aJCfreak - Dan's Blog

Yep - you read it right - it's the Rat-a-thon and I'm blogging about it... Can ya believes it?! Our story begins on one fine Winter day in Bangalore at the residence of #7, 1st Cross, Nagappa Reddy Layout located in A Narayanapura. It was the 26th of November, 2007. Suddenly, a streak of speed and gray caught the corner of our young hero's (Me, Myself, Dan) eye. Yep - it was a rat. Oh my, Oh goodness! What to do, what to do...... Our young hero freaks out and then decides on the brilliant plan of locking up the rat inside the room that it ran into - incidentally, our young hero's own room! And there it stayed, and ate (our hero's clothes - phooie!) and lived.... Until the 8th of December bounced along. While at the Forum mall, our young hero called up his dear friend Mr. Merwin James (known in Rat circles as the Merwinator... :D) and invited him to the housing event of the year - The Rat-a-thon! Trying to get rid of a rat in your house is like trying on a pair of...

So, I've started Dan's Desirables ... It's a blog I began yesterday to try and write about the funky, cool gadgets that I desire. The first gadget I've blogged about is the iPod . Obviously, it's on my top-top-ten must-have, must-desire list... Hence the beginning. Basically, I plan to update the blog with my latest and recent and not-so-recent gadgets-I-desire. So keep checking it for future updates.... ;-) Oh and one more thing - jus Google Dan's Desirables and you might be surprised to find the first result that shows up. How cool is that, eh?! Adios fer now, Amigos!

Last time I'd been home , I struck upon the idea of visiting my Periamma (Mum's elder sis) and Periappa (her hubby!) in Vellore as they were down here from Aus . I hadn't seen Periamma since Thaatha (Grandpa) passed away in May 2006. I hadn't been to Vellore since December '05 cos I didn't feel like visiting Periamma after she moved out of the house in the wonderful CMC Bhagayam campus. :( Anyways, a coupla calls to Periamma got me a lil bit of totally-deserved sleep (I missed getting off the train at the right station). A couple more calls found me trying to locate a place called Otteri (which till then I thought existed only in my hometown of Chennai). Then I was home.... Man! What a home. If ever you've lived in CMC's Bhagayam campus and you shift out, this is the place to live in!!! It was really grand. Overall, the trip was good. I had some nice time chatting with Periappa and Periamma - discussing work, life and the Christianity of things. I even...

Just Google make money easy or make money from home or something like that - and you'll get tonnes of results which purport to be valid ways of making money - quick, and easy. The funny thing is - some of them end up asking you to pay out a hefty amount of anywhere between $10 to $90 (for courses and material on making money from home) to start off on this easy way of making money. Then, we have pay-to-click services (some of which are totally free) and other services such as Agloco or mGinger which seem to be a bit more trustable. But really, where does this all leave us? I've got some Google referral packs on this blog itself, which, if ppl sign up, I get paid for it. :) Seeing that I'm not yet a millionaire, you can guess how effective that has been :P Anyways, at the end of it all, I guess it doesn't matter as to whether or not we sign-up on any of these sites - but it matters if we are obsessively caught up in trying to make money. Really, if we spend all tha...

Yep... :) Except this time, it's not Ad content relevant to the text on this page. So I don't need to worry about crazy religious Ads. This time, I'm using Google referrals. This way, I get to decide what goes on my blog. :)

There's this awesome song composed and written by Jon Mohr & Randall Dennis - performed by Christian contemporary greats - Point of Grace - in 1992. It goes a little bit like this :             God loves people more than anything             God loves people more than anything             More than anything He wants them to know             He'd rather die than let them go             'Cause God love people more than anything             God loves the weary when they're too weak to try             He feels their pain, He knows their shame      ...

Bemused - that I certainly am. Seriously, was Paul making Christian tents? I mean, did he smear them with the Ichthus , the cross and the like, or did he forego them to favour market appeal? Many Christians today (including myself) search for the Christian element in life. We listen to Christian music, read Christian books, listen to Christian speakers, why, we even have Christian bumper stickers and such. In reality, how Christian do these Christian articles make us? Let's stop and consider for a moment... How far are we gonna take it? Stop buying bread from the baker cos that's where the heathens buy it? Stop getting our hair cut from our barber cos that's where the people-of-the-world get their hair cut? Really... We work in the same offices as the people of this world. We utilise the same public services - telecom, transport, utility services - as the people of this world do. We are aliens - that goes without saying. But we are supposed to be in this world.... It...

aJCfreak. It's a simplified version of "A Jesus Freak". I flicked the concept from the dc Talk. There was a phase back in college, when I used to mutilate furniture (cots, desks, tables, chairs) with the phrase A Jesus Freak woz 'ere... and thats when I decided to go in for an email ID that reflected this too. It was the middle of 2005, I guess (May-June) and I'd jus gotten an invite to Gmail... so I got it - ajcfreak at gmail dot com. Since then, it's been a long time in catching on, but it's finally caught on - atleast in ma head. So that's what I am - aJCfreak. Atleast, I try to be at most times. More often than not, I fail... But mostly, I stand on His grace. FYI, here's a list of some places where I've signed up with this particular alias: 1. Wikipedia (English) plus my IDs on many of the sister projects of Wikipedia 2. Online Photo album 3. Blogger - this blog that you're reading right now! 4. YouTube! 5. Online storage space on e-S...

Del P, Dhanu, Aneks, Dandyboy and Kave... Who's missing? Geen, of course! What happens when most of your usual friends don't turn up and you're kinda lost and feeling outta place at a Knaniah-ite wedding? Well, you hang out with ppl you've never hung out with. And it was wonderful... Serious. I never thought that I would one day be hanging out with these exact people.... Was really nice. And better yet when Geen joined us - we were a merry lil crowd. Of course, time didn't permit us to freak out as they say... but we did get to drive around KTYM in a mad rush to ensure that Dh caught her train on time, that An and Ge caught their bus and that we (Del P, Kave and me) could make it to Kumaragam. ;-) Like I told Kave, thank God for his awesome Viva with the Air con and the music collection et al... Was a blessed time. About the D4C and the Kumaragom trip, I'll write more when I've got those pix - probably sometime next week. :-) And I guess I know now why Ker...

When you've just stepped into the bride-to-be's ancestral home, and the bride's bro asks you "Would you like to freshen up?" while holding out a towel, it does not mean you take a bath! Cos if you do, then you might end up finding (like I did) that the entire household (yep - extended family included) was waiting for you to finish so that lunch could be served..... Very embracing moment, that! So she's married. And that's definitely a wow. This is the first person within the close circle of friends from College to get married. And what a match, too! Her hub's beyond doubt, the chubbiest tall, good-lookin dude I've ever seen. And they look good together, by all means... This match is made not only in Heaven, but on Earth too ;-) Chk da pic. It really was a nice experience - I didn't understand a word of the entire ceremony. I was actually waiting for " ... in sickness and in health.... in blah and in blah-blah... until death do us part...

Possibly. Hopefully. There's a lotta change involved with my life right now. Over the past few months, I've been spending loads of time on Wikipedia and certain of its sister projects... Chk out http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Ajcfreak for more info on that. Well, right now, the biggest changes are these - my longtime friend from college, the one and only Ru is getting married this Saturday. It's gonna be awesome and its got all of us excited (us, as in, the dudes and the gals!) So Thursday - Monday I'll be in God's own country - Kottayam, to be exact. On Sunday, my dear bro takes a flight out to the UK. Lucky dude, uh?! Why oh why?! :) Nah... Me actually happy for him. Just sad for me, is all. Otherwise, things are going wonderful, I guess... I'm completing 14 months at work. Awesome... There's an awesome comp at home. It's been there for a coupla months. Mebbe I'll drool all about it in a post soon. Lastly, lemme just point out that I just seem...

Yup, people! It's gone.... I used to have one of those Adsense thingies right in my blog. Removed it just now. I realised that it pointed to websites that I'd rather NOT have people visiting.... Definitely not - like sites which spread filth about the One I love. So it had to come down and it did.......... Actually, I'm not sorry that I took it down at all.

I guess its been too long since I last posted - so many things have taken some interesting turns........... Graduated (or is that 'convocated' in India?!) on the 17th of March. Brought my phone bill down to 1/3rd of what it used to be..... (It doubled again, this month) All in all - its been pretty busy. Rarely see ma brother nowadays since our shifts rarely cross paths.... Its a lil bit better when he's got his weekly offs on Sat/Sun. That way, I get an opportunity to blow more cash on weekend lunches.... ;) Anyways, got loadsa ideas to write stuff here. Mebbe when I have time.......... And ya, God's leading me through many different possible avenues. Reaching new heights (or shall I see revisiting hitherto unconquered ones?!) is always a joy and a pleasure. Keep watching this space... A blurry of activity comin this way over the next coupla months. All for now! Take care and ciao...

Yep. That's what gets hit at the end of the day... If you cough, it's Christianity to blame. If you don't, then Christianity didn't try hard enough. If the secularists (and non-Christianists) of this world argue one way, then the Christians argue the other. In the words of dc Talk, I'm "sick and tired of this same old fluff"! Basically, I'm beginning to discover now what I've always known. The Bible presents very few facts for life. Of the ones that ARE presented, most are taken up for study in the most-learned and eminent schools of study and then each little line is expanded into a doctrine for eternity. This doctrine is then argued against by many other 'learned' scholars who look at that particular doctrine from the point-of-view of another lil fact in the Bible. The Bible is fact. This - few can deny. However, just because it is fact, I do not believe this warrants a need to use it as a lawbook to slam down on our fellow brethren (and ...

My bro is finally back from the UK. He got back last week, actually... And how!!! With a nice shaggy haircut (or the lack of it!) and completely clean-shaven face... And full of stories of how the service people had messed up almost everything on his trip....... Noone survived the onslaught of thecomputersam, I tell you - Dominoes Pizza UK, TGIF's UK, HSBC UK, KLM Airlines Amsterdam.... Ain't that enough? And he came back with an armload of CCM (Christian Music) CDs which rock (Mostly cos I asked him to get these! ;) ) Anyways, he's back. And he's back to occupying half the house. Feels good. Was good when he was away, is good now that he's back. I think that sums it all up. Apart from him coming back, here's what's been happening - I've not met any of ma friends over the past coupla weekends - ever since I got back from my trip to Mysore-Ooty-Madras.... Dunno why. Just never got down to it. And ma church-going is taking a back seat too. Need to get that...

It's done people! Finally... I carted that ancient two-burner electric stove all the way from ma home in Madras to ma home in backyard Bangalore! I spent the whole evening on Sat shopping at the biggest Big Bazaar in India... And spent quite a bit in getting myself the basic essentials of a kitchen. But try as I did, I couldn't get pot-holders!!!! Whateva... I'm not complaining. Now, to all those Dan-fans out der... Please don't stone me, but the first dish that I cooked on this stove was not non-veg. It was a plain ol' tomato and egg rice thingy. (c'mon... it was late. I was hungry and tired!) But the second thing I made... Was pork gravy!!!! That was Sun for lunch. Am thinking of making that a regular Sun ritual. Sorry if this puts off any of you blog-readers out der... :D And today, I had breakfast tomatoes (lightly fried in butter) for Breakfast and made myself a country omellette for brunch. Am loving this... I just got back last Fri from a round-trip to th...