aJCfreak - Dan's Blog

Business photograph designed by Onlyyouqj - Freepik.com This is something I wrote when I was nearly 30. I just got up one night in July/August 2014, and typed this out on my then-new MacBook Air. Many of these I'd already either started or been involved in some way or the other. Some of these I'm sure, I can't ever do. But here's the thing - I finally know what I want to do/be in life. Apart from the job that I do. Or maybe, even  at the job that I do. My life's mission statement for the next thirty years or so. Here goes... (The purpose of me putting this out there is two things: Firstly, if this can help inspire and 'sort' the thoughts of others, it should. Secondly, if anyone wants to discuss any of these aspects of 'doing' stuff with me, please feel free to get in touch) ______________________________________________________________________________ I want to write. That includes fiction - romantic short stories, thriller novels, m...

Rainbow Flag, from Wikimedia Commons  by Ludovic Bertron Hate . That's what I see some Christians (as groups, and as individuals) spew when it comes to matters associated with the LGBT community. Whether it is a church group that pickets and holds up boards at a public event, or a renowned Christian leader preaching to the masses. I've seen quite a bit of hatred - all online. Love . That's what I think Christians need to be. It's what the God we believe in is, and it's what we need to strive towards. Above all else. The two greatest commandments hinge on love. I've seen little or no examples of love from Christians towards the LGBT community. Whispered conversations . That's what I see Christians partake in, when discussing the LGBT community and matters related to that community. No common discussions. Not much of sound advice from youth pastors and leaders on how we, Christians, should handle members of this community. Frowns . That's what we...

When I created my first email ID back in 2000, dan_hercules@yahoo.com, I did not have much use for it. A few years later, tired of all the spam I was receiving, I switched to eihdee@rediffmail.com. That ID was put to much more frequent and meaningful use, as I was in college and away from the life I'd known till then. When Google launched their Gmail service in 2004, and I received the requisite invite, I signed up for ajcfreak@gmail.com. Since then, aJCfreak has been my online presence. The ID stems from a dc Talk song, Jesus Freak . I wanted to be a Jesus freak, and it kind of epitomised everything that I desired to be. So it was perfect. Almost. Over the past 8-9 years, my online presence has grown to several locations and multiple avatars and IDs and such. It's something that I've become tied to. Who's ajcfreak? Yeah, that's me. In tying myself to this online ID, I seem to have tied my creative outputs to myself as well. For example, the scores of songs I...

Our Hero Honda Passion's 'cockpit' After my time aboard the Science Express , I've been trying to get Smitha to ride the bike. The bike is a Hero Honda Passion, with a 100 cc engine - what folks generally term a 'commuter'. I've ridden it over vales and hills, near rocks and lagoons and about 40,000 km in the two-and-a-half years that I've owned it. What I really would love to see, is my darling wife riding it. Confidently. Comfortably. And of course, joyously. As far as the last one is concerned - joy - I am sure she'll find that it comes with the phenomenon of bike-riding. As for the first two, confidence and comfort - I decided to begin building it. One night, I gently coaxed Smitha to ride the bike for about 4.5 km, inside Mysore city. This coaxing took several persuasive words from my part, plus my hands controlling the handlebars from the pillion position behind her. I also acted as her right rearview mirror, and at times, helped her ...

Me, during my years in Bangalore (from L to R): August 2007, May 2009, August 2011 When, like me, one works in a large MNC for 5 years and 9 months, and then decides to move on, the onlookers raise questions. The first question, "Where did you get a job?", is also the most unnecessary question. I haven't got a job elsewhere. And I'm not looking. The second question, "What about money? Survival?" has a pretty unconventional answer ("unconventional" by the standards of this fast-paced, rat-raced world). It is an answer that some have scoffed at, others have considered as part of "Dan's craziness" while still others have been left stunned at hearing it. Nevertheless, the answer is simple: "God will provide." Let me try to explain things a bit more clearly. On 22nd January 2012, during the regular Sunday worship service at my church, Adonai , the Australian worship band, Shalom, was ministering to us when God spoke to me. ...

Image:F5 tornado Elie Manitoba 2007, taken from  Wikimedia Commons Many things in life are indubitable. Look at the image above - it's a tornado. If you know what a tornado is, no one needs to tell you that this is a photo of a tornado. It's an established fact, and it wouldn't surprise you at all to see the photo and to hear someone say "That's a tornado". You know it's a tornado, and you would be unperturbed by learning that this is a photo of a tornado - it doesn't challenge your thinking and so does not get you all hyper and excited. This is the one thing lacking when it comes to our awesome God who listens to our every sneeze and answers our every prayer (some prayers receive a "No", but an answer nevertheless). As believers, as people who believe in God, we seem to be amazed and stupefied at times when a miracle occurs or when a prayer is answered. Just visit any prayer meeting, and you'll know what I'm talking about. This irk...

So it's been five years since I came to Bangalore to work with HP. These five years have been filled with fun, laughter, eating out, getting to know people, learning bits and pieces of Kannada and Hindi, attempting to launch a proper band to sing/perform/record the songs I write, attempting to write a book or two to vent my imagination based on reality, 3 residence changes, working out of five offices, falling in love totally and madly with my wife, nurturing patience within and understanding a teensy-weensy bit of the world around me. Life at HP has had its ups and downs. Looking back over the past five years, I can only say that God's providence and grace has been with me throughout, and brought me to where I am right now in this mega-mega-company. Everything in these past five years has not been "rosy", but I personally have no regrets. I am very glad with what I am doing right now, and am happy to be where I am. If you are anything like me, you'd be wonder...

Yeah, Coonoor is a crazy lil place for me. It's where some of my bestest friends from college, CSI CE , spent most of their weekend time while at college. It's where I've gotten to know some really cool people at Union Church. It's also where I've spent the least time, while I studied in Nilgiris. Putting all that aside, this past weekend was spent in UC, Coonoor, and it was a splendid time. It was refreshing physically, it was invigorating spirit-wise, enriching spiritually, enlightening knowledge-wise and brilliantly endearing. Yeah - a lot of adjectives. I just felt the need to jot down a few thoughts about the whole affair and where each of the Dudes4Christ dudes are in their lives right now. Smitha , my wife, darling and the love of my life, thoroughly enjoyed the time there. She was pretty much at home, mostly :) The dudes all seemed more mature than our college days, albeit they maintained their characteristic streaks that made them stand out during college. ...

Yep - that's right - Smithafied!!! To all of those who're wondering - what the heck is that - well, it's not much. It's just a meshing together of two lives that God brought together... More specifically, it's the state that Dan is in since God brought Smitha into his life. He's been Smitha-fied...... JC-fying life has always been a top prerogative. But without realising it, Smithafying my life has also taken a good precedence over the other things in my life. And so, to pay tribute to all some of the good stuff that my darling babe has brought into my life, I registered the www.Smithafied.com domain name with Google. That's a Valentine's Day gift for my sweetheart. It's something that touched her heart, and warmed several others. Made me grin like an idiot. ;) Thank God for all He's given me. Love Him!!!

Early on the morning of the 23rd of December (the day after we met  the parents ),  both my parents, Smitha and I left for Mehsana from Baroda . We had hired an Indica to take us there. The trip was nice. We slept for the most time and mum kept complaining that she couldn't see a single peacock. Smitha made the mistake of mentioning that peacocks were extremely common along the highways in Gujarat (atleast, near Ahmedabad ) and this made my mum desire to see a few. Smitha and I could spot a few, but by the time mum turned 'round, we'd crossed those ever-elusive birds. Finally, though, mum caught sight of a few birds just before we rolled into Mehsana. At Mehsana, I was all set to see my cousin and her two kids, all three of whom I haven't laid eyes on since May 2005. If you think that's bad, I've not set eyes on my cousin's hubby for way way longer - so long that I've forgotten how long it has been! So it was with a bit of surprise that I realised that b...

For the uninformed, the entire trip up north to Gujarat this past Christmas week was so that my parents could meet up with Smitha's parents. None of us were really expecting anything much to happen - it was supposed to be a simple s pend time together  thingy. So after that decent train journey, I landed in Baroda at around 05.15 on Monday, the 22nd of December, 2008. I caught an auto (with the help of RM's dad, since I don't know Hindi o r  Gujarati) to the hotel where my parents were put up. They were waiting up for me and we had a nice lil reunion early in the morning. I then set off to wake up ma sweetie. I entered Smitha's house, and aunty is like "Smitha!!! Wake up, wake up wake up!" while I was like "Nooooooooo!!!! Let her sleep, please!!!!" :) I just simply love  watching her sleep. She looks soooo beautiful and peaceful. Here, take a look. My own sleeping beauty I just sat there for some time, watching her sleep. After she woke up and we h...

This entire Christmas season has been sortofa blur... But an amazing and an awesome one at that. So I'm gonna blog about it in parts.............. On December 22nd, my parents were to meet up with Smitha's parents at their place in Baroda . So I decided to make my way up there directly from Bangalore , while my parents were trudging up there from Chennai . I caught the train at 21.50 hrs on Saturday, the 20th of December from the main station in Bangalore, Bangalore Central. It seemed like it was going to be another one of those long, boring journeys. So I was armed with another Star Wars book ( Tyran't Test , one I hadn't yet read) and a copy of Billy Graham 's biography. The last was a Christmas present given to me at church and I was looking forward to reading it during the trip up north. I had also copied some fresh MP3 tracks to my phone ( WOW Worship red , WOW Worship green , WOW Worship yellow , Sandi Patty's 2008 release, Songs for the Journey ) and I ...

So ... I never really bought the iPhone . Should be obvious, considering that it's priced at Rs. 31,000. My life is going on pretty great, right now. Had an awesome Birthday weekend at Baroda . I've got the recently launched Motorola ZN200 slider phone. It's pretty decent. Rs. 6000 and works for me. God's been drawing me closer to Him. I'm beginning to rediscover truths about Him, life and the way we're meant to be. It's simply awesome. Yaiy! That's about it for now, I guess. Will try blogging more later. :) Oh right, and I'm trying to re-kickstart two of my other blogs - Dan's Desirables and Living Momentum . Go ahead. Check them out. Peace out, bros.

Vodafone has just released a statement on their website http://www.vodafone.in/iphone which states that the 8 GB model would cost 31k and the 16 GB model would cost 36k. This is way too much for the iPhone.... popular speculation held that the iPhone would cost anywhere between 15k - 25k in India, when released on August 22nd. This itself is higher than the subsidized price in the US, where the 8 GB model sells for around 8k while the 16GB models sell for around 12k. My personal estimate was anywhere between 18k to 21k. But if this is the price of the iPhone, I won't be buying it. No no, sorry. It's way too costly for me right now. Hopefully, Airtel would come up with some sort of subsidized scheme... I'm crossing my fingers and praying. The giver of good things hasn't let me down. Whatever He does, He does it for my good. Always.

Looks like the band (that has been a looooong time in coming) could become a reality pretty soon... Bina Mathew (my bosom pal from CSI CE) hooked me up with a school pal of hers - Renu Kotian, who's supposed to have this awesome, sultry voice, and who's apparently dying to sing in a rock band. A lil bit of chatting with the Kotian cleared up preliminary fears and encouraged me to meet up with her. She's like this perfect fit for the kinda band that I've had in my head. So that's one.... Now, if only we could get a guitarist, drummer, pianist.... that would be lover-ly ......... Currently, we're calling it the Band in the Air or BITA for an acronym. This is a temporary name - it could become permanent. We'll see what our Lord wants. The band's gotta be for Christ, and the ppl have to be all out for Christ. We need to focus on personal purity and communal harmony. Dedication to such things would help us go a long way. God help us and show us all how!

Yes, I will be owning one, if all goes well, by the 22nd of August. I thought I might not have enough cash to go out and purchase one, but then I ended up praying to God to send someone who would be willing to gift it to me... and guess whom He sent? Smitha D. Gnanaolivu. We all know that she's awesome and she's the sweetest, but this is like the icing and the cake. She's simply the best. She came forward on her own and said she'd been wanting to surprise me, but couldn't let me agonise over the thought that I might not be able to own one. So there.... I'll be getting it, hopefully. God be praised. He's the rock and our ruler, and He certainly rocks and rules!!!!

Hello world! I'm a very happy person right now. We got the first tickets to the John Schlitt concert!!! Yes, we did. It's gonna be a rocking show and I've got so many plans in ma head... But to simply know that they were still cutting out the rest of the tickets when we got ours........ AJ picked them up from the GenX Entertainment office in Chennai yesterday. He's been bugging them until they said - sure, come and take your tickets. :) How happy are we? How happy are we? Really cool, eh?! Anyways, as I was discussing with Josh last night - here's the checklist for the Schlitt concert: Front-row seats (350 bucks each) Arrive at the venue at 3.55 PM (gates open at 4; concert's at 7 PM) Buy a white tee Buy a permanent marker Hold up a sign saying "I made your promo video, John!" (Ha - only I can do that!) Get Daddy's big, badass semi-SLR Digi Cam - it's photos and videos galore Make sure the whole world knows where you're gonna be Get a split...

Hello all. Yes, it's been a while. Just thought I'd update here on a cool new thingy that's been started (yesterday!)... I was talking to a friend of mine when I realised that we really need to hold up each other, if we're gonna make it through this life on earth as God's people. One thing led to another, and before I knew it, Living Momentum was born. Written from daily devotionals linked to personal experiences, the Living Momentum blog (http://lmomentum.blogspot.com) aims to be a source of inspiration, hope and strength to any believer who is feeling lost and alone out on the sea. I really dunno how far I can do this, cos blogging on a daily basis - awww!!! Anyways, for now, just jump in and enjoy. God bless you all.

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...

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...