Conversations with my daughter

"Daddyyyyyyy, after you finish 10th standard, what do you do" ?
Well, then you have to join for +2
"So after you finish your +2, then will you get a degree"
(Where is she getting these terms like degree from ???) No, you have to join for a degree course after that
"So after that you become a doctor is it ?"
No, there are several kinds of degree courses. You can become a doctor, engineer, a writer, what not
"You know what I want to become ? "
(She is six and she already knows ? I am nearing thirty five and I'm still not sure !! What can she say, she'll say either Doctor like her mom or Engineer like her Dad ) No, I don't know, why don't you tell me ?
"I want to become a dance performer. I want to dance on stage and entertain people "

Considering that my child-hood dream was to become a KSRTC bus driver, I have to say my daughter's one is considerably better

Another b’day

Wifey’s birthday was on Saturday, had a mini family get together here with all her cousins and their families coming over. Kids from age of 2 to 10, boys and girls. 4 hours of absolute mayhem and noise, I loved it :-)

Pretty much crashed whole of Sunday, little one has picked some Asthma related problems once more with a nagging cough and slight fever. The weather is so dry here that the dust never settles, that must explain it for sure.

Chokers

However much Graeme Smith and the South African team deny it, the tag is becoming more of a tattoo on their foreheads.

Here is an account of six memorable chokes : http://www.espncricinfo.com/icc_cricket_worldcup2011/content/current/story/508048.html

Out with the old, in with the new

Blogging from my brand new desktop. Not ultra high-end, but a respectable Core2Duo with 2 GB DDR3 and 500 GB hard disk, with a rather nice 20 inch LCD monitor !!

Still stunned by the less than 30 second boot up to Windows home screen time . Compared to close to 4 mins on my older computer.

The breaking point

You know, sometime you look at a person and can just sense that they are just about to break. One tiny provocation and they will just come at you with all that they have got.

I am reminded of this each time I see Dr.Manmohan Singh. Don't think so, check this out

• Got taken to the cleaners in the 2G scam. Opposition just stopped short of accusing him of taking money himself.
• Announced a JPC to probe the scam, opposition slammed him for doing it "without grace"
• Supreme court quashed the appointment of Thomas as CVC and after supporting his appointment for long, sadly PM was left with an egg on his face
• To his credit , he tried to own up responsibility a bit faster this time, still got murdered by opposition for 'un-satisfactory' statement
• Got blamed for everything from onion price rise to Bofors, still managed to cling on
• Tried to hold a press conference to clear the air, ended up in shooting himself in the foot badly with the 'pressures of coalition politics comment
• And don't forget, the MP bribery scam following the No-confidence vote following Indo US nuclear deal in 2008. Guess who backed the deal to the hilt ? Right answer, our PM himself. Expect a lot more heat to be piled up on him in the coming weeks

What I expect is a spectacular breakdown when he takes on his opponents with a choice of four letter words in Punjabi :-)) Who knows, he may already be at it behind the walls of his house !! :-D

I have the deepest sympathies for our PM. Politics is indeed the most fickle of all professions. Ask V.S.Achuthanandan from Kerala. CM today, not even an MLA tomorrow. Such is life .....

The Worst cup

Is this the Cricket World Cup or is this a competition to showcase incompetence ?

I thought India and England put in strong claims for the most incompetent performance of the tournament during their match-up. India for miserably failing for most parts to contain England in-spite of scoring 330 odd runs, and England for their classic muck up in going from needing to score just about a run a ball with a ton of wickets in hand, to somehow scrambling to a last ball tie ! Now that would a tough one to better, wouldn't it ?

Hah !! Said Graeme Smith and South Africa . The dreaded "C" word applied yet again. How they managed to lose after destroying England for 170 odd runs, only God knows.

They say that South African team does not like solid food. Why ? Because they are scared of choking on it :-)

England entered again with quite a creditable claim to the King of Incompetent Teams (KIT, I like that !!) with a stunning display of standing-with-your-thumbs-up-the-backside approach when the unknown Kevin Obrien carted them all parts of Bengaluru.

India staked their strong claim for the KIT trophy by thoroughly un-inspiring performances against Ireland and Holland. But the performance that might have sealed the trophy for Dhoni and his team was when they lost close to 9 wickets for 30 odd runs while batting. South Africa did make a valiant effort to snatch the coveted KIT title by tying themselves up in knots during the chase and somehow ending up requiring 14 runs of the last over. But India was too strong, there was just no match for Ashish Nehra that day

Just when Dhoni must have putting his feet up thinking that the KIT is in safe hands, on comes Darren Sammy and the West Indian team. To go from 222/6, needing just 22 runs to win in 7+ overs, they Calypso Kings collapsed to 225 all out. That is right, 4 wickets for 3 runs. Now that is really tough to beat

So the competition is really between West Indies and India now. And they play each other next. Brace yourselves folks, this is the real one. The KIT final !!

Whose name will be plastered on the ICC Wall of Shame ? Let us wait and find out

Umbrella : The poem

I came home from work yesterday, pretty exhausted. My little one ran up to me with her rough note. In that was scribbled a small poem, on an Umbrella, for which her teacher has given her a very very good rating. Apparently her teacher told her that it should be published in a news-paper. Well, I don't own a newspaper, but I certainly own this blog. So here it goes, reproduced in full :-)

It is cold, It is cold

I want your umbrella to hold

To hold and sing and laugh

To play and Jump.

BTW those exactly define her activities at home too. Sing, Laugh, Play, Jump. Maybe I should add dance too . Life is great when you are six !!

Sachin Mania …

All I get to hear now is how everyone wants to win the ICC Cricket World Cup for Sachin. Guys, just win it first, ok ? Then dedicate it to your grand-mom, cat, couch , neighbour ……… I don’t care. Just bring the cup home.

My reading is chugging along rather nicely, momentum is everything in reading. So let me keep it going. I decided to get online and check out some new books. Flipkart is a neat little site with a fairly well organized book collection and free shipping.

Now let me see what I want to buy. History , Non fiction, Mystery and thrillers, Sachin Tendulkar, Travel ….

What was that again, Sachin Tendulkar as a book category ????

Surely not !!! He he he , the turbulent week at work is catching up with me. Let me check once more …

No , I was not mistaken. Sachin apparently is a stand alone category of books

Nothing personal against Sachin, top class professional and an absolute legend. But this is taking it a bit too far, don’t you think ?

“Inspirations”

Was randomly browsing through YouTube when I came across this lovely song from Cliff Richard named Theme for a Dream. Now surely I have heard this recently …... Not Pal Pal Har Pal from Lage Raho Munnabhai, is it ??

The original - Theme for a dream

The copy - Pal Pal Har Pal

Sadly so, and it was one of my favourite songs too :-(( You can’t even call it an inspiration, it is a straight lift , with very few changes !!

Here is yet another one of my favs Pehli Nazar Mein from the movie Race, this time hit by a Korean inspiration

The original : Korean song

The copy - Pehli Nazar mein

I also found this website with a large list of songs that were inspired or blatantly copied. Pretty big list, I must say. Conveniently organized under the composer name so that you can find out the more ‘inspired’ ones.

One thing can be said about internet, it certainly does break international barriers , even if it is for copying music !!

SMS flood

Generally I am all for technology, but in some cases people misuse to the point of absurdity. Take SMS for example. I get all sorts of nonsense wishes on my cell phone, here are various samples that I have got over the past few months

1. Happy New Year ( Well this is not too bad, apart form the awful text art some folks seem hell bent on making)
2. Happy Republic day !!? ( really ??? when was the last time you wished somebody in person for this ?)
3. Happy Men’s day ( Please, never ever wish a man on “Men’s” day, if at all there is such a day. I beg of you, please don’t)
4. Happy Bandh !!! ( this was when there was a call for a one day Bandh in Karnataka following the fights between CM and the Governor)
5. Best wishes for “XYZ”-festival ( Might be useful to check at least if this is a festival that I am even aware of, let alone celebrate !!)
6. Motivational messages – (I do read a considerable amount of books, so chances that you will tell me something original is slim. Why not avoid it altogether ? )

I really need to update my phone to something that can bulk-delete. My old-fashioned phone is killing me :-(

Life would be fair if ….

1. Life would have been fair if eating and sleeping made you leaner and exercise made you fat.

I would have been sporting rippling six packs if this were true. But alas, no such luck.

2. Life also would be fair if Engineers made all the money and Managers did all the work !!!!

hmmmm, now that I mentioned it, #1 seems to have a higher likelihood of success than #2 :-((

Omen

Ever woke up one day with an unwavering feeling that something bad was going to happen that day ? Well, I did, happened to me last Thursday. From the moment I got up , I had this extremely tight feeling around my chest. Wifey tried to assure me that ‘All is well’ but the feeling would not go away.

Later in the day, it turned out that the feeling was not entirely misplaced.

I was crossing the outer ring road in my car, cutting perpendicularly across two lanes of traffic at a junction to move to the other side of the divider. I saw a Chevrolet Travera stopped just before the intersection, the driver was asking directions to someone standing by the divider. I took my car forward and just when I was about to pass in front of the Travera, the driver decided that he knew enough about the directions and accelerated forward. And of course he was not looking at the road, he was still making some parting comments to the guy on the divider.

All I could do was brake hard and honk at full blast, almost willing the guy to turn and look at the road. He turned almost in slow motion and thankfully jumped on the brake immediately. His front bumper missed my driver side door by no more than 5 cms. Half a second more, he would have ploughed right into me. Saved by God’s grace, no less !!!

Slept like a baby that night, woke up around 3 a.m to the sound of a female voice calling out my name and knocking on the door. Woke up with a start and listened more carefully. Nothing at all. Maybe it was just a dream, or is it a bad omen again ??

I think I have been reading too many thrillers of late, time to get back into non-fiction !!

Bring on IPL, forget the world cup

Let us just forget about the world cup and cut directly to IPL, shall we ? I mean, I no longer have the patience to watch one full day of cricket.

IPL is a different matter altogether. See the brainless auction / salary system that has been devised. A high quality player like Manish Pandey who has not played for India can only earn a max of Rs.30 lakh , where as someone like Saurabh Tiwary , who has played for India for just 3 ODIs suddenly gets Rs.7.2crores ( USD $1.6 million). I cannot understand why everyone was not put under the auction.

Having said this, the auction was perhaps one of the most entertaining ones that I have witnessed, I hope the IPL itself can surpass that.

Well, at least I hope I can see more innovative ads like this one by Virgin Mobile from last year. Sad that this was never telecast. What has happened to our sense of humor ?

Back …..

Well, it has been a while. Just noting here that I should be back soon with more regular updates.

Teaching and parenting

What would I be doing 10 years from now ? Tough to say, but I think I would like to do some element of teaching. Could be to my daughter, for all you know :-)

Trying to teach or explain something to a 6 year old can be a lot tougher than you think. Often I find myself losing patience with my little one. I hope I can remember these wonderful lines by Yeats, immortalized by Sir Ken Robinson’s closing comments in his second lecture on TED.com ( see the video below)

“Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:

But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.”

I hope I can remember this every time, I should do alright then ….