New perspectives on God

Yesterday, Maddy drove to Orange city to meet his friend B Arun. The family greeted him warmly, and spoke with him in Tamil. ah! Their house was a beautiful one. Maddy thought if he should make a home and settle in Orange county.

Before reaching Pasadena, he drove to Calabassas right from Artesia. It was around 6:15 PM when he reached Calabassas Hindu temple. He felt happy to see lot of deities. Lord Shiva made him speechless.

The next day (today), he was shifted to Kartick's location. Maddy was thrilled with the very happening after the visit to temple. Maddy always believes and sees these deities as living people and converse with them as he does with other people. He has very high regards to these deities.

On his discussion with his college buddy Aruntamil, he heard some philosophical lines - 'I do not believe in God. But, I believe in the belief of God. [?] We call things that we do not understand as God'. phew!

He checked his mails. Ed, in her morning mail, quoted some beautiful lines about God - 'Happy moments, praise God. Difficult moments, seek God. Quiet moments, worship God. Painful moments, trust God. Every moment, thank God'.

Just kept wondering on how different people view God. Shivaya Namah!

Growth in progress

Today, Maddy celebrated his birthday in Pasadena. He turns 25. J

It was around 11:30 PM on August 20, 2008. Maddy was sleeping well. He got a call. Some lady's voice in the opposite end. A familiar one. But he could not recognize it. Then instantly, it striked that she was Ed (Edrea). My God! pleasant surprise to him. She greeted him. So kind of her. He had to disconnect the call and proceed to the main hall. The celebrations at home started midnight along with Rakesh, Pradyumna, Sabeer, Vivek, and Xavier. There was a cake cutting ceremony during midnight. Rakesh did the facial. Xavier and Rakesh toned Maddy's body. Maddy wanted to thank all people who shared happy moments of his life.

Ray of hope

Maddy has got hope that his bad times are gonna end. He has had enough with it. He was pressed hard emotionally, physically, and financially. Now, things are shaping up positive.

August 16 - 'ah!' that marks the end of his sufferings and the beginning of a new life. He is sure that he will regain his lost vigor and zeal. This time, he will have not only his old qualities like tirelessness, perfection, precision, and unquenchable knowledge-thirst but also his newly cultured qualities like humility and consideration of others.

I am very positive about the fact that world will see a hybrid Maddy evolving from the ashes. I am sure that it might take a while to be 100% but the first 80% is gonna be quiet fast. August 16 will see a new India and a new Maddy.

God Bless! Sivaya Namaha!

BTW - இனிய விடுதலைத் திருநாள் நல்வாழ்த்துக்கள்!!!

Successful endeavor

Maddy has successfully driven 210 miles last Thursday.

He drove to Fontana to get pictures of the crashed car. He was scared on entering Fontana. The city was dull and looked like a cemetery. He reached the place somehow and saw the car. It was shocking to see the car. He took pictures and started driving towards Newport Beach. On the way, he had his lunch in Corona. It struck to him that investing in Corona is a wise thing. Corona is developing. He met Sarika in Newport Beach and completed his work there. Then he drove to Whittier and settled his hospital bills.

On the way, he got a call from Deepak. Deepak advised him to call Kaushik. Kaushik told Maddy that 8/8/8 was Maddy's last day in Raj's team. Kaushik further told Maddy that he will play Kartick's role and told that he has got only one day for getting the KT. Maddy was taken aback. Thousands and thousands of lines of code to be grasped in a single day. phew! God bless him. After hearing the news, he co-ordinated with Kartick for the next day's KT and then proceeded towards Norwalk.

He met his school buddy (B. Arun Kumar) and his mom in Norwalk theatre complex. What a surprise! He was planning to meet them for more than a year and never did it materialize. He was so happy to meet them. His mom took them to the temple. God, he felt blessed to see Nava Grahas and Shiva out there. She helped him get rice, daal and atta.

Later, he had pani puri and channa bhatura at Ambala Sweets along with them, Artesia. He thanked aunty for taking him to those places. Then, he drove to the Norwalk square to watch Kuselan. He was impressed in art-direction right from the beginning. The emotions were fantastically captured in the movie. He felt like a bliss when Hariharan & Sujatha sang "Sollamma". The acting crew and the camera crew did justice to that beautiful song. All has end well.

He returned Pasadena safely. All are His blessings. Thanks Almighty.

Carnatic MIDI Player

Maddy has built a new MIDI player for his friend Prabhu. He has exposed the MIDI (musical instrument digital interface) support in windows multimedia dll (winmm.dll) using .NET. The program needs atleast .NET 2.0 runtime. Windows vista should be able to run the program without any tweak.

The player has two modes - a single swara mode (can be useful for Shruti tuning) and swara malai mode. In the swara malai mode, the notes are picked from a text file. The player can play 128 instruments. By default, the player plays violin.

He has employed a notation similar to the anglised Carnatic notation. For example, say the aarohanam of Mayamalavagowlai can be as follows: S;R1;G3;M1;P;D1;N3;S^;

Except for Shadjam and Panchamam, all other swaras are represented as two letters as per the sthana. Further ^ is used for one stayi higher, _ is used for one stayi lower, + is used for faster phase, and . (dot) is used for slower phase.

B can used for a blank or pause, if a mute is needed in the swara malai mode. He has spent around 30-35 hours over the past 1.5 weeks building the application. Thanks to him.

Ofcourse, for tech savy people, this application might appeal bacause of multithreading (to achieve responsive UI) and dynamic control creation in the instrument selection page.

Though the application is simple, it is powerful and it will have the touch of a technology specialist in building windows applications.

It will be good for music learners. He wanted to thank Rocky (Rakesh) for helping him in making a decision about the musical notation. He wanted to thank Prabhu who introduced him to Carnatic music.

Mail me if you are interested in getting the player from Maddy.

Will everything turn alright?

Well, August 5 is nearby. The peak of Maddy's bad times is about gonna vanish very soon.

He has planned to drive after a long time. Yes, this Tursday (08/07/2008) he has plans to drive around 150 miles. His leave got approved by Subham.

Let's hope for the best.