Thoughts in general

I am not sure about others but I for one am excited about the Bangalore Metro being thrown open to public in next few months. I just read in the newspaper yesterday that they have been testing the track with brand spanking new metro coach (hot pink in colour). I have not had an opportunity to look at the interiors personally but the newspaper photos have shown that it has a lot of standing space along with some seating spaces as well. With the traffic on Bangalore roads increasing, no amount of road widening is going to help. In fact, it is sad to see so many trees being cut down for measly widening on the road. I would rather they improve the already decent public transport further and increase the taxes on cars and bikes so much that it becomes harder to buy cars. Public transport anyday is better than the gaz guzzling vehicles we have on the road. And I am not a greenpeace activist. I like good cars but looking at the Bangalore traffic, I feel it is not worth even driving in...

Team lunches are a lot of fun. This is one time where guys let their guard down and talk about things aside from work. You get to learn a lot from the employee - their likes/dislikes, their frustrations, their outlook towards various things etc. I tend to use those to assign projects, talk to them etc. Sorry, I digressed. We went to Mast Kalandar on CMH Road for lunch. The good part about this restaurant is that it looks and feel like a clean place. The food looks and tastes fresh although, I would like them to speed up a little bit in serving us the food we order. We came back walking while coming back and it seems like ages since I have walked a long distance. I need to do this more often and more regularly. I used to do some decent exercising every day which i stopped after my trip to the US, where I hogged on chocolate chip cookies. The weather is Bangalore is downright cold in the evening and nights. It is chilly and one does not feel like waking up early in the morning t...

August 15th has always been special to me. I was born an Indian and although I am not an Indian citizen now, I live here and am immensely proud of this country, its values and its heritage. On Sunday morning, I went down to the park in our complex to celebrate flag hoisting ceremony with my 4 year old son. My son has been in his Independence day spirits since he got an Indian flag at school and had been wishing everyone "Happy Independence Day". He still cannot "Independence" right but hey, who cares when what he says sounds so cute to the ears. :) A few hours later, we went to old Bangalore to attend a Satyanarayana Puja at my cousin's new office. It was beautifully done and started and ended nearly on time. That in itself is quite a feat for puja's generally never start or finish on time. There was a delicious lunch after the puja was done. While the puja was great, I was very excited to meet my Mama and Mami. While I do get to see them more often...

I just cannot believe that I have missed out on listening to songs by Talat Mahmood all these years. Hemant Kumar was and will always remain my favourite for not only his beautiful voice but also his music direction. However, I have become a huge fan of Talat Mahmood. His songs are soothing and he can sing all kinds of songs. Ghazals were his forte. He has also acted in many film during his career and deserves to be mentioned amongst the great singers of the golden era of 1950-60. Sample this song from the film "Sone ki chidiya" Pyar par bas to nahin hai mera lekin phir bhi tu bataa de ke tujhe pyar karoon ya na karoon

On Saturday, August 7th, we got the keys to our new house for woodwork. This is the moment we have waited for and are very excited to see how the final product will look once the woodwork is done. We visit the site every 3-4 days or so to monitor its progress and it is coming along rather well. Like most of the new sites in Bangalore, there is Cauvery water and it won't be there till the next phase of Cauvery canal is completed sometime in Nov 2011. Long time!! Till then, we will be relying on the borewell and tanker water. Abhinav is already excited about the "new" house. He is looking forward to sleeping in his swanky new bunk bed. He is debating whether he would have liked the ladder (like has in his new bed) or preferred stairs to reach the top of the bunk bed. Well, now he has no choice :-) I have been playing about 45 minuted to an hour of basketball everyday and that is providing me with a very good workout. Yesterday, I played with couple of 10th standard ...

This has been a topic of ongoing discussion amongst 3 of us who carpool to work.  I am trying to understand how snubbing Pakistani cricketers from a local (call it Indian) tournament constitutes an insult of Pakistan.  Does Pakistan have nothing else to worry about?  I guess they are not worried about people dying in their backyards and worried more about how the supposedly best players of T20 have been left out. Look, each franchise buys these players for money.  They have a choice of picking whoever they want for whatever reasons they want.  However, collusion in any business is not good.  If that is what happened, then I am not on board with them.  However, insult to a Pakistani nation for not picking its players is taking things a bit too far. Now, Shahrukh Khan is saying how humiliating it is for Pakistani players not to have been picked in IPL3.  As far as I know he is one of the owners in IPL and he had $750k to buy someone.  Why didn't he buy all of the Pakistani players?  ...

First of all, a very Happy New Year!  It's been a while since I wrote on the blog.  I am re-starting it again hoping that I will be more consistent in writing on the blog daily. Well, last month was fun.  Wife and I celebrated our 10th wedding anniversary in Coorg.  Coorg (Kodagu, as it is called now) is a beautiful place filled with waterfalls, lush greenery and just a beautiful landscape.  We went to Coorg from Bangalore after picking up DS's cousin in our car.  Hence, we started off for Coorg around 4:30pm.  That was not a good idea since Coorg is about 7 hours away and with my little son with us, it is nearly impossible to drive 3 straight hours without stopping.  We stopped in Mysore and had our dinner at Country Club, Mysore.  Please save your time and money and don't eat at this place.  It serves lousy and spicy food and the cleanliness of glasses is horrible.  It is better to eat at Kamat's that comes along the way. We left Mysore around 8:20pm.  The road to Coo...