On Saturday, October 20, TAJA is organising a two in one concert at the Jacksonville Country Day School
View Larger Map located at the intersection of Baymeadows Road and Southside Blvd. We are even making this event affordable for one and all by charging the ultra-low price of $0 for admission. Yes, that was not a typo, we are making admission to this event totally free. Can't get better than free, right? Wrong! We are aiming to get better than free as pizza for children and snacks (sponsored by Red Chilies) for others will be on offer during the event. Now, isn't that better than free? Go ahead and mark your calendars and come over to enjoy an evening of musical offerings from two different genres.

TAJA is organising this event in partnership with Teluguone.com and Prudential Financial. Any and all proceeds during this event will go to the Vegesna Foundation, a charitable organization which has been helping the disabled in India stand on their own feet. Though donation is totally voluntary, we encourage you to donate whatever you like before/during/after the event. Remember, even a dollar in charity goes a long way. Use these links to learn more about Vegesna Foundation and Ghazal Srinivas. The event itself will kick off at 4 P.M. on Saturday, October 20, 2007. For more details, please email us or call us at 904 63-Tazaa or at any of the numbers on the event flyer.

| Special event 2007 | 20 October 2007, 4 pm to 8 pm | Jacksonville Country Day School |

The weather report was encouraging. Clear skies with highs in the low 80s coupled with relatively lower humidity. Considering the fact that the week before had pretty much been ‘rained out’, it was but natural for most of us to be wary of how the weather would pan out on the big day. Needless to say, come Saturday morning and it looked like Murphy would hit us real hard as the rain started coming down. A quick check of the forecast somewhat quelled those doubts and by the time we reached the park, there were signs of the skies clearing up.

Located bang in the middle of the easily accesible Baymeadows area of the city, the compact, yet secluded park was a perfect choice. The morning hours saw the area humming with activity as supplies were being unloaded in one area of the park, while generators and slide/bouncers were being setup in other areas. A registration/ticket center was quickly setup while banners and signage were being hung/posted around the park.

The India fest 2007 trophy was on display at the registration desk. Tickets for the games and the raffle were given as and when people registered. Breakfast in the form of Upma, Idli, Sambhar, chutney and tea (all sponsored by Mayuri restaurant) had already been setup at the shelter and the early entrants wasted no time in getting to work on it. Not many children initially ventured to try the bouncer that was setup for them, (they preferred to stick to the swings in the regular play area) but as more and more parents wrapped up their breakfast, we could notice the bouncer area start to attract more and more children. The slide/bouncer soon became a major attraction for children of all ages.

Sreedhar Vengala helped setup the music system and took upon himself, for the most part, in association with Sai V, the responsibilities of a DJ. Laxman Chileveru and Padma Patcha coordinated the “Ring” game for children. In short order, this game drew parents too as they at first egged their children to get the ring around the targets, but later on started participating too. A volleyball court was quickly setup and a game got started in no time, but the volleyball decided to call it quits. While waiting for a replacment, the players switched to other games like cricket and football. Meanwhile, some of the ladies decided to indulge in a game of “seven stones”. Bharath Muthyala, Srini Miryala and Padma got the children involved in a spoon and lemon race. To make it easy for children under four, they were asked to race without the lemon!

Vamsi Srikakolapu and Ravi Sanka got together to organise a tug-of-war contest for children. In the Boys vs Girls contest, the girls won the first round. Maybe the result prompted more of the boys to join in the game and help the Boys team win the second round. A men vs women contest was held immediately thereafter and seeing that the men were outnumbered, more men interrrupted their volleyball game and joined in the effort to help the men’s team win.

While people were enjoying themselves, some members volunteered to cook rice (Chidambaram Rayaprolu), to cut vegetables for the salad (Shanta Rayaprolu / Roja Nunna / Vasundhara Srikakulapu) or to prepare buttermilk. The buttermilk was gone in a jiffy, leaving us wondering if we should have prepared more. Either all the activity or the anticipation of a good lunch had folks waiting even before everything was ready to be served. Lunch arrived after a short delay and a line was formeed even as it was being arranged. Lunch consisted of biryani rice, chapati, chole curry and brinjal curry (all sponsored by Apna restaurant). White rice and salad were prepared on the spot and lemon pickle (Kala Kiran) and curd were provided by members. An im-promptu educational seminar on the benefits of insurance and retirement/financial planning was conducted by Ray Riddick and Andy of Prudential Financial just after lunch. Most of the men and some of the ladies listened in and there were quite a few questions asked about long term disability. We thank Prudential for arranging for this enlightening seminar.

Soon after lunch, the cotton candy machine (Chiddu Rayaprolu / Jaya Pureti) and the popcorn machine (Bhagya Sanka / Vijaya Sree Kala) were thrown into operation. The overwhelming demand for the candy soon had us serving the candy on spoons and forks! Towards the end, it was being served at the end of carrot sticks too! Thanks to volunteers like Dora Davuluri and Ramesh Bachala for making sure that no child was left without candy.

While tea was being prepared (KVN, Chiddu R) most adults started settling down for a game of Bingo (housie) while some of the children continued to play in the shaded play area of the park. Tea and pakodi (Red Chillies) which were served while Bingo (co-ordinated by Vamsi S and Ravi Sanka) was on. TAJA President Mallik thanked our partners, sponsors and members for helping out for this day. He also informed members about the upcoming special event on October 20. He dedicated the India Fest 2007 trophy to TAJA members. Raffles were drawn and gift cards/vouchers (Flavors) were given out to winners. It was almost well beyond the scheduled closing time by the time Bingo was wrapped up. Most people started getting ready to leave as soon as the Bingo full house was claimed.

We thank everybody who contributed to make this event as enjoyable as possible. We would like to thank our sponsors; Mayuri restaurant, Apna restaurant and Red Chilies restaurant for treating us to a wonderfull assortment of tasty, fresh food throughout the day. We thank Flavors for contributing towards the gift vouchers. We would like to thank our event partner Prudential Financial for their eye-opening, educational seminar on financial planning.

We would like to especially thank those volunteers who stepped up to the plate and gave us a helping hand when we most needed it (be it in preparing food, serving the food, organising games and events, cleaning up or setting up the place for the events). We understand that these folks could have easily spent their time enjoying along with the others instead of volunteering their precious time and energy towards making it easier for everybody else, and we thank them profusely for their selfless service. (At around lunch time, I couldn’t help but notice Vamsi and Chidu replacing the full trash bags on their own initiative.) We would like to thank Prudential Financial and all of our sponsors without whose active support, we woudln't have been able to organize this event at such a low cost per family. Special mention goes out to some of the coordinators in the respective areas: Murali, Padma, Sai and Srini (Event), Murali and Dayakar (Food) and Mahendra (Sports).

We did have comments from some members, most of them positive, some of them negative. As it is more entertaining to dwell on the negative, let us give you those first!

• Raffle prizes were not given to those who were not present even when members were informed at registration that they need not be present to win.
• Some people didn’t like the idea of giving $5 gift cards for restaurant use only (Grocery store use was struck out).
• Buttermilk was fabulous but in short supply. Should have made more of it.
• The bouncer/slide should have been setup in the shaded area of the park.

And now for the positive ones: Almost all of them read pretty much the same, so we will leave that to your imagination!

| TAJA fall 2007 vana bhojanaalu | 29 September 2007 | Alejandro Garces Camp Tomahawk | Photo Gallery |

We were right in the middle of the hot and hazy days of summer and we were pretty sure that it was going to be a hot day ahead. Maybe parents recognized this too as there was a huge turnout by the appointed time. It can sure be difficult having children wake up and get ready so early on a weekend. Thanks to the huge turnout, the events were kicked off almost on time. Doughnuts, Gatorade, lemonade and water were all available.

The tricolor was hoisted to signal the start of the event. Members present sang Vande Mataram. Running races by age group (smallest age group first) were first held. These were followed by sack races for the same age groups. Nityasree arranged and co-ordinated a Treasure hunt which was won by the girls’ team. A quiz was held on the nearby basketball court. Winners of the various events are as follows:

The arrival of breakfast (Upma sponsored by Flavors) as the races were being held served as a brief and minor distraction for those present. TAJA President Mallikarjuna J spoke on the occasion and the event was concluded as members sang the Indian national anthem – Jana Gana Mana. Thanks to Murali and Nitya for taking it upon themselves and organizing the various activites.

The 2007 edition of the TAJA Pool championship was conducted as part of the independence day event later in the day at the Seven Bridges Restaurant and Grille by Tinseltown. The event was co-ordinated by Venkata (Durga) and Vasudeeep and spanned over the weekend. The winners of this championship are:

All prize winners during the independence day event (Pool championship included) will be recognized during the TAJA Special event currently scheduled to be held on Saturday, October 20. If you would like to correct the spellings of the names in this list please do so now as these names will go on the prizes. Just email us with the correct name.

| TAJA Independence day event | 18 August 2007 | South Hampton Grounds | Photo Gallery |

On his recent trip to India, TAJA's President Mallikarjuna was literally thrown off guard when TeluguOne asked him to give them an interview inn the middle of an informal meeting. Want to see how he fared?

Check out his interview here. Pretty good, considering the fact that he did not have any time to ruminate or prepare.

If you have ever dealt with the Indian Embassy or Consulates, you know how it feels when all you can do is wait and hope that your passport / Visa / PIO / OCI applications is being processed properly. You never get to know the status of your application until your documents are delivered to you!

Well, that is set to change atleast for a few folks (for those applying for an Indian Visa only) as the Indian Embassy in Washington DC decided to outsource the Visa application process to a third party called TraVisa Outsourcing. This agency promises to not only make the application process easier, it also is promising tracking of your application/passport throughout the process and a Visa turnaround time of two business days! You get to fill out an application online and then print it out, sign it, and send it over to them along with the required photos, passport and other documents. It is pretty simple, infact I have already used it! Even here, only the application and the receipt and mailing is processed by this agency, the embassy or consulate will continue to issue the actual Visa! And what is the additional fee for all this? $13.

Effective October 1, 2007 all regular, non-emergency Visa applications will have to be sent to this agency. The Indian Embassy and consulates will continue to process applications for emergency (only at counter) Visas, PIO and COI cards.

What would you do if your car's door handle gave up on you and the only way out (until it is fixed) of the car is to pull the window down and use the exterior handle to open the door? Call it funny if you will, but that is exactly what I got to do when the inside door handle on my car broke. Yes, I was effectively 'child-locked' in for a few days! Under the situation, I had two options: either get it to a dealer and get the handle replaced pronto, or to try and replace it on my own.

If you have been following my rants in these columns, you could have guessed which way I took. Rather then spend what might be a lot of dough on the dealer, I decided to live with the problem for a while and try to replace the handle myself.

A little googling got me to an amazon reseller who was selling the exact door handle that I needed. Some more googling got me to a site that had repair manuals on almost every model of the Camry. Fortunately my target vehicle happens to be a Camry, so my search stooped there.

Once at that website, locating the section on replacing the door handle was a matter of minutes. Armed with a print out of the relevant pages, the new handle and the required screwdrivers, it took me about twenty minutes to get the inside door trim out and replace the handle. Figuring out how to reinstall the door trim was a little more difficult, but once I got that right, the reinstallation took another ten minutes!

I didn't even try to find out how much the dealer would have charged me to have the handle replaced. Maybe someday, I should make that inquiring call to the dealer.