After hours and hours in cramped flight seats, Chennai gave me an annoying welcome with the health officials at the airport making all the people from ‘foreign’ (as they call it!) to stand in long queues to sign some stupid forms. Thanks to the swine flu threats! Stepping out and breathing the freshly polluted Chennai air with all the dust gave a nice adrenaline rush and with 15 taxi and auto guys trying to snatch your trolley, the one second elation to king status gives the ‘feel good’ factor!

One thing which you are supposed to do after staying away from home is to make a list of all your relatives/friends and meet them one by one. The process is pretty simple though. You will be asked a set of questions which will most probably be from the ones below….

X: How is the jetlag and all ? [Jetlag laam epdi iruku?]
Me :Fine! Fine! [Yaru andha Jetlag? ]

X: Is it too cold in your place? How are you managing?
Me: Oh ya…. – 15 C in winter! Heating, jackets…. blah, blah!

Before you give out the answer, the subsequent question will be this….
X:After staying there are you able to manage the chennai heat? [Anga irundutu Chennai heat thangardho? Kashtama Illa?]
Me:Ok…. I stayed in Chennai for the past 21 years if you hadn’t forgotten.

X: How is the American economy? Is it going to recover? Is Obama going to do something?
Me: I think the economy is bad… Hope it recovers![How would i know!!]

This is my favorite! Some relatives who haven’t seen me for years.
X: You have grown big! [Hmmm! Nalla valaandutan payyan!]
Me: I think that’s how the human body works and apparently i also drink Complan every day.

X: How is the stock market over there?
Me: Oh! I don’t keep track
[Wall Street la enga aaya vada suttu vikaranga..... ketu solren]

X: You got foreign chocolates right?
Me: Of course! I did!
[Pinnadi cargo flight la varudhu.... unga motta madila pottutu poga solren]

At Green Trends during the oil massage
X: Sir, i don’t remember seeing you…… Are you new to this place?
Me: I live in the US for now.
X: Sir! Sathukudi juice? this oxy facial is very nice sir…. 2000 rupees only Sir!.
Me: Enaku Americala bathroom kazhuvara velainga…. andha madiri vasadhi vaipu laam illa!
[I work as a janitor in the US!! No posh standard of living!]

Other than this Chennai trip was a refreshing one after an year in Blacksburg. Taking inspiration from the confounded lady here is mine. I always wanted to do this!

“complan”
“Pathu rubha paakadeenga sir” [What's in Rs.10 sir!]
“Murugan Idly”
“Bessie beach”
“balloon shooting”
“cream center”
“open coffee club”
“marina beach”
“city center”
“INOX”
“strawberry smoothie”
“bakhya fast foods”
“oil dripping chilli barrota”
“open quiz”
“watermelon juice”
“arachi vitta sambar”
“Adu enna 24 mani neram AC” (AC for 24 hours)
“Rs. 5000 electric bill”
“friends”
“twitter camp”
“Appy Fizz”
“bangalore”
“landmark”
“TKF”
“Mahabalipuram”
“ECR”
“kalyana sapadu” (wedding food)
“oil massage”
“satyam theater”
“pani puri”
“IIT-Madras”
“Summer rain”
“pothys/saravana stores”
“panagal park”
“west Tambaram”
“degree certificate”
“krishna sweets”
“saravana bhavan”
“cycle”
“full meals/special”
“cousins”
“sondam…bandham” (family…friends)
“residency towers”
“GRT Grand”
“pondy bazaar”
“share auto”
“sun tv”
“Mambalam”
And Now…

“peace”
Blacksburg
“silence”
Blacksburg
“loneliness”
Blacksburg!!

Back to the base and i long to get back!

Sheshadri Sir
Every one will have a inspirational teacher and in my story it was Sheshadri sir. I am generally not the “teacher’s student” and most of the teachers especially in under grad didn’t like me as i would be the one who is spoiling the class! I went to different kind of High school called Ahobila Math and as everyone i hated the school when i studied there but started missing it when i went to college. Even though i was a science student there was a fourth subject which would be biology or comp.science but in my case it was strangely Accountancy. On a lighter note i loved accountancy more than science but realized it pretty late! Sheshadri sir took accounts for me in 12th standard and if i remember right that is the only time in my life i sat in the first bench. He was more than a teacher and moved on well with the students. Every one in the school inspired his personality and his entry in the class would be majestic. It is really hard to find a dedicated and talented teacher like him.

Vinod Ji

Vinod Ganesh was a senior of mine at college. He was this “famous” quizzer in college who was completely different from all the other folks. A multi talented guy every one looked at this guy with awe and some girls thought he was smart! In some way or the other this guy has made some significant turns in my life because i first heard the word “blog” out of his mouth and also created my first blog taking his awesome funny blog as an inspiration. Today my life revolves around blogs, social media and i have churned around a million INR in profits from my blog network in the past year and half. I pay my tuitions here at Virginia Tech on my own and i have a good level of financial freedom. If not for this guy i would be no where and i would have been yet another guy who sits and codes in a cubicle! I still remember those crappy questions which i used to ask him as a fresh undergrad and he was patient enough and answered all those! Also he served as the gyaan guru for our Dumb C and Ad Zap teams and we did carry on his legacy and bagged the name as the team which could not be beaten! We managed to rope in more than a lakh or even two if i am not wrong in prize money as a team during the last two years in college.

Bhuvan Anna

(Of course! The guy who is showing the direction!)

One of the best things which i did unknowingly as a school kid was being over enthusiastic and joining the scouting movement. The few years i stayed with the Patel Scout Group was bliss and Bhuvan Anna was a multifaceted personality whom i got to meet. Being a scout also molded me a lot and it was amazing fun to camp in the tents, go on hikes and so on. Bhuvan was a perfectionist and everything he did will have his stamp. Super talented scout, ambidextrous, awesome painter, mellifluous singer and overall a super human. Sitting in the all faith prayer and hearing his voice has no match. Most of his students exhibited the sign of being Bhuvan’s students. The group was great to be with and all people in there were super enthusiastic and i repent for not continuing. Nevertheless i got the Governor award braving five days at the state testing camp. There is a Boy Scouts of America group here in VT and may be i should go and check some time and recall fond memories.

Vijay Anand

I love people who have a vision and to vision something like Proto.in is not a joke. Today Proto.in is strong, massive and is considered a top notch event in India and the major credit goes to Vijay. I can still recall the first meet at the Cafe day where all the enthusiastic planning for the first edition happened. He has undoubtedly contributed a lot to the start up scene in India and being a part of the Proto.in team was a blessing for me. I did learn a lot and meet lot of aspiring folks. I do aspire to become a start up guy few years down the line and i can’t start off without thanking this guy. I did get an opportunity to see the funnier part of him when we stayed in the Guest house for the fourth edition in Delhi. The funky start up ideas which we churned in the flight way back to Chennai was way too humorous expect that Kausik who was sitting in the next seat had fumes out of his ears.

Ganesh APP

A picture is worth thousand words!

Some one told that if you ever want a bad inspiration then it should be Sagaro! May be untrue for some! He is undoubtedly one of the interesting guys to meet and i definitely developed a lot of new interests because of him. Way back when we first met in the blogger’s meet he was the geeky guy who was in his own world doing stuff which many others thought were dumb. The number of plans which we made were innumerable be it for treks, tours, serious stuff but very few got executed and undoubtedly all those were good fun. I liked his concept of splitting your interests across various fields and be a jack a all trades and master of some rather on sticking on to one thing and dying with it for life. The cycle race on ECR, the Tada trek, part of the 1000 buck tour, the “thon” series, film fests and lots more! Man, Life in Chennai was damn good at times!

There are lot of other people who i like for the way they do things and the people above just came on the top of my mind. For instance the Knowledge Foundation was an amazing thing in which i was a part of and the diversity of the group was the good reason for the success. I liked the attitude of Kiruba, the intelligence of Siddhi, the skills of Syed and overall the group blended on really well. Inspirations do happen but the tough part is being inspired….

If you have scrolled on till this and read the post, Thank you! Seriously , i have never written such long posts!

I am not a frequent flyer and the very thought that i had to take 4 flights in a span of 30 hours across time zones was the first hurdle. I started off from Chennai on my 21st birthday and i was really overwhelmed when all of my friends came to the airport to send me off. Hats off you guys! At many places i didn’t know what to do but finally managed and completed my immigration in Chennai. I had to take a connecting flight to Mumbai and waited there for few hours. I did get some travel company and so it went on pretty well. The Airbus which took me from Mumbai to Chicago was massive. Almost 900 passengers in a single flight! One good thing about traveling in Air India is that you get some decent food but in flight entertainment- NIL! I did finish reading a book in the journey and it was after a long time i read something.

There was a transit in London Heathrow and it is a very beautiful and huge airport. The worst part is we had to walk all the way through the airport, do the security check again. The biggest nightmare was waiting to meet me in O’ Hare Airport in Chicago. I had to take a connection flight from the domestic terminal and there was a three hour gap in between which generally is more than enough. The immigration took close to two hours and with an hour left i had to find my baggage and move to the domestic terminal for which i had to take the transit. The baggage check in machines conked off when i was looking at my watch every 30 seconds. Fortunately the flight got delayed and i made it!

There was Chinese guy waiting at the local airport at about 12 in the night holding a Virginia Tech board and it was a big relief.  After an half an hour’s drive the Indian seniors helped us to get set. The first few days i was awe struck seeing the beauty of blacksburg and the campus. The University was on vacation and there were hardly people on campus. The international center did an awesome job and every day they arranged some activity to keep all the international students engaged.

Cascade Waterfall Hike

There is a beautiful waterfall near Blacksburg and some 40 international students decided to venture out in the woods. The place was so pristine and i enjoyed the 4 hour long hike.  Virginia Tech has a very diverse culture with people from across the globe. In the group of 40 i guess there would have been people from 20 different countries.

Campus Legend Tour and Scavenger Hunt

Every campus will have its one history and myths. Like where the ghosts are, where the secret passages are,  where people make out and so on. Virginia Tech is a little ahead with all these stories and they were damn interesting. Jonathan from Cranwell Center took us for the legend tour and i was impressed on hearing those stories. Vt has lot of underground steam tunnels and there are people who explore those tunnels. The police get behind those guys but still people do it. VtUnderground.com has lot of information about those tunnels. I am planning to make a site for VT Legends along with Jonathan. Should be interesting!

The scavenger hunt is one thing which i was longing to do and finally i did it. Although we didn’t win we completed majority of the 30 crazy tasks and it was absolute fun. the first two weeks on campus was total fun with lot of dinners, hikes, movie night, swimming, club house, library, ultimate frisbee,shopping etc etc. Classes have started and in a week from now i guess it will get hectic. I also managed to get a job in the food court although i am not going to take it! Interviews, online tests, training session for a server or a cleaning job is too much!

Virginia Tech is one of the top college football(American) teams and the people here go crazy about it. The stadium is huge and i heard the home games will be beyond imagination. Hope i get a ticket to sit in one of the loudest stadiums in the country. Before that i am trying to figure out the rules of the nasty game!!

War Memorial. VT is a military school and lot of alumni have lost their lives in the World Wars.

The Torgersson Bridge. There are 8000 outdated ethernet ports and 80 miles of copper and optical fibers in this stretch.

The Newman Library. This is where i work from when i am on campus.

Computer Science Department

Ultimate Frisbee in the drill field. I did play along with the University team once and made my team loose two points but scored one! The guys are super cool and they do pass to me! Hope i will get better at this game.

Check out more pictures from Virginia Tech HERE

Two years in this beautiful place is good but i don’t know how effectively i will tackle my courses. I have put most of my savings which i earned during my final year of UG in this course and hope i don’t screw it up! Looks like all the guys in my department get funded from the second semester but it involves lot of hard woork and research commitment! I can also do a paid summer internship and make some money if i don’t opt to do research. The spirit of the people is too high! The people at Virginia Tech are called Hokies and every single day you can see this word at least a thousand times on hoardings, buses, tshirts,and where ever. I am wearing a Hokie Tshirt too! Feels good to be a Hokie!

I am a Hokie!

The tournament happened during the first week of July and the previous week i also got my visa stamped, so i was very much relieved. The tournament happened in a remote place near Bangalore and we started in the early morning and after grueling for about ten hours on unimaginable roads we finally reached the destination. Hat games, sleeping in the tent, late night talks, good food, the nail biting game between chennai and Bangalore, travel convos and many more. The two days was fun filled and i really loved being in the CUF gang. I got to speak with people who i haven’t interacted much and i felt good.

Check out the photos of Camp Shrishti HERE

Was back from the tourney and the preparations for the summer edition of Proto.in was in full swing. Had some productive meetings in Vijay’s office and those ones really were of good help. A few of us from the team started to Delhi a couple of days before the event to carry on the ground work. The event went off well, thanks to the amazing guys from Delhi who of great help. We stayed at a place called Heritage near IIT Delhi and it was really amazing. This was the first time peeps from Knowledge Foundation got to stay and work together and it was good fun and lot of lessons learnt. Met some very nice people like Shivaas, Piyush and they were with us throughout the event. Apparently Shivaas is also gonna be some where near Virginia and we have planned to meet up some time. It is always good to keep in touch with guys who have the entrepreneurial spirit running in their blood!

I loved Delhi a lot and the city is full of life (at least in parts!). At the end of the first there was a Proto.in Alumni Dinner and after it got over, good guy Shiv from Viewspaper took us to the India Gate. It was around 12 in the night and it was a splendid experience. We has Chuski near India gate and walked on the Raj Path! Shiv had a good knowledge about Delhi and he briefed us as and when some landmark passed. One funny thing is that the place where we stayed was inside a colony and the entire colony which spread about a few kilometers was locked! Every entry to the colony was locked except one. You cannot walk in after 10 o clock in the night. On the other hand there were families happily sitting and chatting near the India Gate at 1 AM!

The next day was when the presentations happened and it went on pretty smooth. After the tiring day it was all random talks in the rooms and i didn’t remember when i fell asleep. The next day we went to a place called Delhi Haat. The place had food stalls from all the states and we had a sumptuous lunch there. All this time we had this guy called VC Karthik along with us and he has a amazing sense of humor. He will keep the place lively with all his stories. We still had a few hours for our flight back to Chennai and so me, ravi and kau decided to travel by the Delhi Metro. We took an auto to CP and then went in the Metro. Impressive! Then we walked around the Parliament, Rashtrapathi bhavan and it was a short and good one.  Nothing can beat the in flight conversations because that is when you get bored to the core. Vijay was at his best throwing up crazy ideas and i added on. After some time we decided sleeping would be a much better option!

Overall a pretty good month and more than that feels good to blog. One more week to depart and i still haven’t got the mind set. Still lots of pending work. Hope i complete all those before i leave!! I have decided to blog regularly from now on and this time i guess i will stick to it! Looking forward to see the good old times of blogging everything i do!

The first of the three sundays was jam packed and good fun. Some of us met for the first organizers meet of Chennai barcamp 2 and after some heated discussions and vetti talks decided that we should chuck off Barcamp and do a Howtocamp. It will be happening in a month’s time in Chennai and is gonna be exciting. From there me Ganesh and swami headed to the Chennai Metblogs meet. I may be joining the Metblogs team shortly. Met some nice people over lunch and got some interesting inside information! The next destination was the Open Coffee Club meet at Amethyst. We both took an auto and landed some after it started. Hats off to Sid for starting the OCC in Chennai. No doubt it is one of the best ever meets and the attitude of the people who attended it was definitely matchless. I could see the fire in all of them! Good luck for all those future business magnets! Ganesh and Mahen left off in the middle to look at some art /chick exhibition where in girls would explain the intricacies in naked pictures. I preferred the OCC instead!

The next weekend i went to SASTRA univ for their cultural fest and it went on well. We as a team packed home with 8k in cash. Very poor judging in one other event we lost 6k. Anyways it was good fun. One of the best ever Dumb-C s ever and they had some super cool innovative rounds. After battling hard we beat the teams from NIT, SVCE, Sastra, JIPMER and bagged the first place. We have won more than 25 prizes in dumbc but this was one of the best. My quizzing skills went to an all time low. I sucked!

By the time I reached Chennai Sid’s sister who was bringing the Macbook from the US also arrived and the next two days went on playing around with the Macbook! Thanks a lot to all those who helped me in smuggling the Macbook to India

The next weekend i went to Chennai tweetup. i started using twitter after a long hiatus and now i am loving it. It is killing lot of work time and my productivity is going down!! The tweetup had lot of new faces and it was a welcome change. When ever something like this is organized it usually goes on like a get together for the TKF junta but this time it was different. Some ultimate mokkais did happen in the meet!!

Last working day of college happened and it was really a memorable. Farewell and Thanksgiving happened and hats off to the juniors for pulling it off in a great manner.

The following week we had the intra college cultural fest and we lifted the overall championship. We finally did it!! One of the most joyous moments for my department guys and the day will stay fresh for long. We ran around the campus carrying the huge cup and it was an amazing feel and much to the envy of other department guys! After two days 20 of us went to a restaurant and made the place galeej…. We were almost chucked out but we are dejent guys u see! We moved to another restaurant nearby and repeated step one! Guys also went for a movie and to beach the next day but i missed it.
I have cribbed a lot about my college in the past but definitely i am gonna miss it.

This sunday Me, Gapp, rupya and vicky met for deciding stuff for the How to camp website. The website will be up soon.

…..And finally i completed writing this post after four sundays!!!

I have made a half a million INR turnover this fiscal from blogging, domaining and other stuff. Happy that i hit the target which i set 6 months back. Some tough decisions to be made in the next few months and life is gonna take a new change. I am looking forward …..

After having 2 rounds of dried veg puffs we started of to Vittal’s place. We had to go to Mandaveli and all i knew was it was pretty far. After an hour of travelling we finally reached, got the keys from his aunt’ place who thought we were some goondas! To kill the time we both tried playing some sort of ping pong on a square table with a stress ball and it was good!

Then TUD and Syed came in. It has been a long time since we guys hanged out together. I badly miss the Roof Top Film Festival and mainly the Knowledge Foundation meets at Syed’s office! Me and Syed went out to pick some snacks and drinks. Then Mahen joined us.

When we returned back almost every one had arrived. Vittal came along with two of his other friends. Nandu and Gapp went and picked some movies from Tic tac. Initially we had some glitches with the projector but it went on well after some time. The idea of ditching the DVD player and projection on the wall turned out to be awesome.

It was all set…. Movies, Food, Booze and we started off!

The first movie was “Super Bad”
A pretty entertaining movie. Absolutely hilarious! A nice movie to watch with a group of friends.

The next one was Natural born killers By Tarantino. Unfortunately i slept off in the starting parts itself!

TUD has joined NDTV as a Assistant producer and Mahen is getting married in June. Both of them have agreed to give big treats. Congrats guys!

PS: Posting after more than 50 days! I have lost all my blogging skills!!

I booked this domain a few months back but lot of things kept me occupied over the past few months and that combined with laziness never gave a dawn for this blog. At last i thought i should do something meaningful and decided to start again on New Years day. The year was good for me on many fronts be it college, family, life etc. I could sense that there are lot of people who care for me. The North india tour with college mates was a very memorable one and i repent for not blogging about it!

My contact list got bigger and people started recognizing me!
“Hey are you the guy who makes hell lot of money!”
“Dei, Jump! Heard you are making shit loads of money”
“Bugger, I will leave the seat, pay me $20″

I did make good money this year and initially i was crazy and then i was greedy but now i am composed and i know what i am doing. Many people also asked me whether i will continue doing this without going for a full time job. I do make more money than what TCS will be paying me two/three years down the lane but one thing is what i do now is not sustainable over a period of time and am trying out something which is more feasible.

On one front i am very happy that i helped few of friends and they also made a few thousands dollars. Bringing in foreign exchange and increasing India’s economy;) I was also able to make an impact and currently there are around 25 bloggers in my class but most of them started with the sheer aim of making money and trust me they will miserably fail. Ok! No more lessons, here is what i intend to do in 2008. I don’t say it is my resolution!

-Become an engineer [first things first!:)]
-Enjoy max in the last few months of college
-Be more friendly and affectionate to people
-Set some personal targets and reach it in the intended time (Read it as blogging/Money)
-Create a flagship site for me.
-Stop missing Ultimate Frisbee and play regularly.
-participate in the International Cycle Race(ICR on ECR) (Self reminder: Moron! Buy a cycle this week)
-Go to Rajasthan/Nepal/Sri Lanka/Himalayan trekking
-Get a Mac book
-Get back to scouting and attend at least one camp
-Watch more movies, read books and do some quality quizzing.
- Participate in a marathon (At least register and start running!)
-Help people with the knowledge which i have.

I hope 2008 will be a great year too and i will be witnessing some remarkable turning points in life. For all those who have been with me all these days….”So long and thanks for all the fish!”
Wish you all a happy and a great year

PS: You can add this blog to your feed reader (http://ramanujam.net/feed/) and i hope i will keep updating. Also do remove my previously blogspot blog from your blogrolls and add this.

[Click to enlarge and select LARGE in the flickr page]

How do I make money???
Most of the money which i made from this blog is by writing sponsored content from PAYPERPOST(i.e) if an advertiser wants to create buzz about his product/software/website he requests for reviews from bloggers.What he gains is traffic and back links which gives him a good search engine optimization and in turn bloggers like me get paid for providing the content.

Can I also do it?
Yes, of course. If you have a blog and if it satisfies the conditions prescribed by the advertiser you can join the race. But beware if you write too much your blog will get spammed(Like mine;) and you may lose your regular readers.

What is the solution?
There are a lot of services from which you can get offers. Subscribe to all those and select the opportunity which will best suit the content on your blog. For instance you can very write a review about an Anti spyware software if you have a tech blog and it will definitely do some value addition. On the other hand it will be very lame to write about a credit card or a drug rehab service. Selecting the opportunity is the key.

Some of the Get Paid for blogging services
-PayPerPost
-Sponsored Reviews
-Blogitive
-Smorty
-Blogsvertise

Payments are generally made via paypal on a weekly or bi weekly or a monthly basis. It is also not viable to create a new blog for sponsored content. In my case i have shifted my personal blog to another platform which is the best i can do!

Any proof that you make money?
Here is one!!! Dont ask me put my paypal account screen shot!

Visit my PERSONAL BLOG!
[Free from all marketing!]

If you have any queries or if you want to know how to tweak your blog and make it eligible for writing sponsored posts feel free to bug me.

YM: ranuromeo
Skype: ranuromeo
Gtalk: mail.ramanujam

Podworks will be a workshop style unconference where all the knowledge needed for making a podcast will be imparted from people who have done it before and there will also be many hands on sessions, competitions and discussions. Podworks will be India’s Biggest Event on Audio & Video Podcasting and promises to bring the best of the podcasting/blogging/new media community together to learn, share, experience, and grow.

There will be a door donation of Rs.200 for meeting the expenses of the event and of course there will be some give aways which will help you continue your podcasting experiments from home.

Registrations for the event are open and rush up if you are interested as the number of participants for the workshop is restricted. Keep yourself updated about the event by joining the mailing list. If you are interested in volunteering go check the wiki and take up some responsibility

The first organizers meet for Podworks was held last sunday at CCD, IIT Madras and surprisingly 34 people turned up for the meet and offered to volunteer and take up various responsibilities. It was a very diverse work force consisting of students, journalists, software professionals, RJs,actors and a singer. Many remarkable decisions were taken in the first organizers meet and a lot of brainstorming happened so as to make the event a grand success.

Check out more photos in Chinmayi’s blog. As per plans we will be starting for the bigrace after attending the podworks as it sounds too interesting to be missed.