2007 the year that was

Driving back to work after having dinner at ITPL, Bon Jovi screaming "It's my life" through my car stereo. Yeah sure, I agree , it is my life. I can do whatever I want with it .

Or can I ? In the past year, have I really done whatever I wanted? Or should I be living my life whichever way I like? Do I even know what I want from life ? All these nonsensical questions whirl around in my mind.

The wannabe racing driver me is pushing the speedo up to 100 . Attention wanders from the road for a second . Sure enough the ever present cow in the middle of the road is staring back at me with an impassive face that says "I'm not moving out of the way buddy, your turn today" . Screeching brakes and deft steering narrowly saves the day.

Flash back to the start of the year . Remember those steely resolutions to get more excercise in this year for sure ? Unless you consider slouching in front of TV as excercise, I don't recall making much headway on that. "It's not your fault , you were too busy" whispers an angelic voice in my left year. I begin to relax and slowly get back into mood of this song.

My peace is shattered by a sarcastic rolling laughter to my right. I am startled to find a tiny red colored guy sitting on my shoulder. He says "Too lazy to get off your fat butt and so something , aren't you ?".

My blood instantly boils . How dare you accuse me of such things. Don't you know I work 10 hours a day ? The red devil laughs even more : "You stay in office for 10 hours alright, how many hours do you really work ? " Why you nasty little dwarf, are you trying to tell me that I am inefficient ? Don't you know how hard I need to think to solve all these complex problems ? "Think hard ? You can hardly think any more " retorts the little devil. This guy is really annoying me now and he is showing no inclination to go away. I try ignoring him for a while.

The dwarf chirps after couple of minutes. "And what about your resolution to read for one hour everyday before sleep". What about it , I ask him. Haven't I been doing that ? "Well you have been mostly reading newspapers, Calvin and Hobbes and Dilbert. You were supposed to be reading more serious stuff that that. Whatever happened to all those classics that you were supposed to read", he asks. I am white hot with anger now. Well sue me then, I say. According to me I am reading every day. I don't care what you think about it.

Not even a minute passes , the guy poses another question "Have you been treating all your friends well this year ?". Whaddya mean you pest, of course I have been . "Really ?Are you sure you have not picked fights with them over trivial issues ?" . Well , may be a couple of times I have, but I was under lots of stress that time , I retort. I am feeling a touch defensive now.. What should I do to make this guy go away ?

"Don't worry about me, I will go away. Just think about it ?", he says this and vanishes into thin air.

What a relief !! Finally he is gone. Who is he to ask me all these questions ? Sure, I am living my life the way I want it .

Only I am not so sure now what is that I wanted from life.

The next song starts on my stereo "Another day in Paradise" , says Phil Collins.

Thank you !

A little bit of breathing space finally and I am leaning back on my chair reflecting on my friendships. Have to say that in spite of being bit of a social retard, somehow I have managed to find some wonderful friends !

So here is a big year end thank you to all my friends for tolerating me throughout the year. I promise to be back in 2008 with more trouble for you :-)

I am off on my vacation starting tomorrow, so may not be getting time to blog for a while now.

Lazy weather

Cold, rainy & windy out here in Bangalore. Ideal weather to just curl up in your bed and sleep all day. Not that I need a reason to sleep !

Other option is to settle into your armchair with a nice book for company. Would be ideal if you can have a mug of hot coffee and some snacks to munch away. Add to this the company of a loved one, and there is nothing more I would want from life.

Unfortunately , I can't do any of these :(. So here I am in office hammering out reports one after the other. One more and I am done for this year .. Phew ..

Performance appraisal time

Time to re-live all those Dilbert cartoons on performance evaluations, it is that time of the year again. See this one


http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/archive/dilbert-20071216.html


I am always confused at this time of the year . What I have I done in one year ? Very tough to put to words , will have to fall back on my creative writing skills :)


My key accomplishments for the year are re-starting my reading habits & regaining my enthusiasm for voluntary work. Well, that does not really help me much in my appraisal.


Or else I can take the escapist route by citing a vaguely relevant quote "A hundred years from now it will not matter what my bank account was, the sort of house I lived in, or the kind of car I drove...but the world may be different because I was important in the life of a child”

I hate this !!

Key to happiness

Often I think , the key to peace of mind is to have very low expectations

Think about it . If you had low expectations for your salary, won't you be delighted to get a pay rise ? :-)

If you send your friend a mail / message with no expectations of reply, wouldn't you be over the moon if he/she replies ? Tell you what, this alone could bring 75% reduction in my stress level !!

Extend the same logic to most things in your life, you will never feel the need to be aggrieved ? ;-) .

Kind of a knife through the heart for all the self improvement book lovers, isn't it ?

Most comforting feeling in life

There are few things more comforting in life than having a 3 year old snuggling up next you and falling asleep . I can instantly feel all my tensions just vanishing off into thin air ....

Is a good academic record over-rated ?

Right from a young age all I have heard ( as has any other kid) from all teachers is that unless you score very good marks , you will not make it good in life . Of course I believed sincerely till I passed out of college. Now I am not so sure.

For me academics is over-rated. Some of my friends who know me and my background would probably raise an eyebrow at that :). From whatever I have seen, people who do exceptionally well in life are the ones who can interact with people well and are mentally tough. I am not trying to imply that top rankers turn out to be losers. Just that more often than not you will find that they are not the most succesful ones in their careers.

Could be due to a variety of reasons. Maybe they are too narrowly focussed . They have rarely come face to face with failure or never been down in the dumps like the average run of the mill student.

When I passed out of School, Father Edakkara ( who was one of my fav. teachers) made this comment to our outgoing batch of students "It is nice to have a 100 rupee note in your pocket , but to stop by the road-side and drink a cup of tea or to take a bus home you will need one and two rupee coins. The relationships that you build, the way you treat others , all these are the loose change you will need later in your life"

Sound advice, I must say.

Finally, some relief

Work seems to be settling down a bit. Past few weeks have been a real struggle. Very little sleep and working on weekends. Two things that I try to avoid at all costs !!

Worse thing is , I had miss out on close to 3 weekends of my volunteering at EOTO :-(

But as I said things are looking up now , looking forward to my year end vacation now.

One quote that describes you ?

What would be the one quote that describes me ?

"Anger is what gets me into trouble, pride is what keeps me there" would come close, I guess.

There is another quote which I wish I could live up to : "Dream as if you will live forever, live as if you will die today"

Losing my perspective?

Very often I feel we tend to lose our perspective on life.

Just a couple of months back I was in a sulky mood with the usual grumblings : salary not high enough, traffic is bad , too much work and too little time, Bangalore is so expensive and so on .

Incidentally I had to go that weekend to Each One Teach One center ( EOTO ) to conduct some student interviews. EOTO is an NGO that provides free computer literacy to college students.
Volunteers from our company take classes there on weekends. We do the interview ( or rather screening of students) just to make sure only the deserving students get through.

I reached the center around 10 am , there were already close to 25 students waiting. We started the interview process soon. Boy, wasn't I taken to a different world altogether .

I sat there absolutely shattered as student after student came in front of me and told me about their struggles. Several of them with single parents, almost all their parents did not have steady incomes. In some cases these 18-19 year old kids were also working part time to support their parents.

I had to discreetly brush away a tear or two as I sat there and listened to all these gut wrenching stories. For these kids, this was really their last chance to re-build their lives and do something with this.

And I was thinking I had problems !!

Does give you a different perspective of your own self imagined problems, doesn't it ?

Dealing with loss of someone you love

I do not know the origins of this poem, came across this first time when I was reading one of the those Chicken Soup for the soul books. Earlier in the year I lost my uncle rather unexpectedly, remembered about this poem then. Found it to be very soothing ..

Do not stand at my grave and weep
I am not there; I do not sleep.
I am a thousand winds that blow,
I am the diamond glints on snow,
I am the sun on ripened grain,
I am the gentle autumn rain.
When you awaken in the morning's hush
I am the swift uplifting rush
Of quiet birds in circling flight.
I am the soft starlight at night.
Do not stand at my grave and cry,
I am not there; I did not die.

Ever feel like this

Ever felt in life that you are being taken for granted ?

I am passing through a phase in life and friendships when I am increasingly getting this feeling. "No matter what happens he will be there " ," I can always put more work on him, he won't complain" , "I can always be late for appointment, never reply to messages, never call him and still things would be fine" .

It could be I am just stressed out. But I strongly feel I am being treated like dirt by some folks.

Maybe I am just imagining things . This feeling is not great , that much I can tell you .

Misadventures of a wannabe cook

Who says men can't cook ? Exactly the question that swiveled around in my mind on a bleak winter evening here in Bangalore. Cloudy & cold outside, add to that the horrendous Bangalore weekend traffic . No chance of me getting off my backside and going out to grab some food.

Chapathi and dal seemed like a logical and easy way out. Only thing is I am about as good a cook as Ralph Schumacher is an F1 driver !! But hey , I watch lots of these reality cooking shows popping up all over in the telly. How tough can it be ?

Deceptive question, as it turned out. 2 hours and the use of around half the kitchen utensils in my kitchen I was looking at some weirdly shaped charred specimens. Sadly I realized unless I place a label under them saying "Chapathis", there is very little chance of any one else recognizing them. On the brighter side , the shapes were all designer ones, no two were alike and none of them bore a remote resemblance to a circle :).

Strangely they tasted decent , praise the lord !! Maybe there is still some future for me as a cook .

They say "If at first you don't succeed, try , try again" . I prefer "If at first you don't succeed, destroy all evidence that you tried".

Adios , will be back with more soon ..