Tuesday, November 08, 2005

My Best Friend



I was going through poems on Friends and Friendship. I got an inspiration from that to write about my best friend. Terri Fanning say:

Friendship is like the breeze,You can't hold it,Smell it,Taste it,Or know when it's coming,But you can always feel it,And you'll always know it's there,It may come and then go,But you can know it'll always be back.

I was lucky to have hold, smell and taste of friendship. Once in a while we meet someone who become so close to us for reasons unknown. The time we spend with them will always be our memories. Though the person is not closeby their thoughts will always remain in us. Every single soul on earth will have such a person. I am not an exception for that.

Today is my best friend's birthday. I thought of giving her a different gift. Here I go with a blog for her. We have been friends for 23+ years (touchwood). We don't spend much time together. We don't talk over phone everyday. We don't email eachother often. We have been out of touch for months together. But we still remain very close (again touchwood).

I don't know if there is something called 'telepathy'. But there was something between us. She will stand before me whenever I feel like talking to her or for that matter think of her. I would say we have been "best of buddies", though we have our own friends circle.

I take this opportunity her for her love and affection. I pray the Almighty to bless her with all the good things she deserve.



Dear Sowmya,

Wish you a very happy birthday di! Hope you had a great day! Thank you so much for being such a wonderful friend. I am very lucky coz I have you! Love you a lot!

HAPPY BIRTHDAY!

Love,
Sindu

A Friend

A simple word isn't it? It's uttered everyday to almost every person imaginable. Who are your friends? I used to think that friends were the people that you could laugh and talk to. Now I know that friends aren't that, they're the people that touch ur heart. You could spend hours with them doing nothing at all and it can be the best time of your life, just becuase it was with them. They're the people you can share your secrets with, cry with, laugh with, and just have fun with. They don't judge you or make you change. They accept you exactly as you are. They look at you and they see a great person, one they love spending time with. You all share something in common and are tied together by memories, tears, laughs and smiles. You're tied together by love for the other. Friendship is the strangest but greatest thing in the world. I find my time with my friends, the best times of my life. My friends are my heart, my soul, my fun, my laughter, tears, love and my life."

-Kate Tierney

Images courtesy - Internet

In India These Days - Very Funny!!!

Thought of posting something on the lighter side...Enjoy!!!
Beggars

Air Hostess

Culture

Raksha Bandhan

Marriage

Saturday, October 29, 2005

Happy Diwali!



Wish you all a very happy deepavali!

Saturday, October 22, 2005

Trust

I have been slightly moving away from my favourite topic - relationship. I am back with a short story. I believe TRUST is the main factor that keeps a relationship going, especially in between couples who live miles away from eachother. But that is completely a different TRUST. Here is a short story that talks about the TRUST from a different angle.

A little girl and her father were crossing a flimsy bridge. The father was kind of scared so he asked his little daughter, "Sweetheart, please holdmy hand so that you don't fall into the river."
The little girl said, "No, Dad. You hold my hand.""What's the difference?" asked the puzzled father.
"There's a big difference," replied the little girl. "If I hold your hand and something happens to me, chances are that I may let your hand go. Butif you hold my hand, I know for sure that no matter what happens, you will never let my hand go."


In any relationship, the essence of trust is not in its bind but in its bond. So hold the hand of the person whom you love rather than expecting them to hold yours...

Tuesday, October 18, 2005

Me as an Instructional Designer

My previous blog would have given you a rough idea of what Instructional Designing is. What is my part in that.

The content will be provided by the clients in the form of Word documents PowerPoint presentations. Sometimes clients give content junks. First step is to analyse the content. The content is split into logical junks or modules (Technically these are called SCOs - Sharable Courseware Objects. Previously it was called RLOs - Reusable Logical Objects). Each module will a name. These modules must be independent and no module should be referred in the other modules. Then the storyboard will be created for the course. Once the storyboard is over, the visualization takes place. Each frame of the course will have relevant images. The storyboard and the images are given to the programmer who integrates the components into a single location. The packaged course is sent for quality check. After fixing the bugs the course is launced or sent to the client.

What I have given is just an outline. Instructional Designing is more creative and it involves lots of learning.

Instructional Design

Instructional Design

So many people have asked me on my profession. What is the nature of my job or what do I do as an instructinal designer. I thought of writing a blog that. Hope this blog gives a clear picture of what I do as an Instructional Designer. Let me start with the of Instructional Design.

What is Instructional Design?
Instructional Design can be considered as:
  • A process
  • A discipline
  • A science
Instructional Design as a Process
  • The systematic way of developing instructional specifications using learning andinstructional theories to ensure the quality of instruction
  • The entire process of analysis of learning needs and goals and the development of a delivery system to meet those needs
  • Includes development of instructional materials and activities
Instructional Design as a Discipline

Branch of knowledge concerned with research and theory about instructional strategiesProcess for developing and implementing the instructional strategies.
Instructional Design as a Science

Science of creating detailed specifications for the development, implementation, evaluation, and maintenance of situations that facilitate the learning of both large and small units of subject matter at all levels of complexity.

Wednesday, October 05, 2005

Enhancing Relationships

I always wonder why there are divorces happening across the world. There are so many people who select their own partner and get married. Even in such marriage the relationship breaks after some time. What really is the problem between the couple? How can they enhance their relationship? Here is another good forward that I received.

TRUST is a very important factor for all relationships. When trust is broken, it is the end of the relationship. Lack of trust leads to suspicion, suspicion generates anger, anger causes enmity and enmity may result in separation. A telephone operator told me that one day she received a phone call. She answered, "Public Utilities Board." There was silence. She repeated, "PUB." There was still no answer. When she was going to cut off the line, she Heard a lady's voice, "Oh, so this is PUB. Sorry, I got the number from my Husband's pocket but I do not know whose number it is." Without mutual trust, just imagine what will happen to the couple if
the telephone operator \r\n answered with just "hello" instead of "PUB".


NO POINTING FINGERS

A man asked his father-in-law, "Many people praised you for a successful marriage. Could you please share with me our secret?" The father-in-law answered in a smile, "Never criticise your wife for her shortcomings or when she does something wrong. Always bear in mind that because of her shortcomings and weaknesses, she could not find a better husband than you." We all look forward to b! eing loved and respected. Many people are afraid of losing face. Generally, when a person makes a mistake, he ", the telephone operator answered with just "hello" instead of "PUB".



NO POINTING FINGERS
A man asked his father-in-law, "Many people praised you for a successful marriage. Could you please share with me our secret?" The father-in-law answered in a smile, "Never criticise your wife for her shortcomings or when she does something wrong. Always bear in mind that because of her shortcomings and weaknesses, she could not find a better husband than you."
We all look forward to b! eing loved and respected. Many people are afraid of losing face. Generally, when a person makes a mistake, he would look around to find a scapegoat to point the finger at. This is the start of a war. We should always remember that when we point one finger at a person, the other four fingers are pointing at ourselves.

If we forgive the others, others will ignore our mistake too.


CREATING PERFECT RELATIONSHIPS?
A person visited the government matchmaker for marriage, SDU, and requested "I am looking for a spouse. Please help me to find a suitable one." The SDU officer said, "Your requirements, please." "Oh, good looking, polite, humorous , sporty, knowledgeable, good in singing and dancing. Willing to accompany me the whole day at home during my leisure hour, if I don't go out. Telling me interesting stories when I need companion for conversation and be silent when I want to rest." The officer listened carefully and replied, "I understand you need television."
There is a saying that a perfect match can only be found between a blind wife and a deaf husband ,because the blind wife cannot see the faults of the husband and the deaf husband cannot hear the nagging of the wife. Many couples are blind and deaf at the courting stage and dream of perpetual perfect relationship. Unfortunately, when the excitement of love wears off, they wake up and discover that marriage is not a bed of roses. The nightmare begins.

NO OVERPOWERING

Many relationships fail because one party tries to overpower another, or demands too much. People in love tend to think that love will conquer all and their spouses will change the bad habits after marriage. Actually, this is not the case. There is a Chinese saying which carries the meaning that "It is easier to reshape a mountain or a river than a person's character."
It is not easy to change. Thus, having high expectation on changing the spouse character will cause disappointment and unpleasantness.
It would be less painful to change ourselves and lower our expectations..

RIGHT SPEECH

There is a Chinese saying which carries the meaning that "A speech will either prosper or ruin a nation." Many relationships break off because of wrong speech. When a couple is too close with each other, we always forget mutual respect and courtesy. We may say anything without considering if it would hur! t the other party.

A friend and her millionaire husband visited their construction site. A worker who wore a helmet saw her and shouted,"Hi, Emily! Remember me? We used to date in the secondary school." On the way home, her millionaire husband teased her, "Luckily you married me. Otherwise you will be the wife of a construction worker." She answered ,"You should appreciate that you married me. Otherwise, he will be the millionaire and not you."

Frequently exchanging these remarks plants the seed for a bad relationship. It's like a broken egg - cannot be reversed.

PERSONAL PERCEPTION


Different people have different perception. One man's meat could be another man's poison. A couple bought a donkey from the market. On the way home,a boy commented, "Very stupid. Why neither of them ride on the donkey?"Upon hearing that, the husband let the wife ride on the donkey. He walked besid! es them. Later, an old man saw it and commented, "The husband is the head of family. How can the wife ride on the donkey while the husband is on foot?" Hearing this, the wife quickly got down and let the husband ride on the donkey.
Further on the way home, they met an old Lady. She commented, "How can the man ride on the donkey but let the wife walk. He is no gentleman." The husband thus quickly asked the wife to join him on the donkey. Then, they met a young man. He commented, "Poor donkey, how can you hold up the weight of two persons. They are cruel to you." Hearing that, the husband and wife immediately climbed down from the donkey and carried it on their shoulders.
It seems to be the only choice left. Later, on a narrow bridge, the donkey was frightened and struggled. They lost their balance and fell into the river. You can never have everyone praise you, nor will everyone condemn you. Never in the past, not at present, and never will be in the future.


Thus, do not be too bothered by others words if our conscience is clear..

BE PATIENT


This is a true story which happened in the States. A man came out of his home to admire his new truck. To his puzzlement, his three-year-old son was happily hammering dents into the shiny paint of the truck. The man ran to his son, knocked him away, hammered the little boy's hands into pulp as punishment. When the father calmed down, he rushed his son to the hospital.
Although the doctor tried desperately to save the crushed bones, he finally had to amputate the fingers from both the boy's hands. When the boy woke up from the surgery & saw his bandaged stubs, he innocently said, " Daddy,I'm sorry about your truck." Then he asked, "but when are my fingers going to grow back?" The father went home & committed suicide.


Think about this story the next time someone steps on your feet or u wish to take revenge. Think first before u lose your patience with someone u love. Trucks can be repaired.. Broken bones & hurt feelings often can't. Too often we fail to recognise the difference between the person and the performance. We forget that forgiveness is greater than revenge.
People make mistakes. We are allowed to make mistakes. But the actions we take while in a rage will haunt us forever.

Thursday, September 29, 2005

Love Quotes








Relationship!

This story was forwarded to me by my friend. I generally do not read the forwards I get. But the subject of this message made me to go through the content.

A man and his girlfriend were married. It was a large celebration. All of their friends and family came to see the lovely ceremony and to partake of the festivities and celebrations. A wonderful time was had by all.The bride was gorgeous in her white wedding gown and the groom was very dashing in his black tuxedo. Everyone could tell that the love they had for each other was true.A few months later, the wife comes to the husband with a proposal: "I read in a magazine, a while ago, about how we can strengthen our marriage." she offered."Each of us will write a list of the things that we find a bit annoying with the other person. Then, we can talk about how we can fix them together and make our lives happier together."The husband agreed. So each of them went to a separate room in the house and thought of the things that annoyed them about the other.They thought about this question for the rest of the day and wrote down what they came up with.The next morning, at the breakfast table, they decided that they would go over their lists."I'll start," offered the wife. She took out her list. It had many items on it. Enough to fill 3 pages, in fact. As she started reading the list of the little annoyances, she noticed that tears were starting to appear in her husbands eyes."What's wrong?" she asked. "Nothing" the husband replied, "keep reading your list."The wife continued to read until she had read all three pages to her husband. She neatly placed her list on the table and folded her hands over top of it."Now, you read your list and then we'll talk about the things on both of our lists." She said happily.Quietly the husband stated, "I don't have anything on my list. I think that you are perfect the way that you are. I don't want you to change anything for me. You are lovely and wonderful and I wouldn't want to try and change anything about you."The wife, touched by his honesty and the depth of his love for her and his acceptance of her, turned her head and wept.


IN LIFE, there are enough times when we are disappointed, depressed and annoyed. We don't really have to go looking for them.We have a wonderful world that is full of beauty, light and promise.Why waste time in this world looking for the bad, disappointing or annoying when we can look around us, and see the wonderful things before us?

Sunday, September 18, 2005

Thotti Jaya - A Review

This review was written by my friend.

First half very impressive. Second half normal masala where the hero and heroine is chased by villains and hero beats them all and succeeds.
The first scene of the movie itself gives a great hype. The way the hero chooses to be a mobster is portrayed well. The time when Hero feels his love is realistic.The way Hero and heroine express their love is nice.
Simbu has acted well. He does not smile or cry until he starts loving. He resembles his father at many places but still looks good. Gopika looks great.

Saturday, September 03, 2005

JAB - Just Another Blog

He came...
He saw...
He conquered..
Later he destroyed...

Sunday, August 28, 2005

A Refresher

This kavidhai was written by my classmate, Mr. Giridharan.

Friday, August 05, 2005

Rendezvous 2005 - Minutes of Meet

Date: 31st July 2005
Venue: Apoorva's Sangeetha
Attendees:
Sindura
Amudha
Ravi Kumar
Jayaganesh
Govind
Balamurali
Giridharan
Kannappan
Selvarathinam
Vijay Kumar
Krishnamoorthy
Sivakumar
Raja
Ashok Kumar
Nagamaiya Karthik
Lakshmi Narasimman
Jismon
Manikandan
Ganapathy Raja
Muthukumar

Here I go with the Abridged version of the meet!

The actual time for the function to start was 4 PM. But we beingIndians started it around 5 o clock. Muthu and Ashok were the oneswho first came to the venue. I went there around 3.30. We did somedecoration work (You would have seen the chart that was stuck on thescreen).Later Amudha came there with her kid (Naveen). I thought of startingthe show differently. I gave a piece of paper to everyone. Each oneof them should write something about themself in the paper. It maybe an incident that happened in the class or anything related to theperson. A person would pick a paper and read it out to others. Withthe given clue, the person has to be identified.The game started with Krishnamoorthy. I guess the guys had real fun.We were pulling each other's legs. It was great fun. It got over by7-715. We started our dinner by 730.In between we exchanged our addresses, fone numbers and othercontact details.

It was great fun to meet my friends after a long time. I wish we could arrange for something similar with more participants in the future.

Rendezvous 2005 - Pirandha Kadhai

It was Friday, 29th July. We have started a new trend at work. We allot one hour every Friday for fun and games. Being in Cognizant you need to celebrate work. I was so excited, it was not because of the Friday fun. But it was because the "D" day was nearer.

I never enjoyed my college days, especially when I was doing my MCA. I always wanted to come back home. But I missed those days once I graduated. I took a resolution that I would stay in touch with my classmates. I initiated this get-together plan in April/June 2004. The response from my classmates were very poor. Hardly 10 people were ready to join us. The excitement with which I started shooting e-mails to our group faded as days went by. I couldn't understand why these people were so indifferent. They didn't even bother to reply the mails that I sent. At that time, all my friends had a valid reason. Most of them were unemployed.

After one year, once again I started mailing them on the get-together. This time there were quite a few additional responses. I created a database for people to update their contact details. In addition, I also created polls to get an idea on what each person has in his/her mind. But once again my efforts failed. There were hardly 10 entries in the poll/database.

I coordinated with Mohi, who happens to be the moderator of our group and removed the people whose e-mail address had expired. We tried tracking the whereabouts of all our classmates. By then the plans once again flopped.

All of a sudden, Govind who was our class representative, sent an e-mail saying that the get-together will happen on 31st July. I was really excited. But I still had my own doubts if people would really turn-up. Most of them were abroad and we didn't have contact details of 50% of people. But Govind did a neat job. He somehow found the contact details of our classmates and he communicated with them from Delhi.

We finalized the date. Then came the question of Venue. Initially, we thought of having it in Spencer's Plaza, Chennai. But I felt the place would be too crowded on Sunday and we won't have enough privacy and space. The next option was to hire a resort and go there. But once again, we thought of commuting. Some of our friends were placed in Bangalore. It will be difficult for them to start early on 31st. So I gave a suggestion that we can hire a hall and have the function there.

God was on our side. One of our friends, Muthu, is working at the Hotel Sangeetha. I contacted him and asked him to enquire the hall charges and food charges. We finally fixed the Vadapalani hall for the function. We also fixed the timings as 4 P.M to 7 P.M.

I started calling people from Friday evening to remind them of the meeting. I did some shopping too. I got pens and scribbling pads for them. I even tried to paint a banner. Unfortunately it didn't come out well. Still we displayed it in the hall.

To know how the get-together went, wait for my next blog....

Thursday, July 28, 2005

Rendezvous 2005!!!


Finally, we have planned it. I pray it should end up well. Am talking about the get-together of my MCA classmates. This had been in my mind for more than an year. We have now planned it on 31st July. I guess its gonna be real fun...meeting my friends after 3 years.

Displayed here is the invitation I created for the gathering. We are expecting minimum of 25 people.

Will write MOM on Monday.

Monday, May 09, 2005

What am I doing here???

Its months since I created a blog for myself. But I haven't written anything ever since I created this blog. I like reading blogs than writing. I have gone through the blogs of all my friends. Here I go with the inspiration I acquired from them.

Basically, my profession is to write. I get a good flow in writing when it comes to work. But now, I am wondering how to start and what to blog. Let me think of something interesting and fill in the pages. Till then..keep waiting!!!

Tuesday, January 18, 2005

My First Kavidhai Kirukkal!

Kadhalithu paar..kadhalin punidham unakku puriyum...
Kadhalil thotru paar..kadhalin vali unakku theriyum..

Welcome!

Hey ppl! Thanks for stopping by. I am in the process of writing something interesting. So will be back with something creative!
-sindhu