Little one down

My daughter is down with Asthma. Poor thing has been coughing non-stop for a while. Doctor has put her on steroids to ease away the Asthma. We do use inhalers for her, but if you use them too much ( like a Salbutamol ) , the heart rate gets bumped up and that is not good.

This is one thing I am sure I have passed on as a hereditary trait to my daughter. How I wish I could reverse that :-((. Bad Bad Bad gene, no donut for you ....

There must be few things more upsetting to a parent than a sick child. Also wish I could be by her side comforting her . Well, she has an array of grandparents, uncles and aunts to fuss over her, so I must admit she is not doing too bad on the affection front :-)

Question & Answer

As another Sunday evening approached, an interesting question popped up in my mind :How fast can my Wagon-R go on the outer ring road ?

Answer : Not very :-(

After some attempts, the max I could hit was around 110 kms/ hr, got limited by traffic mostly. That is like a first gear corner in F1.

I am realizing driving fast is also a mood elevator for me :-). Do not get alarmed though, I am a fast driver , not a rash or stupid one . There is a difference, you know . A difference not appreciated by most of my friends, I must say :-(

Weekend passed by with the usual dose of activities. Cooking, reading, some TV, movies and volunteering. Latest movies were Silence of the lambs, Forrest Gump and Remember the titans. Liked all of them. Chilling is the only word to describe Antony Hopkins in Silence of the lambs. Forrest Gump is one of those genuine heartwarming stories, Tom Hanks is just amazing. Remember the titans is based on a true story of a football team that overcomes racial segregation issues. You can learn more about the true story here : http://www.71originaltitans.com/

Next in line is Bridge over River Kwai

Another weekend looms

My plans of making a brief trip home have been upset by some work related stuff that has come up, so sulking a bit because of that. Would be missing my niece's birthday, so feeling down now :-((

Today we were asked to leave office by 7 p.m as there were reports of some unrest in parts of Bangalore like JC Nagar. No one knows what exactly is the nature of unrest, unable to find anything on this on TV either !!

I have resumed volunteering as you might have read in one of my earlier posts. I am convinced that the direction we are headed in with our new initiative is wrong. However no one seems to be keen on listening to me :-(( I can only put in my best effort and hope things work out well. I must admit that I am missing a bit of passion from my time at EOTO.

According to me our target student population has been woefully off so far , this is still ok as we are just starting. More disturbing to me is that our agenda is getting hijacked into something else now. If we are not really careful, it could mean the end of our program. However, not many others seem to have the same amount of concern, maybe I am wrong.

Or maybe I am just tired and my thoughts are all scrambled up. God knows, that has happened a few times before .

I am adding the disclaimer again that this blog is not intended at any particular person(s) , it is just an expression of my own frustration

The taxi driver

As you can guess from the title, yesterday was mostly a driving day.

Started off by going to the Passport office near Koramangala national games village. My passport expired couple of weeks before and had to renew it. Made a strategic blunder by choosing the outer ring road and was severely punished for the error by being stuck in a jam near Bellandur cross for like 30 minutes. Another unwise choice was to skip breakfast. By the time I was done with the whole submission process, I almost collapsed due to hunger !! Hey, how come my mistakes always get savagely punished, this ain't fair !!

Went over the good old Imperial hotel near Koramangala club and parceled the legendary Kerala porotta with chilly chicken. Was nearly 3 p.m by the time I finished my "brunch" and reached back home( near Marthahalli)

This was followed by a trip in the evening to Richmond road to meet a dear friend of mine, the kind I mentioned in this post :-). You know some friends never fail to cheer you up, a 5 minute chat is all you need to feel great again !!

Traffic was pretty light and managed to reach near MG road in 15 mins. The last 500 meters took a further 20 minutes :-((. We had dinner at Karavalli ( Residency road), dropped her back to Richmond Road and then back home.

All I recall is lying down on the bed, next thing I know is alarm going off in the morning !! So now I know the pill for sleeping. Drive around in Bangalore traffic for couple of hours :-)

The cook returns

After the stellar success of Aloo paratha, I had some recent discussions with my consultant on what else can be achieved. We discussed 4-5 options , each of the recipes went like this

"Take chilly powder, green chilly, mango powder, coriander, onions"
"Take green chillies, onions, potato, mango powder , chilly powder"
"Take onions, potato, green chillies, coriander powder , mango powder"

You sort of get the drift don't you ? My head started spinning like a top trying to work out the subtle differences. Vague qualitative answers did not help one bit either. Take in the following conversation, Con is short for consultant, no pun intended :-)

Me  : How much coriander powder should I add ?
Con : A little less than Chilly powder but more than Mango powder 
Me  : Hmmmm .... So how much Chilly powder ?
Con : Well, it has to be slightly less than the salt
Me  : What ???? How much salt do I add ?
Con : Depends
Me  : #&^%#$#)#$(#*

Well, the last response of mine is imaginary, I don't swear in real life :-). Rest all is true !!

Finally after some effort , we narrowed down the choice to the fairly innocent looking cousin of Aloo paratha , The Onion Paratha. Apparently, there is nothing to it, instead of using aloo, just use more onions and make the stuff.

Ha ha ha haaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa.......

For starters, rolling it is a heck of lot more trickier than aloo paratha, but my technique has become very polished with time. So I tackled that hurdle ok. But boy, what happened to the taste ?? It was some of the most horrendous tasting stuff that I ever made. I am pretty sure, some ingredients have been conveniently 'forgotten' by the consultant again.

Hunger forced me to eat two parathas anyway, just could not bring myself to finish the third one, had to throw it out :-((

Another case of a talented cook led astray by poor advice, I must say :-)

Hungry !!

Guess what, I am hungry. I am out of raw materials as well as patience to cook. So enforced fasting at night for the past week :-(

For me hunger is always something that causes bad mood swings. I get angry the most when I am hungry. I believe it does have a strong co-relation for most people. Which is why it is never a good idea to schedule a meeting right before lunch hour, especially if it is a brain-storming session. Mostly you will end up having people getting on each others nerves :-)

So what should be my next cooking project ? Need some discussion with my consultants to finalize that. Till that gets done, more fasting in store for me , I'm afraid.

Been following Wimbledon a bit, happy to see the Maverick Marat Safin returning to center stage. I have always had a fascination for these odd-ball characters in any sport. Not the consistent brilliance of a Federer and Nadal, but on their day these folks can take your breath away.

They seem to be fighting some demons from within most of the time and are always within a hair's breadth of hitting the self-destruct button. Say a Vinod Kambli in Cricket or a Paul Gascoigne in football. Somehow I feel we are not getting enough of these mavericks in sports any longer. Every one is so focused on saying the right things, looking the right way, having the right technique and so on. I almost fall asleep listening to most of their interviews. Come on folks, let us see some color and life out there !!

And this coming from one of the least lively and colorful persons out there. Saying is so easy, ain't it ? :-)

Yet another weekend

The main thing to report is that I am finally back to volunteering ways again, started going to the new computer education center. Had taken a break of close to month just to re-charge.

Lots of challenges this time around as the student population is very young and does not speak English very well. So we will have to devise smarter ways of teaching. Unfortunately, in spite of being in Karnataka for 10 years now, I cannot speak the language. I can understand bits and pieces. Cannot really say that I am too proud of this fact :-(

Just downloaded OpenOffice and was playing around with it. Very impressive. A touch slow , but hey it is completely free !! Menus and navigation is pretty similar to that of Microsoft Office, so picking it up was really easy. I wonder why this has not been more popular here in India !!

Drove around Bangalore on Sunday evening due to lack of anything better to do. Traffic was not all that bad. Did a round of AECS layout, Outer Ring Road, Airport Road, Koramangala, HSR layout and then back home. Picked up dinner also along the way. The all time mallu favorite of Kerala Porotta with Chilly Chicken !! :-)

Really happy to see that Spain has won the Euro 2008 !! They have been such an under achieving team so far. Wanted Holland also to do well, they had some really awesome players. Somehow did not click when it mattered.

Still reading the Manual of the Warrior of Light. This one cannot be rushed, so taking my time with it.

I am stuck with Appams as breakfast , lunch and dinner for the past couple of weeks. Boy, I am sick of it already !! This is the trouble of using instant Appam mixes that come only in 1 kg packets. Serves 35-40 appams, they say . Who will eat all these is my question ? In my opinion they should come up with bachelor friendly mini packs that makes 4-5 appams only

Manual of the Warrior of light

I am finding the above book to be really good. I have been re-reading the the following passage over and over again.

Every warrior of light has felt afraid of going into battle

Every warrior of light has, at some time in the past, lied or betrayed someone

Every warrior of light has trodden a path that was not his

Every warrior of light has suffered for the most trivial of reasons

Every warrior of light has, at least once, believed that he was not a warrior of light

Every warrior of light has failed in his spiritual duties

Every warrior of light has said 'yes' when he wanted to say 'no'

Every warrior of light has hurt someone he loved

That is why he is a warrior of light, because he has been through all this and yet has never lost hope of being better than he is

Keyser Söze

Finished watching The usual suspects, hence the title of the post . I really enjoyed it, my kind of movie, with a wicked twist at the end :-).

Well that gets me thinking. How do I really know what the real identity of people around me are ? Well for all you know, I could be a serial killer !! You might smile on reading this . Not so fast buddy, you might be next on my stalking list :-)

Saw Reservoir dogs  too, really nasty movie. Lots of bloodshed , swearing and double crossing. I did not like it very much.

Blasted through Bloody River Blues  by Jeffrey Deaver. Decent book, nothing special. Started on The manual of Warrior of Light by Paulo Coelho, it has been very interesting so far. Again a collection of thoughts and ideas.

There is a neat little site called Shelfari which lets you build up a virtual bookshelf. Helps me keep track of my reading nicely. You can see a snapshot of my Shelfari bookshelf on the right side pane of my blog. You can also rate you books, write reviews, read about what others have to say and all that. Nice concept. Could do with a better web interface though !!

Movies , EURO 2008 reading and relaxation !!

Been a while since my last post, the culprits being the items mentioned in the title above. :-)

I have been downloading and watching movies at the rate of one per day. Some of the recent ones being A few good men, The siege, The Shawshank Redemption and  Chariots of fire. All were pretty decent. I had read the Shawshank Redemption book earlier, the movie is almost as good as the book.

Next in line are Reservoir Dogs ( Kaante was apparently a rip-off of this movie), Drunken Master 2 and Raging Bull.

Just finished what must surely be rated as one of the worst books ever, Devil wears Prada. This apparently was a bestseller, I don't have the slightest clue why. Maybe people just wanted to experience what a poor book feels like. Very rarely have I felt like throwing a book in trash after reading it, this one did produce those feelings !!

There is a 25% discount sale on at www.indiaplaza.in/books and with free shipping, so I have been ordering a few of late.

Thankfully with the installation of a webcam here and back home in Calicut has meant that I see my family daily and chat with them. Has made a world of difference. Technology is just amazing , isn't it ?

All this means , I am at peace with myself finally :-)

Monsoon time

For all the keralites out there who are missing the onset of Monsoon, here are couple of videos that I shot from my home during my recent visit. Enjoy the sound and sight of rain !!



On the reading front, I am a bit tired of Devil wears Prada, boringly repetitive.

Got two more acquisitions during my trip home, from a lovely shop called Odyssey in Focus mall, Calicut. Acres of space to browse books in and fully air-conditioned to boot !! Similar to Landmark @ Forum mall Bangalore in layout, minus all the crowd. Books that I picked up are The Liar by Stephen Fry and Bloody River Blues by Jeffrey Deaver.

Suffering from Bus-lag now, so thinking of dozing off. If you are unfamiliar with the expression, it results in being tossed around in your berth while traveling by sleeper bus, partly due to bad roads and partly due to the winding nature of roads. :-)

Relaxing at home

I am set into this eat-drink-sleep-TV routine at home. Feels awesome to sit around and recover back to normalcy, May had been a mad month for me !!. Just spending some time with my family has washed away all my tensions and apprehensions. Glad to report that Pradeep is back to normal and would soon be firing on all cylinders again !! :-)

Monsoons have started in full flow here, as always it is a spectacular sight to watch. But realistically, I do not like the rainy season so much. Whole house has a damp feeling, your clothes never dry on time, you are forever splashing around in wet clothes. And if you stay where I do, you will have to waddle through pools of muddy water just to get home everyday . Yuck !!!

My little one started school yesterday and quite remarkably she has not shed a tear so far. Seems very comfortable in class. I went with my camera to capture the crying and came back disappointed:-) Here is a snap anyway, was taken just before we started for school.

You will notice that I am again sporting this experimental French beard. Started itching badly today evening, so I have gotten rid of it now :-). Good riddance, most people would say. I have had very low acceptance rates for this beard, from friends and family alike.

Planning to get some reading done later this week, apart from that no plans . Just chilling :-)

Ciao .

Now I see the sun , yes now I see it !!

Lay beside me, tell me what I've done
The door is closed, so are your eyes
But now I see the sun, now I see the sun
Yes now I see it!

From Unforgiven-II by Metallica

Finally the day has arrived. I am going home today , will be there in Calicut till 15th June. Two important dates coming up. June 9th being my daughter's first day in school and June 14th being my 5th wedding anniversary. It is amazing how fast the time flies.

I hoping to put a full stop to all the 'emotional disturbance' I have been facing over the past few weeks. I'll be back as a new man, that much I am sure !! As always a few close friends boosted me tremendously during this time, so yet again I have to thank them .

Adios Amigos. Will be back with more news on how the first day in school went. I think I am looking forward to it more than my daughter :-)

Friendship and expectations

Disclaimer : This blog is not a potshot at anyone, its just an expression of some of my own thoughts !!

Is a friendship meaningful without expectations ? I mean a really good friendship, not the casual "Hi , how are you" type.

According to me , the answer is - No. Without expectations, there is no meaning to a close friendship. Now what are some of these expectations ?

- Belief that if you have a problem, your friend will always be there to listen to you. That you can talk on any topic freely with him or her. He or She will always offer a shoulder for you to lean on.
- Feeling of zero obligation. A friendship cannot be based on obligation. If you are feeling 'he has helped me so and so times, SO I have to help him this time', then according to me the friendship is not working. Friends are there to help one another, there is no place for keeping count.
- Complete trust that you can place your life in your friend's hands and feel absolutely safe. I can count on my fingers of left hand, the number of friends that qualify for this :-)

So why I am thinking of all this ??

We cannot really control what our mind chooses to think, can we ? :-). If we could, many of our problems would just vanish into thin air ...

Taking a break

After a May month in which I probably saw more emotional ups and downs than is usual for the whole year, I have decided enough is enough. I am taking the whole of next week off to spend some time with my family. That for sure will help me settle down a bit.

Also my little one is off to school on June 9th, there is no way I'll miss her first day at school. If you have to go by the father's genes, I can tell you she will cry like crazy :-)

It is quite curios that most kids who were extremely naughty in childhood usually turn out to be fairly meek as adults. Prime example being yours truly. Some examples of my work during childhood are below. All incidents happened when I was < 4 years old .

• Falling down from a scooter and fracturing left hand
• Smoking cigarette stubs picked up from sidewalk. And when my mom's friend found this out and told my mom, I threatened to kill her for ratting on me
• Driving off in my 3 wheeled toy tractor behind people who came to collect garbage. When my mom finally noticed me missing and caught me, I had almost hit the main road
• Walking around with Jacket unbuttoned claiming to be Amitabh Bachan
• Locking my Mom inside the house by latching the door from outside and running off to play

Why do kids like these become much milder as they grow up? Is it because of constant criticism from family / friends / teachers  ? I don't know the answer.