Dull-blank-confused moments..

Not sure about what that means but that is pretty much the state i am in.
guess it's what I am doing, or not doing... work wise... career wise... even life wise... (did the last one make sense?)

hoping to figure things out... well atleast the easier ones...

Passport - Name bifurcation

Recently I had the oppurtunity of bifurcating my name on the passport and had to go through multiple websites and call various people to get the details right coz multiple visits to passport offices is in not enjoyable by any means. Anyway, the good news is that after all this I managed to get it done, hence this post is for anybody else who wants to go through the same procedure and looking for info.

Get the following documents in place before applying for a Name bifurcation in the passport:

1.Passport Form No-2 can be obtained from the passport office or can be downloaded from their website.
2.Residence address proof of 1year:
A) Rental Agreement
B) Lease Agreement
C) Bank letter with residence address with managers seal & Signature
D) Gas connection purchase voucher
E) Company letter with residence address
Any two of the above documents must be produced
4. Marriage Certificate
5. Spouse’s Passport

6. 2 passport size photographs (check the passport office site www.kar.nic.in/passport/).
7. Old Passport (original passport)*

*If applicant is not residing at same residence for more than a year then the Personal Particulars form should be filled in for each residential address stayed in and the previous address proofs must be produced.

All the documents are required in original & two sets of photocopies, with
applicant signatures on all the photocopies.

A new passport is issued and the existing passport is marked as “cancelled” and returned back to you.

Timelines:

The normal process takes about 15 working days, and under the tatkal scheme it takes about 4 days.

Cost:

Normal: Rs 1000/- ( for issuing a new passport)

Tatkaal: Rs 1000/- ( for issuing a new passport) + Rs 1500/- for Tatkal process so Rs 2500/- in total.

One can get in touch with representatives like Superseva/ Les concierge etc who will do this task for a nominal amount. However, these representatives will not handle tatkal processing so if you need the service done ASAP it is better to go to the passport office personally.

happy budday to me!

It was my birthday a couple of days back and a special one at that coz I turned 30 this year!

I was in the US on my last birthday and it had been a normal day ( on second thoughts it was anything but normal, but I ll write a separate post about that ) This post is for my current one!

So, this one was an interesting day with lots of calls and messages from my relatives and friends. With the growing popularity of social networking sites I was expecting a lot of e-messages but it appears that people still find the good-old-telephone as the preferred mode of communciation - Secretly I feel so too!!! Personally when it comes to wishing someone, I find the email option very impersonal , now there are understandable situations when it is not that easy - like the person is in a different country, otherwise I would prefer to call and wish a person anytime rather than send out an email.

Anyway, here s how mine fared:

Calls on my cell: 13
Mail: 11
In person: 2
Facebook:
Orkut:
Gtalk: 2

About 12 hours and 13 calls later my cell phone gave up on me and got completely drained out. I had important things to deal with today and feel totally out of sync without my cell phone - on the verge of becoming a 'nomophobiac' which i hear is the 21st century affliction and stands for the fear of being out of mobile phone contact. Apparently, people have become so dependent on their mobile phones that discovering that it is out of charge or misplaced simply sends thier stress levels soaring! Personally I cannot imagine my day without a cell phone which is funny, coz even when I have it around I almost never accept calls -as in I keep it in my handbag and end up with quite a few missed calls later.

All in all... 30 years of my life spent... If i have to look back and count all the meaningful things in my life, there are very few ..though the events are quite important but still they are very few. so although life s pretty good right now I still feel I m missing something. Guess its high time I rise up to the 30 year alarm and do something! So here's to a hopeful and meaningful year ahead! and last but not the least -Happy budday to myself! :-)

Getting past the initial blocks:

Its time i started writing about something meaningful rather than posting lyrics, so starting today i.e. the 31st May 08, I declare that I am going to be a more active blogger - blogging about things that matter to me, interest me, and intrigue me.

Well thinking about it now, I realize that I do have lots of things to write about but somehow when I sit down to pen my thoughts my mind goes totally blank - now Is that a writers block? It seems that 'this' feeling is common among lot of bloggers, so I should try to get past my initial blocks and move ahead!

A-live!

A little history first.... I am not a sports person. Neither do I play nor do I watch ANY sports and seriously no regrets about that! I have never so much as survived through a few minutes of any tournament on TV ...leave alone the fifty overs of a cricket match - but as it is being quoted everywhere.. that IPL changed the face of cricket ...it sure did and it brought about a change in me too! Well I have not turned into a cricket maniac like the majority of my cricket loving nation, rattling away the cricket ratings of a not so famous batsman from a famous ABC cricket team or analyzing the brilliant stroke by Sachin in a match against XYZ - but I sure have got to know a few famous players and can proudly claim to recognize them if their faces ever flashed on TV. Regular following up on the TV/newspapers did help a lot but I would give the most credit to my DH.

So, with all the glitz and the glamour pulled into the IPL I was hooked on to it in the beginning and what with my favourite actors and leading businessmen coming together with huge cashflows for the teams and all the local competition and advertising I had to get involved!

Now coming back to my post - since DH is very passionate about sports especially about cricket, I wanted to surprise him by getting tickets for the opening match on Apr 19th. Should have anticipated this but it was close to impossible to get the tickets for the opening match as most of them were sold out but with the help of my cousin bro' managed to get tickets for the second match in Bangalore. It happened to be the match between Bangalore Royal Challengers and Rajasthan Royals on April 26 2008!

Anyway, the match was scheduled to start at 8:00 PM, so we reached the Chinnaswamy stadium at about 6:45 PM After the routine security check up at the entrance as we were walking towards the stands I noticed the attractive red colored "6" and "4" placards written in golden yellow on a red background depicting the team shades. DH was a little apprehensive about picking them up but I couldnt let go of the chance to hold and wave these placards at my first cricket match, could I? I had to be ready waving the placards so that the cameras would get a good shot :-) Also, my parents and sister would be looking out for me on the TV and this sure would increase my chances of getting spotted. So I asked the concern person and turned out that people are allowed to pick as many as they want! Great! So DH picked up a "6" and I picked up a "4" and a "6" - I had to cheer my team for every win however small!! So we walked up to our stands and choose seats with a decent view. A band was playing some decent music trying to cheer the crowd that was slowly filling up the stadium and as soon as it finished playing the entire stadium came alive in

Few highlights:

The Chinnaswamy stadium is really small, cant make that out on the TV screen can ya?

There s really no time between one ball and the next or between overs for that matter. Those TV ads only create an illusion of time.

No live commentary too. This one was a let down. I didnt think there wouldnt be one. I mean one of the main attractions of the cricket match are the commentators going yada yada yada with their interpretations and analysis and most importantly the flow of the match. So i was fairly disappointed by the non inclusion of commentators in a live match.

After a great shot, when a replay is shown on the screen in the stadium, no matter where u sit, part of the screen is blocked either by a pillar or something else that i cant remember right now :-)

All the players look like tiny specs on the grass in the distance and for a person like me who is not very cricket savvy it takes a major effort to recognize the few players that I actually know a little about.


Although it was a wonderful experience to watch a live match. Given a choice, I would still prefer to laze out in the confines of my home on a plush sofa with some popcorn and watch the same on TV with the commentary switch over during advertisements to some of those dramatic serials.

Tuj magato mee ata

A quick search on google for the lyrics of this soul stirring bhajan by Lata Mangeshkar did not yield any decent results. So I decided to make a contribution to the internet myself.
For a very long time my mornings would begin by listening to these marathi bhajans -'Prabhat Geet' as was written on the cassette cover. Here it goes....

Genre: Marathi bhakti geet
Music: Hridayanath mangeshkar
Singer: Lata mangeshkar

Tuj magato mee ata...
magato aata, tuj magato mee ata, magato aata
majhya dyave Ekdanta...
tuj magato mee ata..

tujhe thai majhi bhakti
viruthavi Ganpati...
tujhe thai jyachi preeti
tyachi ghadavi sangati..
sangati tyachi ghadavi sangati

dharani dhara aise dyave..
sarva bhooti leen whave
tujha sharana sharana sharana aalo
patit me zaan.. -2

tujha apradhi mee khara -2
ahe ikshu chaapadhara
majhi yeu de karuna
tujhe laagi gajanana..
gajanana ...
maz dyave Ekdanta...

You might want to listen to the original rendition by Lata @ music india online http://www.musicindiaonline.com/music/devotional/s/language.6/

Hello world

Nah...we are not talking about the first program one writes while learning a new language - this is just me sending out a BIG hello to the world through my first post!!

More later...