The gadget guy

Well, quite an accumulation of gadgets at home now. iPad2 ( gifted by me to Wifey), Kindle ( gifted by my friend to me) and Samsung Galaxy S2 ( Wifey to me). I love gifting :-)

My phone has simply been brilliant so far. Especially in my trip to U.S. It hooks on to free WiFi networks ( which are plenty in the U.S), so then I can be online through Skype , Yahoo Messenger, Gtalk etc, enabling easy access to staying in touch. No need for the exorbitantly priced international roaming plans !!

Need to recharge battery on a daily basis though, I don’t really consider that as too much of a drawback though.

Ad from yester years

Remember seeing this ad several years back. They did not play it very often, but somehow I liked the theme of it a lot.

I could not find the full video, but I think it went something like this ….

In the beginning you just love to play,
because you are a kid, and it's a game.

Then the forehand gets stronger,
and the serve starts to pop,
and the expectation grows.

But you still love to play,

because you're a kid …………... a 27 year old kid,

… And it's a game !!

Sometimes when I watch Sachin Tendulkar, I wonder where he still gets the drive. Maybe he still loves to play because he is still a kid , a 38 year old kid ……. :-)

Daddy, what do you do …

“Daddy , you have seen my time-table at school, right ? “

Yes Indeed, I have

“So you know what I do throughout the day at school?”

Yes, I do know what you do at school. In fact I almost have your daily schedule memorized

“So tell me this. What do you do whole day in office ?”

Errrr ….. I go to the lab, test some things. if they are not working, I try to fix it

“So you are like a repair-man”

Well …… no, not exactly. Sometimes I think of better way to do things. Like I get lot of ideas.(Actually daddy goes to office, drinks coffee, cracks lots of jokes, browses the net, checks mail and comes back . But what the heck, the previous explanation sounds impressive, even to me)

“BLANK STARE”

What do I tell ?

How about “I think about the really tough problems facing us today and try to come up ways to solve them” ? Nice statement, but that is not really what I do most of the time :-(

Should I say that I am a researcher who does not know half the time whether he is right or wrong ?

Or if I am someone whose job involves making vague power point presentations on how to solve problems that may or may not exist ?

I really need to think on how to put this nicely to a 6 year old !!

Terrorism …..

I was browsing the net when I came across this article talking about a potential 9/11 10th anniversary attack in the U.S. I certainly hope that this would not be true

However I am confused after reading the article. The article quotes a person from Homeland security as saying “In this instance, it’s accurate that there is specific, credible but unconfirmed threat information.’’

If its accurate , credible and specific, how the heck can it be un-confirmed ????? I can’t figure this one out, can you ?

One year

“If you want to know the value of a day, ask a schoolboy on the last day before summer vacation.
If you want to know the value of an hour, ask a criminal sentenced to death.
If you want to know the value of a minute, ask a person that just missed their flight.
If you want to know the value of a second, ask a person that just avoided a serious car accident.
If you want to know the value of a millisecond, ask an Olympic silver medalist”

(http://www.johnboe.com/articles/time_management_tips.html)

Wifey informs me that she has completed one year in her job as of today. So if you were wondering whom to ask about the value of one year, you have the answer now :-)

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 :-)