My Tryst with Hollywood

My Tryst with Bollywood

My Tryst with the Mobile Phone

Cut to flashback...I need to first mention about the land line telephone which we all were used to earlier.
I went to the telephone department at Sheshadri Road to apply for the telephone connection by paying a deposit of Rs 3000/- when I was an engineerig student in 1999.
I was so happy that that I need not go to the PCOs or the coin phone booths to call my friends. Now I would have my own number where my friends could reach me when I was @home.
It took 3-4 months before we received this phone connection. We got ourselves a cordless Panasonic handset & I was all gung ho about this.

It was the year 1999 or 2000 I think, I got my hands on the mobile handsets such as Siemens & Ericsson. These were bought by my father. And then there was the mobile phone from Motorola which belonged to my uncle which used extensively for SMSs.

In 2003, I badly needed a mobile phone of my own since I had already started searching for jobs. And then Reliance's Karlo Duniya Muthi main campaign happened which revolutionized the mobile phone industry by making LG CDMA handsets available for a paltry Rs 500/-. This phone had a medium resolution blue backlight display which was capable of displaying images in grayscale mode. There was R-world CDMA data service through which we were able to connect to the internet for downloading ringtones & images from Reliance CDMA data sites.
The phone used to get heated up during long conversations on it. It had a stand type of charger. The phone was quite cute & small with a nice keypad layout.
The mobile cost me dirt cheap Rs 500/-

Due to this, mobile phone was no longer a gadget of luxury & even people from lower middle class could easily afford it. But of course there were expensive models even then which only the upper middle class used to go for.

Then came the era of mobile phones with color display in 2004. There were lot of players in the low end market of color display phones then such as LG, Samsung & Ericsson. Nokia was a somewhat late entrant into this category since its B/W phones were doing very well such as the 3310, 2100 Nokia models.

Finally I bought my first GSM phone from my own hard earned money which was a Samsung C100 which had a brilliant color display & a blinking LED on top which emitted multicolors during phone rings. It had nice ringtones of midi format such as the nature sounds, horse's squeaking & so on. It had a nice steel slim body finishing with a nice keypad layout.

This one cost me Rs 7000/-

This was the cover of my first GSM pre-paid phone connection from Airtel. I still use this same number even after 8 years but have converted the connection to post paid plan.

Then came the era of camera phones during late 2004 & that was when I went ahead with the first upgrade for a camera mobile phone from Motorola. I dont remember its model number but it had a much bigger screen than the Samsung C100 & it could display JPEG images with great clarity. The camera was a basic one with 0.3 megapixel but it generated decent images.

The pic of this phone is here for all to see :)

Little did I realize that this was just the start of a never ending saga of mobile phone upgrade due to its craze & frequent upgrade of mobile phone technology which is true even today.

Paid Rs 10,000/- for my first moto !

Mp3 ringtones & video camera in a phone became a rage a few months later. the lack of it in my moto mobile phone was pinching enough for me to go for a new phone very soon. In 2005 I went for Sony Erricson K500i camera phone which captured decent videos. It supported mp3 ringtones & very nice call recording capabilities.

I paid Rs 6,500/- for this one. It was a very sleek mobile with nice 3D games & a video camera for the first time in my case.

This was the phone which I used when I got engaged :). Needless to say that it had great battery backup which enabled me to talk endlessly with my spouse for hours together.

Just before marriage around November 2005, smartphones were round the corner. Nokia had introduced its first smartphone Nokia 3650 which was a rage among people. I soon switched over to a used handset of Nokia 3660 which was the second smartphone from Nokia which had a huge screen & keyboard layout. My friends used to call it the Brick phone :)

The best thing about the smartphone was that you could extent its capabilities by installing software available on the internet. Due to its large displays viewing photos, videos & SMS messages on it was a delight. Also installed an mp3 player, movie player on it. I listened to mp3 songs on this phone for the first time ever. I paid Rs 4000/- for this one for a used handset.

Then came the shortcomings of this phone which I realized slowly.. The smartphone OS symbian was highly unstable causing phone hangs & crashes often. Also it supported external memory only up to 256 MB. Due to its large display the battery used to get drained very early which was a major problem.

In late 2006, I was forced to switch to a new mobile phone again. This time it was the Nokia 5200 XpressMusic. It was an excellent phone with mp3 music playback capability with 2 GB external memory card support. Excellent design with external keys for controlling music.

To be continued.... stay tuned !

Coming up...

Nokia 5700

Nokia 5800

& finally the almighty Nokia N8 :)

Child is the Father of a Man

This blog is a long pending itenarary in my bucket list.

Its going to be a year ever since that I have been blessed with the greatest gift a man could get.

Yesss... Its about my darling baby girl Neha that I am talking about !

The moment I heard the news from my WIFE that I am gonna get a promotion in my life, I was on cloud 9 & was exuberant !! The sense of being a creator is amazing which

one should experience in a LIFETIME. Apart from being very excited to welcome a newcomer into our family, it also provoked my thoughts towards keeping my personal health & fitness up to good levels since suddenly from nowhere the feeling of wanting & craving to live LIFE for as loooong as possible was born.

As a result I started working out & joined our nearby Gym. In the process, it also inspired some of my buddies to join me in this new found hobby. Yes sir, we wanted to look fit & handsome to my new born baby. :)

The day when she was born was the most unforgettable day of my whole LIFE where happiness knew no bounds for both me & Sunitha.

The two of us had now graduated as parents for our tiny little beautilicious pumpilatios Neha !!!

I could observe the divine smile that she was beaming with, right from day one. I mean, I could forget the worrisome world & leave it behind when I could see the smile of my baby.

She showed great affection towards the people around her. Especially her grannys & grandpas.

Month after month.. I could see that her enthusiasm & inquisitiveness on the things around her increased.

She was now able to blabber cute words which was a big bundle of joy to our ears.

Another sweet & cute thing about her was her thumb sucking habit. She was so flexible that she could even suck her toes. :)

We have lessons to be learnt from the kids to keep ourselves fit. Her excitement was now being transformed into physical movements. It was a great sight to see her moving around by rolling herself or by crawling.

Once she became something around 5-6 months, she came back from her granny's house to our home. There were no bounds to my happiness on that day. I still cherish those moments when she was back for good to our sweet home.

She had developed a great fondness for her mommy dear which I was happy about but somewhere underneath I was a bit jealous about it. All these days, It was I who had proactively showed affection towards her & looking Neha actively showing a likingness to her mom really amazed me. I had to make myself more dearer to her to reach to the level where Sunitha had found herself. :) so that Neha proactively shows a sense of affection towards me.

These are some of the sensitive & some of the most important things in LIFE which most parents do not realize. But getting close to their own kids right from their childhood is a very key thing from my perspective.

Gradually I could see the results of my efforts from her actions. Whenever I was back from office she used to exclaim with joy which is a sight to been seen to experience the pleasures of fatherhood. She liked being with me as much as her mother now. Even Sunitha noticed this & she did admit it to me about it which doubled by joy further. :)

Hmm.. so as a result of being able to spend a lot of time with Neha, I have learnt a lot of things in LIFE by interacting with her which made me conclude that "The child is the father of a Man" which I will reveal & explain in a series of chapters.

To be continued....