This... and That...

I can't believe that it has been four months since I updated this blog. I know it has been on life-support for a while now -- I haven't written anything much even during the months leading up to this 4-month hiatus except posting some songs reflecting my mood of the day.

How do people keep their blogs constantly updated? Where do they get the enthusiasm from?

So much has happened/has been happening -- both good and bad -- in the last several months that there is definitely no lack of information I could share. If I wanted to, that is. But why would I?

Yet, I envy those that are capable of writing so much so often while still abstracting out all the private details. I wish I could have that kind of drive. I can do it, but I just don't have the drive anymore.

I'm finding that, over the past several months, I have been writing in my personal diary more often than before. Long ago, when I was in college, I probably wrote more diary than homework. I used to use up all the bank diaries that I would get from my father and uncles! But now I have Penzu -- an online personal diary that doesn't put a limit on how much I can write and when. I use it from my Mac as well as iPad. I write even when I am on the train to work.

Anyways. I realized just now that this is my first post in 2012. Hopefully this blog will survive yet another year, but if it were to die, I wouldn't mind it. I also realized that I took out my beloved Nikon D200 only once in the last several months. And i haven't even touched it since Nov 2011. THAT I will definitely mind. I am not gonna let my camera stay silent for long. To kickstart, I've got to by a new lens first -- the one I have been wanting to buy for a while, the one that will cost me more than $2000. Hope the budget gets approved fast.

Talking of purchases, Caesar got a new ramp as the first purchase of 2012. Initially he saw it as an obstacle in his way and would jump over four feet from the sofa. Then he realized he could actually use the cushiony thing and save his legs for other more important activities. :-)

Here is what he got:

I of course use it in front of the sofa. The bed needs a taller ramp.

16... Sweet?

Homeland to Home.... 16. And still counting. Nuff said.

This is scary! How did they know??

Targeted advertising, my foot! This is downright scary! Those McIdiots probably thought I would smile seeing the ad in an Indian language.... Absolute misuse of census data I must say.

Keep Thy Smoke To Thyself

Just when I was happily concluding that the day started out really well, this lady had to come and sit next to me on the train and screw my morning up.

My (Not So) Dear Smokers Everywhere: If you are going to board a train or a bus or enter any enclosed area that is likely to be inhabited by other human beings (actually, I would say other animals too, especially dogs), don't walk in carrying a cloud of left-over smoke around you. Take your time, stand in a remote corner, re-inhale all the smoke you have exhaled, and then proceed. If you can't do that, stay as far away as you can instead of picking me out in the crowd. You are guaranteed to give me a headache, and if it happens to be your lucky day, I might even oblige you by puking on you. I am serious. JUST STAY AWAY.

I know you have been told 'n' times, but I'm telling you again just in case 'n+1' is your magic number.

And to those smoke-walkers on side walks: No, we don't need you to go around spreading the goodness. If your smoke-cloud allows you a clear vision, take a look at the stream of people walking right behind you. They are following you not because they are penniless poor folks who need you to manufacture smoke for them so they can gulp it, but because they are in a hurry to get to work. Don't gag them with your smoke. Find a corner, finish your cigarette and then take a hike.

Not that my health is great, but if at all it is going to be totally messed up, at least I want to have a say in it!

BlackBerry Photography

I just love getting there early when it is still misty all around, buy a hot cup of coffee (the small coffee shop's owner at the station holds out a cup for me the moment he sees me enter the building -- kinda adds to the nice feeling), and take a few sips before my train pulls into the platform. Sometimes I reach the station too early, early enough to catch the train before the one I planned to take, but not early to get my coffee!? So I let it go... like I did today. Not the coffee. The train.

Ah.... Early mornings... Fall weather... hot coffee.... What a beautiful way to start the day!

And to think I am not a morning person.

me.PRETTY_PLEASEd

Mothers know best how to protect... against all odds!

Does this need a title?

With all the recent goings on -- busier work schedule, travels, etc., etc., the best I can come up with, once in several weeks, is nothing but a ragged patch of disconnected thoughts and observations. Darn! It is hard to write once you lose touch, especially if all you write day in and day out is code, proposals, estimates, project plans, and emails. And an occasional shopping list that never gets looked up.

Thankfully, I can still read. Though not as much as I used to. I read Lajja recently. It was long pending but I ended up not liking it. Found the style very immature. Maybe it was the translation that did it in. Still, I fail to understand why the author was taken so seriously recently in Karnataka where people ended up killing each other over something she was supposed to have said.

***

What is worse than getting stuck in the middle seat between two men on a long flight? Of course, getting stuck in the middle seat between two women on a long flight! No wiggle room whatsoever, and you can't even nap fearing you might sway a bit too far like a drunk and embarrass yourself!

But then, you can't always help it. I couldn't on Monday.

A hefty lady to my right. She wouldn't even let me imagine that we had an armrest between us. And she closed the windows even before the plane took off cutting me off totally from the outside world and thereby depriving me of the joy of seeing sunset from 30000 feet.

To my left, a skinny woman who busily worked away in her notepad calculating some strange numbers -- tens of thousands of dollars per week. Wonder what business she was in.

And me, with my skinny book, sitting like an overwhelmed school kid. And Pandit Jasraj singing my favorite Todi variations into my ears to help me forget the discomfort.

I was hardly 3 rows from the door. So as soon as the doors closed, I started looking around for an empty aisle seat, and I didn't have to look far. The 3-seater row to my left had an empty window seat with the other two occupied by a young Chinese couple. The guy then moved to the window seat, leaving the aisle seat vacant. Perfect. And as I was eyeing that seat, the guy noticed me and in one quick perfect move, asked the girl to move to the aisle seat leaving the middle seat vacant. What a disaster! I resigned myself to my fate, and settled down uncomfortably into my seat. But I couldn't help notice, albeit grudgingly, that the young couple flew the entire flight sitting a seat apart! It was as if they were saying "We would rather keep a small distance between us than allow a stranger invade our privacy." Fair enough!

***

I have seen women cry for all kinds of reasons, "absolutely no reason" being one of the more common. However, I had never seen a woman cry watching a movie on a plane! The skinny lady who was working some crazy numbers before the movie started got so absorbed in the movie that at the end, as Leo Tolstoy was dying, broke into uncontrollable tears that wouldn't stop even a good ten minutes after the movie ended! I just couldn't believe that somebody could cry in public while watching "The Last Station"! Sure, it was a good movie with some great performance by Helen Mirren and Christopher Plummer, but still....cry?

I guess this lady has never seen a bollywood movie!

.

The End.

Merry Christmas, folks!

Photographs of World Leaders

An interesting collection of portraits, mostly black and white, by photographer Platon, taken during UN General Assembly in September. As any serious photographer will tell you, portraits, especially the B&W types, are some of the most difficult to shoot. More so when your subjects sit for you only for a few seconds!

I also loved the short commentary by the photographer for each portrait. Go ahead, have a look. There is definitely something to enjoy here if you like to study/photograph faces.

http://www.newyorker.com/online/multimedia/2009/12/07/091207_audioslideshow_platon

The Eating Dilemma!

Say you make 3 or 4 paratha (ಪರಾಠ), chapaati (ಚಪಾತಿ), or dose (ದೋಸೆ) for yourself. As each of them comes off the skillet, you put it on the plate or in a box (to keep them all warm). When you are done making them all, how do you go about eating that stack? Top one (the latest and hence the warmest) first so that you can enjoy at least ONE hot paratha/chapati/dose? Or, are you an Equal Opportunity eater who flips the stack and eats the first one first and in the process eating them all at the same at a "not really hot" temperature?

One of my eternal dilemmas. I face it every time I make such dishes. Like today when I made parathas for the first time in my life.

You know, this dilemma actually applies to a lot of everyday events, including those in your professional life. It says a lot about who you are, how you approach life, how you make decisions in life. Sounds trivial and silly, eh? Well, sit back and think about it. And you will see what I mean.

Trying to catch up.... and giving up

It's hardly been 3 days since I got totally consumed by a professional event that I had been preparing for over the last 3 months, but the number of blog posts that I haven't read in that time has shot up to 1000+ already!



Will I ever catch up? Of course not! I am sitting here in the cocktail lounge of the hotel to catch breath and unwind from hours of non-stop technical talking/listening/working since Monday, and to prepare for another hectic day of round-tables tomorrow. I took a brief glance at my reading list, and lost breath right away. There is no way I can read all of them.

But I am definitely going to read my friends' blogs on the above list. I may not comment, though. I hope you won't mind this time. :-)

Something about nothing...

Well, there's nothing to write about in this post. Hmm... make that "nothing significant". Actually, there is. A lot. So, make that "nothing concrete". Because of lack of time (and mood?) to give concrete shape to several abstract thoughts.

(Looking at the way this blog is frequented by my friends and other "regular" readers, I don't think anybody missed me here anyway ;). But there are exceptions.)

The other day, a good friend of mine prodded me to update my blog. And I said "sure". I really meant it. But then, well, read the opening paragraph.

I've been really busy with work with so much happening at the same time. Working on multiple projects/initiatives at the same time, and with my work spread across multiple time zones/continents, and now, starting last week, extending to multiple spoken/written languages involving 8 more countries, my time is seriously getting stretched thin. And with an upcoming product launch, and a weeklong conference coming up in November (padded with vacation on either side of it :-) ), I am just loving it. No, seriously!

Last night (Friday), my client, a serious workaholic herself, emails me with a request and says "It's not really urgent. By Monday morning is OK."

:-)

I have vowed to not bring my work into this blog. So I won't elaborate anymore than I already have.

I am suffering this weekend. Seriously. With M$ Windoze, that is. You see, I dropped my Mac off at the local Apple store to get some system library issues resolved. I was supposed to get it back this afternoon. Two calls later, I still don't have it. And, with my luck, I may not get it till Monday morning. That is scaring the living daylights out of me. Not because I have got loads of work to do, but because I have to use this Dell Laptop till then!! I have been using it since last night, and I still can't get used to anything on it! The bulky body, the kludgy keys, the horrible screen, and the "cooling" fan roaring like an industrial fan blowing hot air.... And it is supposed to be a pretty decent laptop! Dual-core 2.2GHz with 2GB RAM is not archaic, I am sure! But then, the very fact that it is running Windows makes it archaic.

GIVE ME MY MAC BACK!!!!

Anyways, Happy Deepavali, folks! Hope you really enjoyed it. And hope you stopped others from harming the environment.


UPDATE (Oct 18, 2009 7:30PM): My Mac is back and is working beautifully again. Normalcy has been restored. Life can resume now.

Scars And the Psyche

So another year has passed since the brutal event.

Very late last night (actually well into early morning today), I was preparing a slideshow for our sales team, and as I was doing some screenshots, I suddenly noticed that the date had turned to 9/11 and it showed on one of the application screens I was capturing. I backed out of the application right away, changed the system date to 9/9 and started all over. I just didn't want that date to be on my slideshow!

I once considered requesting a room change as I was checking into a Hotel in San Francisco and saw the room number on my key card. It was 911.

Such is the nature of the scars. And how our behavior is influenced.

Blast from the past

Certain days just don’t start right. That is just how it goes. There is not much you can do about it. You could wake up to a harsh scream next door or a loud bang on your door or the unbearable sound of the lawnmower right in the morning of a summer weekday that you chose to sleep in! Or it could be the loud and incessant ringing of a junk call on your landline. Or it could be the sweetest ring tone you chose for your cell phone which, when you reached for it, turned into possibly the most unwelcome voice at the other end. **it happens. Like it did for me this morning.

But then, some beautiful things do happen, almost riding on the back of the ugliest of things. Life has a way of teaching you that the good and the bad appear, almost always, together. It is up to you to take in what you want and leave out what you shouldn’t want.

OK, back to what happened this morning. As soon as I hung up the unwelcome call that woke me up this morning, my BlackBerry beeped again. I was not inclined to reach for it, I wanted to go back to sleep and get some much needed rest as this was the first weekend I was fortunate enough to have just for myself after weeks of crazy work schedule that spanned several time zones across continents.

Reach I did, half willingly, and realized that it was an email. I opened the inbox with droopy eyes.... and my eyes lit up in an instant! I just couldn’t believe my eyes, I thought it was a dream. I had received an email from a long lost friend whom I cherished a lot and tried very hard over the years to find! And he had found me and sent me an email!

This friend, a very very nice guy, was my closest buddy when we lived in Delhi. We did everything together, from roaming the streets of Delhi (and nearby places), visiting the most wonderful and tiny book shops around Chandni Chowk, taking the DTC buses to wherever we felt like going, eating wherever we felt like eating, shopping anywhere from the amazing by-lanes around Janpath to the vegetable market in Mandawali Fazalpur..... and, yeah, discussing career and life plans... and everything under the sun. The innumerable evenings we spent talking both our grandiose plans and utter non-sense sitting on the terrace of his mausi’s house sipping tea and munching various snacks....

I have visited Taj Mahal only once in my life despite living in Delhi and passing by Agra soooo many times. And it was Dinesh who was with me when I saw Taj Mahal. It was also his first time.

The last I saw him was probably in 1994. We kept in touch for quite sometime after that. I moved to US and he moved to Mohali. We had ‘snail mail’ contact after that. He had occasional email access which he rarely used, and as I finished grad school and my email addresses kept changing in the pre-gmail days, we were slowly cut off. I couldn’t reach his parents back in Himachal Pradesh. And this was probably about 1998, before cellphones became common in India. So we lost touch. Completely. Until this morning.

And was I thrilled!! I am so glad he renewed his search and found me. He has a good job, is happily married, and works/lives not too far from his home town. I am so happy for him!

Why am I writing about it here? Of course I am happy and excited about regaining a very good friend. But the bigger reason is to highlight the positive impact internet can have on our lives. That is, only if we allow it to. And only if we use it in a positive way. I have seen people who use internet as a weapon of destruction, to harm others, as a means to satisfy their greed, their hatred, their lust, and to basically extend their evil existence. But you can also use it to unite people, find friends, find and spread happiness, and to basically extend your good existence. What you want to do with it is a reflection of who you are. You choose!

Oh, by the way, I totally forgot about the unwanted call that woke me up. Actually, there was no other choice. A wonderful event had replaced it almost immediately.

When insensitive morons get to run businesses....

This is what happens.

As if this, this, and this, just to name three, weren't enough.

It reminds me of the horror I felt when on a lazy post-lunch stroll in New Orleans a few years ago I happened to see a "hookah cafe" flaunting the following painting out on the street trying to entice people to come in for a smoke or two. The French owner apparently believed he knew how to put Ganesha's multiple hands to good use.

Morons. Really.

Game over. Nerd wins .....

This is a bit old but I stumbled on it today on another blog. (Thanks, Bill Buchan!)

Michael Jordan the basketball player having "retired," with $40 million in endorsements, makes $178,100 a day, working or not.

If he sleeps 7 hours a night, he makes $52,000 every night while visions of sugarplums dance in his head.

If he goes to see a movie, it'll cost him $7.00, but he'll make $18,550 while he's there.

If he decides to have a 5-minute egg, he'll make $618 while boiling it.

He makes $7,415/hour more than minimum wage.

If he wanted to save up for a new Acura NSX ($90,000) it would take him a whole 12 hours.

If someone were to hand him his salary and endorsement money, they would have to do it at the rate of $200 every second.

He'll probably pay around $200 for a nice round of golf, but will be reimbursed $33,390 for that round.

He'll make about $19.60 while watching the 100-meter dash in the Olympics, and about $15,600 during the Boston Marathon.

This year, he'll make more than twice as much as all U.S. past presidents for all of their terms combined.

Amazing isn't it?

However...

If Jordan saves 100% of his income for the next 500 years, he'll still have less than Bill Gates has at this very moment.

Game over. Nerd wins.

Wow! And to think Bill Gates made his fortune making and selling some of the crappiest of software ever written while Michael Jordan (whom I am huge fan of and whose games I rarely missed even if it meant skipping classes ;)) earned his dough producing some of the most reliable, most efficient, most entertaining, cleanest, craftiest and swiftest of Basketball plays ever witnessed on a Basketball court! Mind boggling!

A Southwest Rap! :-)