Joys of life

My little one has her headphones plugged into wifey’s 5800 Xpress music. She is listening to “Country Roads” by John Denver. Not just listening too, she is belting the tune out at great volume, with the occasional Air Guitar routine thrown in. Nice to hear , her singing genes ,thankfully, are inherited from the Mom’s side:-)

So different from a year or so back when I was wading in pools of misery. Where have all the dark days gone ? The nature of human mind must be such that a few months of good times and you begin to wonder what the fuss was all about during the not-so-good times .

Here is the song :

Hiding behind the wall

One more article on Rahul Dravid, nicely done. http://www.espncricinfo.com/england-v-india-2011/content/current/story/526147.html

The wall

Two well written articles about my favourite cricketer

Dravid's flame still burns - Harsha Bhogle

Dravid shows his greatness - Sambit ball

Got to learn an interesting stat too. Of the 33 hundreds that he has scored, only one has come in a losing cause !!

Have I made it large ?

Apparently Harbhajan is going to sue. What happened to our sense of humor ??

10 years and a farewell

A colleague of 10+ years quit today. After 10 years, you no longer think of people as colleagues. they become so much part of your life ..The morning tea sessions, chatter over lunch, technical disagreements, office gossip, jokes, family outings … Somehow you cannot think of people just as “colleagues”

Hope the break helps her and family.

And that brings me to the point in the title, 10 years !! Yes, I have completed 10 years in one company. Almost a Dinosaur by modern day standards !!

Pet hates ..

Some time back in by blog, I had professed the pure hatred I have to all the folks who pay through Sodexho / Ticket restaurant coupons.

Well, I have a new category of people to add to the hate list : The nit-pickers.

The very same category of people who insist on picking up any fruit or vegetable one by one. They seem to be incapable of counting in anything more than one unit at a time. By all means you should pick up certain things in units of one --> Coconuts, Apples, Mangoes, Pineapples, Tomatoes .. I have no problems there.

But WHY would you want to pick up 1/4 kg of green chillies one at a time ? Or beans ? Or leaves like curry leaves , mint or coriander. 

I guess India is a free country and they can do whatever they want…………………. As long as they don’t do it front of me, I’m ok too !! :-D

I have the same policy for vehicles with L board, driving slowly in the middle of the road and blocking traffic. I tend to honk the daylights out of them. Couple of friends suggested that I should go gentle on these poor souls.

I have the same answer, You wanna learn driving ? Fine , do it . BUT NOT IN FRONT OF ME !!

Eight years

And still going strong. Happy Anniversary to us !!

A legend retires

Oh, but he chucks, they snickered behind him all the time. He just smiled , returned to the top of his bowling mark and revved up another one at the poor batsman.

Muthiah Muralitharan, in my book is one of the greatest spinners of all time. There was a period when I thought he was a chucker, then I saw this program on TV in which they showed the deformities in his arm and how he was able to bowl all the deliveries even with an arm brace. That converted me to a believer.

Murali bowling with arm brace

The amount of vitriol that this guy had to take has been un-believable. Imagine if you came into work and some of your colleagues kept on shouting behind your back that you are a cheater. How long would you last in that company ? 5 days ? one month ? one year ??

This guy took it for close to 20 years and that is what makes him special. Sure, you can poke deeper into his record and say he did nothing in Australia or India. Well, Shane Warne did nothing in India or West Indies !!

And why so much hatred against Murali alone ? Take a look at some of the contemporary spinners in action. All of them having blatant chucking actions. None of them half as successful as Murali though, probably that is why they are being left alone  ..….

 

I’m sure Murali does not care. 800 wickets, somebody beat that first and then let’s talk !Adios Murali, there goes the last great spinner of my Generation. Why would anyone want to watch test cricket now ?

Wisdom from a six year old

We went to the railway station couple of days back to see-off my sister, brother-in-law and niece. Diya had just spent the good part of her two month summer vacation with them. She has always been extremely attached my sister's family

So predictably on the way back she was sobbing uncontrollably in the car . Both me and my wife were trying to console her and she settled down somewhat after a while.

And then the rain started, the onset of Monsoon in Bangalore.

She turns to me and says "See daddy, it is not only me who is crying. The whole world is crying with me"

What do I say ....... Where does she get this imagination from ?

Keep marching

Often corporate strategies are not very different from what Alfred Tennyson described in his poem The charge of the Light Brigade.

Half a league, half a league,
Half a league onward,
All in the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.
"Forward the Light Brigade!
Charge for the guns!" he said.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Forward, the Light Brigade!"
Was there a man dismay'd?
Not tho' the soldier knew
Some one had blunder'd.
Theirs not to make reply,
Theirs not to reason why,
Theirs but to do and die.
Into the valley of Death
Rode the six hundred.

Cannon to right of them,
Cannon to left of them,
Cannon in front of them
Volley'd and thunder'd;
Storm'd at with shot and shell,
Boldly they rode and well,
Into the jaws of Death,
Into the mouth of hell
Rode the six hundred

Just replace six hundred by whatever is the appropriate number for your organization. The poem would pretty much hold true at some stage during the evolution of the company.

Try sticking around in any one company long enough and you will know how true Tennyson was :-)

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 .....