1) Sea...rather The Sea.

2)Flyovers - The cris-cross Guindy flyover is something one will remember for a long time after seeing it while in flight. Love the Tambaram flyover too.

3)Tamil movie songs- Yuvan shankar raja and his music...simply awesome !!

4)The office location- in the lap of the hill and near the zoo.

5)Buses- The entire bus system seems to be very organised, something very, very different from Kolkata.

6)The entire saga of animated conversations.

7)The train route from Thiruvanmiyur to Chennai Fort.

8)The fact that movie ticket prices doesnot swing up and down on any given day.

9)Well...The Sea...again.

10)The quest for good food...and the joy of getting Annapurna at Egmore, Mainland China at Nungambakkam and the phuchkawallah at Besant Nagar Beach.

Its almost nearing a month ever since I opened that joining email, cried , packed my bags, waved back at my father and bro before the final boarding call, held my mother's hand, boarded the plane and landed in Chennai.

The plane braved bad weather, crossed the sea beautifully, and made a smooth landing. No, not actually.

Since then , we have been calling everybody Anna and Amma, bearing earsplitting grunts from bus conductors, missing busstops,enjoying rasam and pongal for breakfast , sitting on Besant Nagar beach n Saturdays , tapping foot to Tamil music in volvo buses, and escaping to Skwalk Ampa mall in between training breaks.

Traffic options are disgusting at times and Metro is frantically missed at times. More on nasty autowallahs, demonic bus conductors and fat TT later.

Disclaimer: The below post is a mail forward from a friend from another company. Some are funny, some I dont agree even as an outsider!

Comments from a software professional “banglorean”

Hi friends,

This is a live update from chennai.

Language – Tamil, tamil and tamil. Even if they know hindi, they dont speak up.

People – We never heard anyone laughing here (I wonder if they ever laugh or shout). So conservative, that noone talks even in the bus.

Food – Idly, sambhar, rice, dosa, vada, pongal. We have to cook our food ourselves (unbelievable naa).

Weather – summer from october to feb and rest of the year it’s deadly summer.

Lesiure – TV, dormitery, dirty sea beaches on weekends.

Rent – 6.5 K / 1 BHK. Advance – 6 months

Aata – Rs. 26 /kg

Apple – Rs 100 /kg

Orange – Rs. 10/piece

Banana – Rs 3 /piece

Mausmi Juice -Rs 22 /glass

Jeans Dryclean – Rs.40

Phulka – Rs. 8 (idly also Rs.8)

Interesting facts and incidents :

1. Here you cannot buy a needle after 6 PM (strange).

2. We asked an auto driver, “hindi aati hai”?. He replied in hindi “Hindi nahi aati”.
3. The most common suffix here is ‘a’, e.g. straight – straighta
2 cup tea – 2 cupa tea

4. Even dogs eat curd rice.

5. In north, names are like Gori Shankar, gauri prasad etc. Here the names are like Kaliraj, kalicharan etc.

6. When there is a ‘t’ in any name, they add ‘h’ to it. jayant – jayanth ; bharat – bharath

7. Here is a culture of adding mystical alphabets after ones’s name, like Mahesh R, Sandeep T etc.

8. Cable connection is of no use here as only tamil channels are broadcasted on cable TV, if anyone wanna watch hindi channels then you need to buy a set up box (Rs.4000).

9. Cognizant navallur office is actually not in chennai, it comes under a district called Chengalpet which is 51 kms from main city.

10. Once we saw a girl in the food court, she was looking and acting like a north indian. My friend became exited and planned to talk to her, but just then we noticed her breakfast and then “dil ke armaan aansuon mein behaye”, she was having pongal. (disguise!!)

11.How dare anyone come to chennai : Cognizant Chennai MCity comes under SEZ(special economic zone), swap and transfers from here are not possible.

12. No life after 9 PM.

13. No need to worry for Tsunami, because noone will be left to cry on your grave.

Bye Bye (waiting for banglore, pune, hyderabad update)

Life is not about cursing your posting location but it is about how soon you leave the company.

You don't always have a Ranchod das to bail you out with your final year project when semesters knock at the door, HOD's deadlines drive you mad and sassy group members keep throwing tantrums.

Thats precisely was lesson number one of 3 idiots. To avoid things from getting suicidal, make your start prudently.
The project saga formally started at the beginning of 7th semester with the notice board asking you to form groups and submitting the names to the Departmental coordinator.Yours truly is truly spoilt for choices between two groups, each containing a madly in love couple. Now ,since I'm allergic to prawn, PDA and mush, it was quite obvious choose the group with long standing couple applying the radioactivity principle.

Now, when I say you need to make a prudent start, I refer to the choice of project. This stage is quite vulnerable because you either keep dreaming of seeing your name in the newspaper for executing an awesome project or a big F in your gradecard.
So, after a few brainstorming sessions with the project mentor, rejecting a dozen idea, the group settled for an apparently doable idea.
And thus begins the real ordeal.

From a dozen metro rides to Chandnichowk to buy components to persuading group members to come and work. From getting nightmares to having dreams of the project working full fledgedly.From making sorry faces to shopkeepers to give bills of items we never bought to assuring the mentor that we are gonna finish in time.From living in fear that the circuit will not work once the power supply is given to jumping in ecstacy once it has worked. From giving gaalis to group members to shaking hands with them the next day.From roaming around lanes and bylanes of Chandni in search of a single chip to discovering a Coffee house with awesome waiter and amazing cold coffee.

And then there were these to deal with in moments of distress :P



The project was finally done- complete and working :) The project report was hopefully the best in the department , thanks to the Cornell Univ portal :)
And we were a happy group , sans the gaalis and bitching.

Rs 500 for registration
Rs 25 for bank's handling charges
Rs 2 for the envelope
Rs 5 for Fevicol gumstick
Rs 8 for the rickshaw to cybercafe
Rs 15 for online registration and printout + hassles about id proof + frequent computer shutdown
Rs 5 for rickshaw to Post office
Rs 5 for stamp
Rs 5/6 for calling up people to verify things
Rs 2 for the photocopies of the registration form and pay-in slip

Rs 5 for the ice cream after finally dropping the letter in the Letter box and praying that it reaches atleast.

Oh, I did return home, so Rs 5 for the auto fare.


All these for?
18 general seats - 50, 000 applicants. Priceless.

..

When I fell in love with Farmville, like a true mad lover, forgot everything else in the world. Mother’s yellings, soaring broadband bills, brother’s threats, father’s frowns- nothing seemed to matter to me. I merrily sowed, harvested, milked, collected, bought and sold my farmland stuffs, dreamt fields full of daffodils and tulips and read and re-read whatever came out in newspapers about it. Zynga looked like the greatest happiness giver of modern times. But lo! There came the holy semester and our meeting became less frequent. And like most long distance relationship , things did not work out smoothly. Now, to the people still reading, take a tissue paper and pretend to be strong. Yes, the worst happened . We broke up. I did not even open the three score gifts lying below the Christmas tree. The fields are dry, the trees are full, the houses empty. To my bovine , equine, elephantine fellows- I miss you. Cows were never so sweet, pigs were never so cute, elephants were never so adorable, never so close. Dear Farmville, you did this to me.

Jumping from virtual to real world, here’s the story of my short stint with digestive biscuits. Not chocolate or sundae or say palak paneer.
It was the International trade fair where I aimlessly wandered into the Bangladesh pavilion and bought a packet of biscuits. Little did I know, that simple buy would usher in much happiness for one month in my life. The biscuits were digestive biscuits with a layer of chocolate on one side. God! It tasted awesome. Had it not been the last day of the fair, I would have surely gone back to fetch a dozen packets more. Foreign stuff gone, it was time to go desi. There is n’t any brand whose digestive biscuit I haven’t tasted. Breakfast to evening tea, it was D. B all the way. At the end of the month , I got bored and now I almost can’t stand the mention of it.

Btw, roses at the flower shops, red and white balloons at the Archies, and Vodafone messages tell me that Valentine’s day is round the corner. Don’t frown, how else will I know? So , here’s wishing everyone a happy Sunday.