hairs can deform themselves,so its absolutely possible to walk on all types of surfaces. One might feel, the area of contact is very minimal- but the large number of nano-fibers making contact at a given point in time and the molecular force(especially Van Der Wal’s force) it exerts on the surface makes it sufficient enough to stick on the walls.

Now to mimic this mechanism of walking , scientist have actually synthesized the nano-fibers!! So it’s a 100 % re-creation of gecko style of walking .. that’s really cool isn’t it !!

With all these improvements, I made a small attempt (failed though) to construct my climbing robot. My bot too works on Suction Adhesion, a disadvantageous method I explained above. The part I was interested was the physics, My idea was to build the bot with suction pads minus without the pumps!! Once the bot is stuck to the wall, it must hold on to it with the initial force provided (jus like the pichoo ball sticks on the mirror for hours ) . I made these small tyres with suction pads ! I jus stuck the cups from the pichoo ball using Anabond! Once it was done, I fitted them in the old remote controlled car of mine.

These are the tyres of my bot !!

[My Mind voice : Dei naye.... idha dhaan robot,robot nu soniya..Podangu !!] .. ahem dudes… keep reading .ignore my that voice

Ok, as you see in this model ,once the motor is turned on, the robot would move forward sticking to the surface jus by using the successive suction pads on the tyres. Since there are four points of contact,I thought the pressure would be sufficient enough to hold it on a vertical plane. !! Surprisingly it was ! The bot did hold on to the mirror ( but only at a low height) The higher I place it .. it seems to have greater gravitational influence, so I stuck it to the bottom of the mirror. Moreover it didn’t hold on for more than 3-4 seconds , but showed staggered motion down the mirror for a few seconds and fell down on the floor… But the behavior was lot satisfactory on an inclined plane(35 degree elevation ). It climbed around 25 Cms before rolling back to the ground. Weight is a primary factor here , It s powered by four AA batteries which added up to the total weight of the bot!! I know I had got the weight calculations completely wrong .. I resorted to trial and error to get it .. but after all its only a small experiment !! The attempt however deviated from the use of pumps to generate vacuum .. that’s actually lot more safe in comparison to my idea… but I believe the simplest and cheapest implementation of robots would find greater application and penetration into human lives.. Hence the attempt !!!!

[Mind voice: Dei naye.. kadaseela enna dialogue, idhukulaam korachalae illa.... Veetla ethavathu vela irukum.. adha poi pannu .. useless fellow]

Hours of continous fasting , blazing eyes , complete suppression of nature’s call , sweating foreheads and stifled by physical exertions .. more than 100 souls march into a gloomy tunnel for conquest of valour, grit and glory [ My mind voice interrupts and says : dei naye … build up kudukama vishayatha solda]… Ahem… Dudes ! sorry if I ve tried to project a scene from a Vietnam Warfield or an epic battle… Well it’s the day for Medical Check up .Hmm… for guys who got recruited by the Tata Consultancy services. AVM Medical Research Centre at Mylapore was the venue and we were asked to come there at 7 in the morning ! The Checkup had some pre-requisites .. here are a couple of points from the handout

[3] To come on empty stomach with atleast 10 hours prior over night fasting for fasting sample

[4] For Ultrasound scan the urinary bladder should be kept full during the test !!

Ohhhh! A few other points too were there… These gave a picture of a Hollywood style medical test – Hi-Fi Labs , masked doctors and computers with weird medical gadgets. KT picked me up in the bike at adyar ,@ 7 in the morning. We reached there well in time .. just to find it was opposite to the Bajji Shop where we used to eat during Kama Sir classes! Satish had come their a few minutes prior to us and a whole lot of people had started taking before us.. We had to fill a form and proceeded to room number 106. There was a small Q and Kannan was seated outside the room.

Kannan : ( to me ,satish &KT) Dei..ennnada ivlo late ah vareenga?? Idhu engaluku second test!

Me : Unaku vera velayae illa .. ela Question paperayum out panidu.. engala elarayum Second test ezhutha vei

(The Question paper scam was blown out jus a week back and kannan was caught among the prime suspects )

We had to wait for a few minutes in the Q and then the doctor called us one by one for some basic examination.. We got in and it was no big deal…. He was in a hurry.. so he asked me a couple of questions.. “Do you have any history of medical ailments ?” .. and crap.. he marked a few stuffs and sent us to the top floor! This is satish explaining what happened in there !

We went to the top floor .. but it was the terrace! Fishy- nobody was seen… we were abt to walk back.. A turn from that place showed a large hall full of SJCE’ians … There, we Qed up to get the Blood Pressure tested. Seena was fully pumped up.. he was smiling and rejoicing ! Dono wat made him so happy…. But he cudnt stop laughing at all !! When I was a kid, I thought the BP machine was something to measure the strength in the arms ( The “Valuu katra” machine .. valuvu is colloquially refered to valuu)… but … I know now its called the “sphygmomanometer” and not the “Valuu katra machine”.

This is seena smiling during the BP test ! And same with raghu … the nurse jus couldn’t find the spot to measure the pulse rate ! The veins had buried themselves deep inside the fleshy arms of Raggy !!

Somehow .. I guess they managed to find a random number for his pulse rate !

This was followed by a Blood Test. They collected blood samples and I m not sure they tested it .. the sincerity with which these tests were conducted.. I don’t think they would do anything with those samples! Unfortunately the test fellow couldn’t get the vein right at the first attempt.. A few guys got struck twice!! Vasanth wasn’t lucky .. and nor was Kannan.. This is kannan getting poked in his left …

And again in his right !!

Seena always hates these medico stuffs !! Seena reacted with a “disgusting” face to the syringe piercing the flesh !

A nurse then measured the height n weight !! Following which they collected other samples of importance.. I ll skip that !! Then we were sent down to get the Ultrasound test .And here, the doctor applied some gelatinous stuff around the tummy and checked at a few points around the rib cage, he used a sensor in his hand which he moved on the stomach and saw the output on a computer monitor . The one that’s used to see babies in the womb?? –Same one (but of a lower configuration I guess) And hey what it show for me ???.. This is the output screen !!

Darn… these guys are so spoilt by Microsoft !!! Anyway.. Jus kidding ! From there we were sent for Eye Test in the basement. It’s a simple task of reading alphabets reflected on to a mirror! Actually, the alphabets of the smallest fonts must be read to demonstrate maximum visual acuity. The smallest letters were L-P-D-O-E-Z !!And all fellows mugged up the sequence of characters.. this is wat happened… Satish first L-P-D-O-E-Z “ ..


Snehan next “L-P-D-O-E-Z” … smiling seena “L-P-D-O-E-Z” and then Kimi “L-P-D-O-E-Z” !! The hospital staff cudnt resist laughing too !!! …

This was then followed by ECG… This involving sticking copper cups onto the skin and getting some output !! We didn’t exactly know what it was for…. But I was around when they were checking up snehan… In a couple of minutes , the nurse got pissed off and scorned “ Konjam Summa irukeengala, ivaruku otrathuku edamae illa “ !!! .. she was complaining of lack of space on him !! LolZZZZZZ!

So the last one left was X-ray !! Took off the shirt and leaned on the X-ray cassette and it was done in a second! It was almost 10.30 by then! All the tests were over.. jus had to submit the form and get bac home… but I saw this label on the X-cassette of satish … It had the name of his underground connection on it … See this !!

And If you do not know who it is…. Chk her pic out !! Kozhi kokara kozhi .. Konda seva kozhi !!!

We walked to Saravana Bhavan from there.. It was crowded enough and we cudnt stand and eat… We drove 2 spencer plaza from there! .. Still early hours according to the shop keepers…. They were all shut! We drunk Lime soda to keep us occupied for half an hour.. and atlast Food !!! We ate at Subway !A salad completely drenched in Mayonese and Mustanr sause ..( a plot to cut me down from eating it ..Coz I hate mayonese) then, A couple of Veg Subs for satish n Kimi , a Chicken Tikka Sub for me and KT’s killer instinct made him order the “ Meat Ball Miranara Sub “ – that sounded like a Tanzanian delicacy !!

We hogged over the salad first .. and then it was time to open subs… no surprises in the Veg Subs and Tikka… but the Killer instinct seemed to have worked out !! The Meat ball turned out be the worst of all… stuffed in a bread which couldn’t hold those meat balls, KT messed around trying to eat it … a tried a bite .. but that was worse!! I guess he wud even swallowed a balut instead of the meat ball ( Balut a philipino delicacy – it’s a boiled duck fetus .. click here if u wish to see how it looks Warning : Graphic Content ) !!

Atlast he cudnt finish that off .. he left the sub on the plate after all efforts to eat that !! Kimi @ this conjure : “I ve never Seen such a Goooooowri murder in my life” ( remember the dialogue from Vetayadu vilayadu ? the post mortem officer says this to Kamal Hassan on a serious note .. ended up being an unintentional comedy ) … We then jus spent a little time @ spencers … played in a Play station … and Lime Soda again … It had all become very heavy and turned us sluggish.. Satish n Kimi went back in the car. It was 1.10 by then … the temperature climbed up and hit more than 35 degrees ..KT dropped me at the bus stop, got the keys from Dad @ kathipara n finally came home… tongue-out for water and AC !!

— Over and Out —–