"Maani baby remix" by The Three Monkeys!

If you're not familiar with "The Three Monkeys", don't be too hard on yourself. In all fairness, we barely sprung into existence last weekend :) Before your brows get all quizzical with the whole monkeys doing a remix thingy, let me start the story with Manya, the birthday girl..

August 16, 2008: My niece Manya turned two and we had planned a birthday party for her..we being her parents, my brother, sister-in-law, her mom and I. My sister-in-law, being the born decorator/designer/party-planner that she is, came up with the Barney theme and played the HOD (Head of Decorations) :) with the help of the mom (her sister)..We boys decided to pull off a multimedia quiz, a t-shirt painting session and finally, /the remix/. Phew.

The remix: I've been working in bits and pieces on remixing Tamil movie songs with hip-hop music off late...and 20 people + birthday party - opportunity that one can't pass up :) So, I suggested that we fuse Classical and Hip-hop and edit the lyrics to suit the birthday girl. Three of us boys decided to wear t-shirts with three monkeys on them (because it was a kids party?) and hence the name "The Three Monkeys" :D My brother picked the melodious "Sundari Neeyum" from Michael Madana Kama Rajan; I picked up Jay-Z's big pimpin' and Manya's dad hooked us up with the bridge.

The song...

(Part I - Sundari Neeyum with modified lyrics)

Maani kutti neeyum...shashu kutti payalum..
serndhirunaal orey kottam...oh..oh..
Maani satham potta...avan satham poduvan..
engalukku thalai suthum...

Happy birthday Maani inikku nee
license-oda kottam adikalam
enjoy maadi

(Maani kutti neeyum...)

maani-ku soru voota..oorukul yarum illai..
maaniya thoonga panna...ph.d degree thevai..
enna sonnalum she is our raani..
shashu kutti-ku avadhanda nanny..
(naaanyy...yy..yy..yy...yyyy)

(Maani kutti neeyum...)

(The bridge..)


(Part II - The rap!)

Maani kutti...romba chutti very naughty
she got the personality
aatam aaduva..pattum paaduva
saami slogam kooda solluva
pidivadham konjam jasthi..
guess she got it from her daddy..
velayattum romba jasthi...
yeah she got it from her mummy..
she's also really friendly..
yup..that's from her chitthi..
Folks say she also got a lot of mariyadhai..
uhn..guess where that came from?..uhn..
hell yeah its from her patti
okay..what about her chithhappas, huh?
what's she got from chitthappas, huh?
we taught her leg shakin...puriyala..
kaal attifying..
periya chitthappa taught her this..
chinna chitthappa'll teach her this..
hahahaha...that's how we do it. unh.

(Maani kutti neeyum...)

(Part III - Back to Sundari Neeyum!)

Maani-ku sooda paal kudutha
so cutely she says "choooda..."
sappadai kizha potta...vellai
kari pol she says "uh oh.."
Appa engannu ketta she says "aafees"
When she wants TV she plays her own CDs
Baaaarney....nu sonna podhum she
throws her own bday party..!

(Maani kutti neeyum..)

(End of remix)

Guys, relax. I know its cheesy, but its a birthday song for 2 yr old. What else did you expect? :) If you think you can brave a video of the same, come back in a day or two :)

Dance like nobody's watchin!!!

Sure, hip hop is messed up these days. All you hear is "shawty", "bling", "n**gers", "club", "get low", "shake that booty" and so on. But if you love to dance, and if you got the rhythm, youse' at the right place.

Let's get to business. C-Walk is a flashy, fast, feet shuffle to hip hop music that's fun to watch and better yet, a killer if you can do it. Needless to say, there's several versions of the c-walk and let's take a quick peek at some tutorials. I'm trying to learn the c-walks myself at the moment - let's how if I can hit the snake heel toe hop transition in the near future. See them videos below and you'll know what am talkin about! :)

Heel toe:



Inverted heel toe:


V-Snake:


Snake to heel toe transition:


Shuffle hop:


Wiggle walk:


Knee drop:


How about them moves, eh? :) Train em, enjoy em and nail em!! :)

My nephew's a star!

The title says it all :)

Name: Shashvath
Age: 19 months
Nickname: Chikki-pingli (ask the parents :D)
Complexion: Foreigner (as in, vellai velerrr :))
Hobbies: Birdwatching, dancing, music and his paal buddi :)
Girlfriends: None so far (to the best of my knowledge)
Accomplishments:
- Repeating his dad's jathis,
- humming "baba black sheep" and
- nailing the 3 syllable word "Chi-tha-ppa".

Videos:





I am the proud "chithappa" of this bundle of joy :) and I shall take personal care in grooming him (though my anna/manni might be worried about it -)). More pictures and updates to follow in the blogs to come!

CRY Walk Run 2008!

Greets.

If you know me, you probably know about the Child Rights and You Walk Run 08 that happened on June 15, 08 through my gmail status message, my phone calls, my incessant e-mails and the CRY blog. I joined CRY Bay Area in February 2008 and offered to lead the walk run event this year. I can proudly tell you that this was a milestone event for our action center - we had 428 individuals register for the event, around 400 people participated in the event and we raised almost 15,000$ from the event! To give you an idea, this is a 500% jump in funds raised and event attendance compared to last year. Enough with the bragging...read below for more on the event...

The Bay Area Walk event was held on June 15, 2008 at the Shoreline Park in Mountain View. It was an exciting day with over 400 people attending the event. Our congratulations to the winners of the 10km run, 5km run, 5km walk and 3km walk events! We distributed around 40 medals and certificates to male and female winners from each age group and so many walkers/runners thanked us for a well-marked course and ample water supply along the way!

Lots of children also participated in the special kids activities that we organized and their screams of joy and fun made our day! We had a sack race, three-legged race, lime-in-a-spoon race and relay race for three age groups (under 7, under 10 and under 12). We also had face painting and balloons which kids really enjoyed!

Onto the raffle event! Some uber-cool raffle gifts were given away - an iPod Touch, a dating package, jewelry, a multi-purpose printer, dinner packages and so on! Pretty neat, right? :)

Father's day celebration! - we raffled away two pairs of tickets to a baseball game at the legendary Giants stadium to acknowledge Father's day and also took pictures of Father-child teams to upload onto our website in the near future!

Click here for CRY America's account of the event
Our fundraising page (You can still donate! :)

I'm proud to be part of this good cause and give back to the community. If you feel my flow :-) and would like to do your bit, don't hesitate to shoot me an e-mail at bharath.sundararaman@gmail.com

Famous last words...I'm back. More blogs to follow!

My last blog was "boooorrrrringggg".

Yup...That was the comment on my last blog. This one better fuckin' do some amends :)

Crobar, Chicago (Yeayyy!!)

Here's the situation. Friday night, 11 p.m. and I had a flight to Vegas at 7 a.m. in the morning the next day. Prash was on the same flight too. Wouldn't be a good idea to get some rest and wake up in time for the flight? Right. But we don't do that shit :) We decided to party the night out at Crobar and the rest is history. Had a blasty-blast (DC, anybody?) and surprisingly, Crobar played lots of hiphop that night. What's up with that? :) Anyway, Prash and I decided that it was a great idea to pull this off...Until....

Oh, shit.

This happened!! Er, no, it aint no homeless bum. Its just me, wasted and rolled up. Probably cursing myself for partying like a maniac and I'm guessing my hoodie wasn't keeping me too warm. If you were to add a soundtrack to it, my friends would gladly say "abhishekkkkk....lemon kondaaaa". haahahaha. If you don't get this reference, its probably a good thing. For me. Seriously, this pic is embarrassing. Let's move on :)

Vegas (new year's day)

Of course, I'm the one with the pink hat. If you can't see what it says, take a guess. It says 'Happy New Year'. We call this pic "Roshan's Seven" (parody of ocean's seven...) cause we're desis. Haha. Weak. I know. But New Years at Vegas was amazing! (Duh). Mama Jay pulled off some fantastic stunts! (leftmost in the pic). My personal fav is when this girl, Anna, got on the train and stood next to Jay and I. When she heard the "please hold on to a pole, train's about to leave" announcement, she almost grabbed Jay :D. Our man, after 5 seconds or so...said "you thought I was a pole" in his usual accent. Unbelievably hilarious shit. Hard to explain but funny as hell in person! :))))

San Francisco! Golden Gate, y'all.

Roughly six weeks ago, I caved into the desire for a change (and sunshine!). Interviewed with a startup (my cousin works here) right after Christmas and I got the offer a week after the New Years. Packed my bags, got outta Chicago in a little over 2 weeks and here I am. San Francisco! From sub-zero temperatures to 70 degrees today. Whoo hoo! And for the record, I checked out the SF nightlife this Friday (Mission district) by myself and had a wild night. Blondies bar and no grill -> beauty bar -> Lexington and I met some really cool folks. Good fun. Anytime you end-up arm wrestling a lesbian on a pinball machine at a beauty bar (beauty salon + bar), you know you've fuckin' seen it all -))) I did beat her. And I got her a glass a red wine cause I'm a nice guy. hahahaha.

Things are rushing at me in full speed but I'm starting to settle down. Officially moved into my apartment in San Fran and setting up my place now. Gotta ready it up for some house warming parties ;-) See the image below. I know I'm pushing it but at some point, I gotta give my crib a face lift, right?

Shady’s back – tell a friend.

Ladies and Gentlemen, I’m back. After a long blogless stint, I admit desperation in wanting to write about something (or anything) and here we are. Its an hour past midnight on Christmas; I’m at my cousin’s crib in San Jose by myself with a bottle of Blackstone; I can’t even connect to the Internet and I’m typing my blog in Word to upload it later, when I can. Typing blogs offline = intense. Period. Talking about comebacks, Jay Leno recently said that the only comeback that Britney ever did was to come back from a buffet. Hilarious =] Moving on, my Dec 07 in a nutshell….

California love.

Christmas weekend 07. I’m here in California primarily to interview with a startup firm and also for a family rendezvous. Thoroughly enjoyed a whole day of interviews (8 different people interviewed me between 9.30 a.m. and 4 p.m.) and at the end of the day, I actually celebrated a recent success of their sales team (folks were toasting while I was downing champagne) and I thought to myself: “good shit”. I don’t have an offer yet but things are looking positive. This is huge because if it all works out, after 7 long years in Chicago, I’ll be gone. Poof. On the family front, meeting my folks (especially my nephew Shash) has filled up my tank with pure joy!

Birthdays and shots.

December 8^th, 07. Here’s the thing about birthdays and shots – sometimes you get completely drunk, get home, wake up with a bad hangover, call your friends, joke about it, thank them for joining u, eat chinese food and go to bed. There’s also times where you don’t get home and instead you end up in ER. Two of my friends celebrated their birthdays the same night, both passed out and we took both of them to ER the same night. Here’s the twist - my close friend and I had a blast hangin out with their friends while we were waiting for them at the hospital and now, I think I have a bad case of Nimania (not Pneumonia). Don’t ask, don’t tell =))

Self-centered pig.

December 1^st week, 07. I hooked up with this girl (let’s call her…Julie) through my family (typically referred to as an “alliance” for whatever reason) and I thought we got along pretty well. There was a huge language barrier (She’s very Northie and I’m very Southie, if you know what I mean) which she was unhappy about (so was I) but when I asked her if anything else bothered her, she said that our conversations had totally been about me and I hadn’t asked her anything about her work or her family. Thinking back, I have to admit that she’s right. Whilst I kept yapping about myself (she kept asking things about me), it didn’t occur to me to I should return the favor. Have I just become a self-centered, attention-craving pig? (It’s a rhetorical question, answers are not welcome :P) I hope not. Anyway, good for her and good for me, all it took was 4 phone calls to move on (which is great!).

I'm goin to Vegas for the new years (ha!) -> blog updates next week. Come back soon :)

LoLLaPalooZa!!!

From my blog on Lollapalooza 2006:
"3 days. 130 bands. 8 stages. 70,000 people. An alternative rock festival at Grant Park, located in the heart of Chicago."

From my roomie's blog on Lollapalooza 2007:
"I happened to make my now ritualistic pilgrimage to what was once the hot bed of alternate rock"

Before I delve into the details of my glorious three day escape at LPZ this year, I will warn you that this blog is dedicated purely to Daft Punk's outstanding audio-visual treat on Friday night (I reserve the right to use the F word to show extra emotion -))

If a picture's worth a thousand words, videos must be worth way more. So, here's a collection of videos from the show. Blast your speakers and brace yourself :)

First Video ("Aerodynamic" & "One More Time" remix)




Amazing light display. Pure genius!!




The crowd goin crazy!!





Another video of Aerodynamic with cooler visuals!!





Finally, the introduction!!



I'm still on a high. If you love to dance to electronic music, you can't hope for a better show than this. To put things in perspective, this was just one of the 130 odd shows that happened over the weekend! Just imagine!

Stay tuned for the next episode!

This and That.

(Flashback, last week)

Of all the days, I chose to write today. On my rooftop. On a night when the sky looks like it just caved in to the dark side. Ominous black clouds have blanketed the sky and rain is just around the corner. Oh, and the first flash of lighting just showed up. Great :) Anyway, I decided to do some justice to my love for writing and here I am, Ctrl+S-ing as I write so that I can shut my laptop and dash for cover when rain says hello :)

Okay, rain's here. Timeout :)

(Now, July 26)

Back on my rooftop. No rain threat today (hope is a beautiful thing) and I'm turning 28 at midnight today. My friends will be here in the next hour or so for a little celebration and I don't got much time to write...so let's see how far I go. Talking about friends, I'm truly grateful for the friends that I have acquired in Chicago. Just plain grateful. Its unfair to talk about some friends and not about others, but one of them deserves a special mention - Kabs. I call him a one in a hundred and a hundred friends rolled into one. Why the special mention? Simply because of his friendship that has tolerated my DABby behavior (DAB - Drunk Ass Bitch :)) for awhile and he doesn't drink! Maybe I'm one of the reasons why he'll never drink - I'm so outta control all the time! Can't forget the day when I passed out a dominos pizza store last year after drinking/dancing/partying for long hours. What a disaster! :D

What else? Work. My passion for what I do (am a software engineer) is just growing (knock on wood) and I'm lovin it! Last week, my manager randomly called me into his office and said I got a pay hike because I exceeded his expectations throughout the one year that I've been working with my company. Joy. Not to mention the "shield-vangina look" on my face when I get introduced as the Social Director for the entire IT department (as opposed to a Java Developer, which is my primary duty). So, things have been good at work.

Moving on. I've registed for a walking challenge at work. Starting this saturday, for one full month, I have to walk (or run) at least 6 miles every day! I have a pedometer already that tracks my walking progress and the shocking truth is that we have almost 90 participants! That's huge. I expected to compete with around 15-20 people at most but what do I know, right? Maybe my company is super health-conscious - gotta change my pattern of throwing drinking parties, I guess.

Ah. How can I mention my newest bus adventure? I take the bus to work everyday (stop is right outside my apartment) and I've been noticing this girl at the stop for the past 2 weeks or so. If I were to describe her, I'd say smart, successful, friendly and super hot (timeout, wipes sweat) :) I walked up to her, struck up a conversation and we seem to get along fine. She seems pretty interested but god knows how girls think and what they want. I've missed our usual bus timing for the last 3 days and I'm slowly starting to forget her - gotta get back to my routine!

Weekend. I'm going to Michigan with six others in a minivan tomorrow evening, to hit Porcupine Mountains (a state park in the upper peninsula). The drive should be fabulous, the stay must be awesome and we're there for a day. Returning sunday night. Its time to partayyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyy! I have a weakness, people. For road trips, that is. Absolutely love to drive and explore!

One last thing. I saw The Transformers. Twice. Amazing graphics. My roomie hated it but wait, different folks, different strokes. Right? Megan Fox is so damn hot. I saw her on the Jay Leno show, was it? Can't remember..but apparently, she changed her last name from "Foxx" to "Fox". Useless trivia indeed. The way I see it, she can be an "ex" churning machine given her hotness and she has to compensate, I guess, by dropping an X. How random -)

I'm done. I got too much goodies out here with me right now and it makes me lazy to get up. But I gotta. To name a few, I have my laptop (duh?), cellphone, a half-full bottle of 312 (yes, am an optimist :)), a pack of smokes, a lighter and myself. Takes an effort to move around with so much stuff but it helps.

Ciao.