8 GB RAM

10 years back when I first bought my first computer, I asked the shop keeper to put a 64 MB RAM in the system. He said it is too high and that much memory will not be required. To convince me further he said that the computer that he uses regularly in his shop for billing has just a 1 MB RAM. But still I asked him to put a 64 MB RAM, which finally he did.

Around the same time, when I got to know that the production server of our clients had 8 GB RAM, I was surprised. I thought what it is going to do with 8 GB RAM. A couple of years later when I I installed Windows XP in my personal computer, I upgraded the RAM to 256 MB. That system still works fine, but I changed the OS to linux. Today my mobile phone has a RAM of 756 MB and it is considered a low end one in its segment.

I didn't move to upper version of Windows, since it required atleast 1 GB RAM until I bought a laptop. The first laptop I bought had a 2 GB RAM. The second and third ones had 4 GB RAM each. The net book I bought (just for fun) had a 1 GB RAM. I didn't buy a tablet, thinking it was enough, as my mini laptop was close to a tab.

The laptop given in my office had a 4 GB RAM, but still I used to see "OutOfMemory Exceptions" when I execute large software systems (bad coding???).

The first RAM that was put in my first desktop was almost the size of a half-foot ruler(7 inches approx.). Today's laptops RAM can be comfortably placed in the palm and the palm can be closed to completely hide it.

Today my laptop's RAM was upgraded to 8 GB. For the first time I am using a computing system with a 8 GB RAM. Now I think I can launch a rocket with my laptop.

- SPGR.

Complex plots and stories

I am amazed to see the speed at which my little friend Dhanu is able to watch and understand the movies. I never understood the plot or the story of any of the movies until I was in 10th standard. When I think about the reason, now I could realize that the movies in those days had complex plots and stories. Almost all the movies had rape scenes and the main characters or the villians(bad-boys) involved in adultry. By contrast most of the movies today do not have a story and if at all they have, its a simple one.

When my little friend Dhanu started watching movies, one the earliest movies he saw was "Naan Ee". The movie had a narration style as if its told by someone. Also it has the concept of a good boy versus a bad boy, where the good boy wins and the bad boy looses. So, nowadays whenever Dhanu watches a movie, he initially asks us who the good boy is and who the bad boy is. Most of time he is able to identify this himself. Also he is aware that the good boy will have a girl friend. Unlike the movies of the yesteryears its not mandatory that the good boy should marry that girl before the movie ends.

At the rate at which my little friends are watching the movies on TV, I fear that soon they will become movie buffs.

But on the contrary I identified that the complex plots and stories, with rape scenes and adultry have moved to the TV serials. Some of the plots of these serials are so complex that even I am not able to understand at this age. For eg. in a serial, the second wife of a man conspires to separate the third wife from her first husband. It took me months to understand this plot and still I have to agree that my understanding may be wrong.

One day I decided to spend sometime watching serials. I saw one serial where one guy was a bad boy and doing all sorts of mischives. After a couple of ad-breaks found that he has changed completely. He became a good boy and was helping everyone. But I was not able to follow the serial, since almost all the people around him were different, including his wife. It took me sometime to realize that it was two different serials. In the first serial he was a bad boy, and in the next one he was a good boy. I couldn't figure our when the first one ended and the next one started.

All the women in the serials can be classified into two categories - bad ones and the suffering ones. Yes you read it correct. There are no good ones. The bad ones will be conspiring to spoil the families of others. The suffering ones will be suffering all through the serial, and they will be crying, crying and crying all the time. I moved along the channels and got to know that in all the serials there were only the above two groups of women. In Mallu serials, it was even more worse. Almost everyone was crying. I was sad to the condition of these poor women. Endless cries.

Neither the men in the serials appeared happy. Almost everyone in all the serials looked like as if they have lost something and worrying over it all the time.

Once when I felt that I was surrounded by worries and troubles both in my personal and professional life, I decided to see a serial - one serial - continuously. I took that decision because almost all in that serial were having problems and no one was having a peaceful life. While watching, I felt happy that my troubles in life were nothing compared to theirs. At least the problems in my life will come to end  sometime. But for them, there was no visibility for a peaceful life. Their problems and worries kept increasing. But after a couple of days, I couldn't tolerate, as I started worrying for their problems on top of my problems and I stopped watching it.

- SPGR.

Republic Day Parade

On the 66th Republic Day I woke up at 9 AM. Somewhat early when compared to my normal waking time on a holiday. As soon as I woke up I remembered the Republic day parade that will be live telecasted from Delhi. Immediately switch on the TV and kept DD National. Around that time our President, Prime Minister and our chief guest for the 66th Republic day - Obama, the US President and the First Lady of US arrived at the dais for the function. I vaguely remember that the President used to come in a Chariot driven by horses. But now he came in a posh car.

I like the way in which Obama affectionately took Michelle to the dais. I think it is this love and care that every wife would expect from her husband, and Michelle is lucky in that aspect. When Obama sat on the chair allocated to him, I was happy and for a moment thought that he was seated in a chair in the hall of our home. It was raining and to some extent Mr. Obama got wet, though a person was holding a big umbrella for him. I think they didn't anticipate rain at that time and no arrangements were made to handle it. Some of the delegates got wet in the rain, as there was no umbrella for them. For sometime, I felt sad and indeed panicked upon seeing Obama getting wet in the rain. He is our guest!!! But it seemed that he didnt mind much about it.

[Pic: Obama and Modi]

I also had a tough time making my little friends Dhanu and Deepu standing in attention for the National Anthem. Also they wanted to see the "Motu Patlu" and "Ninja Hattori" instead of this program. I have to convince them saything they are given a holiday only to watch this program. Indeed in those moments I felt the belonging and closeness to my mother country. When the Ashoka  Chakra award was handed over to Mrs. Indu Mukunth, our PM Modi explained the situation to Obama. Mrs. Indu Mukunth was found bold and courageous while receiving the award.

[Pic:Ashoka Charka]

When the camera turned to the audience, I could spot Arvind Kejriwal, as usual with a Muffler around his head. Such a gesture in my home state implies that he has lost everything (thalaila thundu). I could also see Manmohan-ji with his wife. Sonia Gandhi was also present in the audience.

[Pic: Arvind Kejriwal, in his usual attaire]

Normally the Republic day celebrations in Chennai will be tele casted in DD Pothigai in parallel to the National Event. But this time, it was the Delhi event that was relayed in all the DD Channels. The Regional celebrations by the Governers of the State followed as a recorded program.

- SPGR.

What a speech by Obama

Morning I happened to watch a live speech by Obama. Actually I happened to stamp on the DD National channel while jumping between stations. Since Obama was talking, I thought of listening to it for sometime. But it was a beautiful speech that I stopped my other activities and listened to it till the end.

It was a speech given by him to an audience of students in an auditorium. Some elderly people were also seen among the audience. He told that his grandfather was a cook to some British person in Kenya. He went on the describe the discrimination that he faced in his life. He said "Due to the color of my skin, I couldn't walk in the some of the streets in that country." Also due to the color of his skin he faced many more hardships. I was watching his statements with a smile. Obama looks fairer (light-colored) than me. So, I was wondering what would have happened to me if I had born there. But Michelle looks darker than me. So, my complexion is in-between Mr. and Mrs. Obama. So now, in a way, I feel that I am closely related to the Obamas :-).

It is not that I had a smooth life without any discrimination. I stopped participating in stage related events (in school and college), when I realized that my skills were required only for the back stage works. Not long after, I realized that my area should be on the intellectual side, where the knowledge and talent matters, and not the skin color. At some of time in my life, I got so seriously wounded that for a brief time I hated my dark skin. Exactly around that I time, I resolved that I will marry a very fair (light-colored) girl and have fair skinned kids so that they do not face the difficulties that I faced. It took me a really long time to understand that the skin color doesn't matter at all. Though being light-colored or dark-colored does gets noticed at the first sight, after sometime it is the overall character and our approach that creates a lasting impression. Once I got this maturity, apart from other things, I also put an end to the habit of taking a look only at the fair and good looking girls, and started seeing all the girls, equally, irrespective of their skin color :-).

Oops... I digressed... Coming back to Obama... He re-iterated the point that both he and Michelle were not from a wealthy background or from a famous family. But at the same time Obama said that some of his teacher and elders were kind enough and embraced and guided him. They helped him in getting the scholarships and getting good education and come up in life. He said that we should provide opportunities to everyone to come up in life, and provide much more opportunities than one can normally imagine. It is this opportunity that will make the grandson of a cook, the President and a tea-seller, the Prime Minister. As a expert public speaker, he stopped at this point, for the audience to clap.

Obama also stressed the need to take care of women and girls. As fathers, brothers and sons, its our duty to protect the dignity of women, everywhere. He said only those countries grow where their girls grow, where their girls are given opportunities and where their dignity is protected. He continued that if a girl gets education.. She can later start a new business, invent something new, cure some disease,  her children will get good education and this is what is needed for a nation. He said that only those countries will grow, which respects their women.

Obama said that when Martin Luther King, Jr came to India he said that he was happy to be in the land of Gandhi and similarly now he is happy to be in the land of Gandhi.

I observed that his accent was not a 100% American accent. Without any difficulty I was able to follow and understand his complete speech. Or may be my familiarity with the American accent has increased. Without any doubt, he was an exceptional public speaker. Towards the end of the speech, the whole of the audience would have become his fans and would have approved all that he said. When I told this to my friend, she said "Thats why he is the President of America". To some extent, I can also talk like him and influence the audience. Let me see to where it takes me :-).

- SPGR.

The story of my watches (6)

HMT Automatic:

Once I was browsing and reading about fountain pens. I am one of those rare persons who still uses fountain pen for most of my writing tasks. But nowdays my serious writing got reduced to writing one page in the diary, of course with an ink pen. During that time, I came across a couple of posts by a person called Hari. whose hobby was collecting pens. He also had mentioned about his another hobby, which is about collecting watches. From some of this posts, I got to know that HMT watches are still in production and they are still sold in their own retail outlets. I browsed more on that and somehow managed to locate a HMT retail outlet near my place. I visited that showroom and bought an Mechanical Automatic watch.

I have written more about it here - My New Automatic Watch.

HMT Mechanical Automatic - Model NASS 11

Sonata:

The Sonata quartz was presented by Amma in 2011, and it is the only Sonata I have till date. The face somewhat resembles the TIMES watch that I had earlier. Till now it required one battery replacement. Its more of a formal watch and I wear it only for special occasions.

Sonata

Chennai silks watch:

This is a digital watch that I brought from Chennai silks in Trichy. It received the attention of some watch enthusiats in my office. This was the watch I was wearing when I met with a minor bike accident. After that incident I almost stopped using it.

[pic: Chennai silks watch]

Chennai silks watch - Not in service now.

- SPGR.