Days of my life!!

Last month, one evening, I was waiting for my order to arrive in ' The Imli ' restaurant and happened to walk over to the end of the hall which housed a few books and magazines. I picked up a copy of the Outlook magazine and started to read some of the articles. Soon, I was engrossed in the data that was reported on the Karnataka elections, which the Congress had won with a majority to the latest updates from the BJP camp on NaMo . What was also astonishing for me, to read, was that the state of India with maximum economic growth in the last financial year was not Gujarat, but Orissa - especially with the work that Naveen Patnaik was doing there without much fanfare. All of a sudden I had become a fan of the publication and went home and told wifey what all I had read and announced that I was subscribing to the same immediately, to which she proudly replied, "I love your never ending thirst for knowledge!" Three weeks into my subscription, I haven't been ...

A few months back I was asked to become the track-lead for our annual user conference SNUG. Key responsibilities included getting customers to submit technical papers, getting them reviewed with appointed committee members, providing feedback to the authors and most importantly picking 4 of the best which could be presented in front for a wide audience.  All this happened over a period of 2 months without many hiccups, but my job wasn't done as yet. The conference was yet to happen! On the day of the conference I had to work with the MC to get a presentation ready for her so that she could introduce the judges, authors and welcome the attendees. I was to take care of basic logistics like plaque distribution. The rest of the work like maintaining decorum amongst the attendees and the corridor outside was assigned to other 'traffic cops' within the group. Overall the job was pretty simple, but the real test of a good track-lead only comes when things start to ge...

The other day when I was watching the movie ' My name is Khan ' I realized that in one of the scenes, the background music is actually a rendition of the inspirational song - Hum Honge Kamayab .... This is a song that I like a lot. The most memorable recitation of it, for me, was at the Wankhede stadium in the year 2001 where India had lost 5 or 6 wickets early in the first innings on Day 1 and the whole crowd sang that song in unison.....it didn't work that day as India lost that test match in 3 days. But it did inspire a turnaround for us in the 2nd test match at Kolkata, which was influenced by a record breaking stand between VVS Laxman and our very own Bengaluru huduga - Rahul Dravid. Some of you may wonder how I related the famous win to the recitation of the song - well there is no proof, but my blog - my thoughts! Coming back to MNiK and that background score got me thinking - who is the writer of this song. This was not written by Rabindranath Tagore, nor...

They say that Breakfast is the most important meal of the day - why not! It gives you enough energy to get through a hectic day. Some may argue that Lunch helps as well, but with a desk job like we all have it also adds a lot of inches around our waist. A heavy Dinner is like a sin, but when dearest wifey cooks such wonderful and tasty food I have no issues in committing that sin on a regular basis. Breakfast, however, continues to remain important. You need to start your day with a something healthy - like a bowl of cornflakes or oats, maybe a few slices of bread or some fruits. You can also have some coffee/tea or some health drink to go with it. Yesterday though, wifey suggested we do all of this with a little twist, " How about a Breakfast date? " she asked. In no time we freshened up and left for the Au Bon Pain outlet close by. (We preferred the McDonalds breakfast menu but for some reason they had closed it for a few weeks!) She went for the Egg and Pes...

One of the best things about people living abroad is the the fact that they are super friendly and like talking a lot and last month the guy who drove us from San Francisco International Airport to our destination in Santa Clara was no different. He literally spoke for 35 out of the 40 minutes it took us to cover the journey. He told us about the weather, the direction, his cell phone provider, his truck and also why San Francisco was the best city in the world. However, for me the most important knowledge he imparted, that day, was explaining how the Bay Area came to be known as the ' Silicon Valley '. It started some 10 minutes into our ride when we passed a board that said 'University Drive'. Before I asked him he started to explain, " If we take the next exit and drive to out right for about 3 miles, we will hit Stanford University. Everything South of this place till San Jose is now Silicon Valley " Apparently, it all started back during World War...

Quite a few years ago, in Mumbai, I had heard a PJ on why they had changed the name of Madras to Chennai. Apparently, everyone in Madras wore lungis' and not regular trousers' or jeans' and hence, in Marathi, "Chain" (or Zip) " nahi" (not there) - thus arriving at Chennai!!  Ok, I do realize that the above PJ was too pathetic even for my standards, but last month when I was in Chennai, for a couple of days, what I experienced was so very different from the typical lungi and kanchivaram yielding, rasam drinking image that the people up north have of Tamil Nadu's capital city. I landed there at about 8am in the morning and the heat and moisture was the first thing that hit me even as I disembarked from my flight. In some 20 minutes, I was out of the airport in my pre-paid air conditioned taxi and what I saw was a very typical early morning hustle and bustle that one can easily associate with any metro city in India - wide roads, traffic ...

Yesterday, I finally decided to get a little more serious and interested about my much awaited, upcoming trip to the US and decided to start by doing some research on the Hotels that I was going to be put up in. So, I went onto Google and started reading the reviews that other users' had put up.  Apart from the usual banter about the rooms, toilets, gymnasium and hotel staff, almost everyone commented on the fact that the wireless internet was not free! Ofcourse, charging for internet in Silicon Valley is like committing a sin, but I really wondered if we could actually do without staying connected? The Answer - a simple NO.  So, let's take a closer look at the manner in which Technology has changed our lives! Let's start with the humble Telephone. An instrument which, some 20 year ago, was a more than just a mere liberty. One could feel really proud to proclaim that he owned one of those large black or red analogue phones with a unique circular dial and a eve...