Vaaranam Aayiram songs

One more proof that Harris reserves his best for Gautham and also that his combination with Gautham Menon is one of the best in the tamil film industry. And this time around, he has pulled it off without his trademark Bombay Jeyashree number :)

Simply loved all the songs with Mundhinam Paarthene and Nenjukkul Peidhidum being my picks. I would go far enough to say that this is one of the best albums of the year, along with Poo and Subramaniyapuram. One person who has an equal share in the songs from this combo becoming huge hits and one who is often overlooked is Thamarai. She is definitely the life line for many of the songs in the albums of this combo and she has worked her magic again in Vaaranam Aayiram. (While on Thamarai, this interview with her back couple of years back makes for some good reading: There's no rhyme without reason)

Of course, there was also the typical Gautham style dialog at the beginning of the Mundhinam paarthene song which immediately doused any meager hopes I had for the movie. Some things just don't change, I guess and we should stop expecting the same. I was like "Gautham, please spare us this torture"

Including Vaaranam Aayiram, all the 5 albums by Harris for Gautham have been blockbusters and Rahman has an arduous task to match this track record with Chennaiyil Oru Mazhaikkaalam.

Forgot Password? Forget logging in

If you have not seen a single B2Csite on the WWW which does not have the Forgot Password? option, then I welcome you to the TrueRoots website. I use Reliance for my calls to India but also buy from TrueRoots from time to time. I heard they were running a promotion and so, went over there to recharge my account. Since it has been ages since the last time I logged in, I had forgotten my password and so, started my search for a Forgot password link in the site. None. My search returned zero results. I was just annoyed that they can have a customer facing website without a Forgot Password or Recover password option. Their FAQ & Help sections are pretty exhaustive about all the issues that a customer might face in their website but not a word about password retrieval even there.

And what happened was even more ridiculous. I sent an email to customer service stating the trouble I am having and this is what I get as a reply back from them:

Dear Filbert,

Thank you for taking the effort to write to us.

We request you to follow the below steps to reset your password:
1. Go to the website www.trueroots.us
2. First you need to login to your account, Click on "Account settings"
3. It will take you to the page where you'll find 3 options, select the third option "Reset Password" and Change the password of your choice.

If you want to reset your password without logging in to your account, you can call us at our customer service number.

How illogical is that? I was fed up and went back to Reliance for my next recharge.

When invincibles go down...

I did my schooling at TVS Lakshmi in Madurai. The school, back then & I am assuming still is, very popular for the high number of students it churns out who score above the magical number of 1100 out of a possible 1200 in the higher secondary exams. The year after I passed out, I met a school junior on the way and asked him how much did he score. He said he had scored 1155 but is still ranked somewhere around 25th in the school. That statement best explained the amazing regularity with which our school used to produce 1100+ scores. But then there was a reason why our school was able to accomplish this: the students that the school admits in the 11th standard. What used to happen was most of the toppers in the 10th standard exams from other schools in Madurai would switch schools and join our school for 11standard, mainly bcos of the reputation our school enjoyed. Thus our school literally didn't have to do anything special to produce that kind of results. The students pretty much took care of the results themselves. And that exactly was why when people used to talk about my school in glowing terms, I used to feel uncomfortable bcos IMHO, the school just didn't deserve all the credit it was getting.

Reason I am bringing all that here, where I actually wanted to write about the USC loss yday is simple: USC pretty much does the same when it comes to recruiting for its football team. Many of the highly talked about football players coming out of high school in America end up signing for USA. I remember looking at the list of top 10 prospects in the country for each one of the positions in the Souts.com site (that ranks high school players across all sports) in 2005 and atleast 3-4 players (out of that 10) for each position had committed playing for USC. Thus is their dominance when it comes to recruiting. It is said that the 4th string running back of USC can start at RB at any other college in the US. That is how strong they are. And that is exactly the reason why I hate USC - they recruit the best players in the country and then proudly tout themselves as the best team in the nation.

Going to their game against Oregon State yday as 25-point favorites, nobody was expecting what ultimately happened last night. The Beavers just stunned the college football world with their victory over the Trojans and throwing the national championhip game wide open. And you could not have found a happier person than yours truly last night, as nothing gives me more pleasure than watching USC lose. Last night was exactly one reason why I love watching college football even more than I do watching NFL. The sheer unpredictability and the fact that all it takes is one game to screw up your entire season, like the way USC did to their 2008 season yday.

Mt. St. Helens - A climb like no other

Climbing permit - 22$
Stay at motel close to trail head - 85$
Peeking into the crater from the summit of an active volcano - Priceless...

That's exactly how it felt when I completed this arduous 9-hour hike last weekend. I have been hiking here in the Seattle area for 3 years now and ever since I heard that we would be able to hike up to the rim of the St. Helens crater, I have been waiting for the day when I would be atop the summit of the mountain, standing at 8365 feet (The St. Helens Wiki is a good place to know about the mountain's eruption history). Last year, we had a very busy hiking season with close to 100 miles covered during summer. But we just didn't plan enough to finish the St. Helens hike before the hiking season ended.

But this year around, we had decided right when the hiking season started, that we should finish this season with this hike. Though we did not do as many hikes as we did last year, we still covered enough miles to keep us in shape to complete this hike. We knew that you have to register to climb this hike and so, when we started the process to register for this climb, we ran into a small snag - the forest service only distributes 100 climbing permits per day during the summer and almost all the weekends in summer usually get booked right when the online booking started back in February or something. So, when we started looking for dates with available permits, all the weekends & most of the Fridays in summer had been sold out and finally, we got one Friday towards the end of summer - on September 12.

Thus began our preparation & anticipation for the big climb. Many a time during the hiking season, this climb proved to be the motivation for the regular day hikes that we do in this area, bcos on days when we were not motivated enough to go on a hike, the thought that we had to be ready for St. Helens convinced us to go on the hike that we had planned for that day. The other preparation that I did for this hike was by making myself as the person who has read the maximum number of trip reports of people who have hiked the mountain :) I would frequently search for St. Helens trip reports, both on the hiking forums and in blogger and by the time the D-day was around, I would have read at least a good 50 trip reports. All trip reports basically said one thing: that the hike is not merely tough but it is brutal. Even professional hikers seemed to agree to that.

The terrain and nature of the hike is what makes this hike unique and a hike unlike no other: the first 2 miles through the forest is like most other trails but you only gain 1000 feet over those 2 miles. Trailhead is at 3800 feet and so, after the treeline is done, you are at 4800 feet. Then starts the first of 2 tough phases of the hike - the scramble through the rocks & stones over 2 miles where you gain a good 2200 feet. Then comes the 2nd tough section of the hike - walk up loose sand (it is actually lava ash and is almost like beach sand) for close to a mile over which you gain the last 1365 feet.

Then came the big day. Most hikers camp at the trail head on the night before the hiking day. But since we have never done camping before, we decided to book a motel 30 mins from the trail head. Left Seattle on Thursday evening, checked in at around 9pm and then went to bed rightaway as we had planned to get an early start. Woke up at 4:45 and were at the trail head at 6:30. The forecast for the day was just perfect hiking weather.

The first 2 miles were as I had mentioned before was almost like a stroll in the park. We finished the forest section of the trail at around 7:40.

Only when we came face to face with the rocky section of the hike, did we realize the magnitude of the task lying ahead of us. Then, we started the long hard hike up the rocks (some of them being as big as big as compact cars). Bcos of the rocks, there was no set trail. There were only tall white poles every 100 feet or so, that kind of acted as guide to the hikers, as to where they should be headed towards next. The rocky section was truly energy sapping, as we drank a good 60% of the water we had carried during this section. Often during this section, we would come across a really steep vertical section of rocks (like in the picture below) and we would think that should be the end of the rocky section.
But only after we get to that point, would we discover the next one. And this one went on for a good 7-8 times after which we were finally done with the rocky section (time at this point was 10:30)
There were couple of seismographic equipments at this point which I presume, were observing the mountain in some way.
After this, was the long hard climb up the lava ash. The only good thing about this section is that right after the rocky section is over, we were able to see the summit of the mountain and people sitting at the rim of the crater.
But this phase of the hike was easily the toughest and the fact that the rocky section of the hike had sapped all the energy out of us, only made things much more difficult than they already were. There is not even a good place to rest during this section and the hiking poles were our only source of rest. And finally, after a lot of huffing & puffing and countless number of stops and shouts of 'you can do it' among ourselves, we made it to the summit exactly at 12.

The feelings that went through my mind as I realized that I am looking into crater of an active volcano was just unbelievable. You can almost call that feeling spiritual. The size of the crater as such was huge and even looking at all those pictures from those umpteen trip reports had not prepared me for what I saw.
There were some gases that were fuming at a few places and since I have read before that they are normal activity, I didn't panic!!

From the summit, one gets amazing views of 5 of the tallest peaks in the area - Mt. Rainier, Mt. baker, Mt. Adams, Mt. Hood and Mt. Jefferson (the last 2 in Oregon) We spent not more than 30 mins at the summit bcos of the high winds and the sand the winds were kicking up. So, took a lot of pictures and then it was ready for us to leave. We had originally planned to have our lunch up at the summit but then bcos of the winds & the sand, decided against it.

While we were at the summit, another cool thing happened. A hiking group had brought a golf club & a bunch of golf balls along with them and they were taking turns hitting the golf balls into the crater. That I thought was pretty cool and added to our list of unforgettable memories at the summit.

So, here are the vital stats:

Distance: 9.4 miles (Round trip)
Time: 9 hours (Ascent - 5.5 hours, descent - 3 hours and 30 mins at the summit)
Elevation gain: 4500 feet
Difficulty level: Most difficult

When I finished the hike and got back to the trail head, I looked back at the mountain we had just conquered and I was truly surprised that I had just climbed that towering mountain. This was easily the toughest hike that I have ever done and the unique terrain of the trail just makes this a hike unlike no other. I am even tempted to call this the biggest accomplishment of my life and when I do ponder about it now, a week removed from the hike, that line of thinking would not be way off the mark.

Endhiran - The Robot starts rolling

So, here it is: the most awaited Shooting Starts Today ad for Robot. Well, have to say that I was a tad disappointed looking at the picture. It kind of looks weird and that picture does not even need Thalaivar. I mean, anybody could have just done some CG work and made that poster. The only thing cool about the picture is the font style of Enthiran. It is uber cool. Same with the way, the tag line The Robot has been added to the name of the movie (much like it was done for Sivaji - The Boss).


But if we were to go by Shankar's track record with Sivaji, we have got some good news. The still that was released when Sivaji was launched was never used in the movie and all the stills from the actual movie were far better than the one that was released at the time of launch. So, here is expecting another such work from Shankar.

The following picture is for the Telugu version where the name of the movie is just Robot and the tag line there is fantabulous :) speed: 1 TERRA HZ memory: 1 ZETTA BYTE


Sify reports that the shooting of Robot will start at the following 2 locations, Machu Picchu in Peru and the Iguassu Falls in Brazil. The 2 locations just look amazing. Trust Shankar to bring these awesome locations to our eyes in the best possible way in Robot.



So, thus it starts, for possibly the most hyped up movie ever in the history of Tamil cinema and lets just enjoy the ride for the next 2 years or so :)