Thoughts in general

Finally, I got a chance to visit my home town of Porbandar during Christmas holidays. Porbandar is a small beach town located near the west coast of India. It is better known as birthplace of Mahatma Gandhi. I love visiting the place because unlike Bangalore, things are generally within walking distance. It is totally laid back and more importantly, there is not much to do. This ensures that you relax :-) We live 5 minutes walking distance from the beach and it is my favourite past time in Porbandar . Even as school going kid, we used to go every Sunday to the beach with friends and families and play, eat etc for hours on end. We also visit a farm in village of Khapat every time I visit Porbandar . The greenery, Keshu bapa's family make it the most relaxing and soothing place to be. The Bajra rotlas , fresh curd/butter milk are amazing there. The smell and the sounds makes you want to stay there and not return to the hum drum of the city of Bangalore. The 8 days we s...

I recently finished reading "Life is what you make it" by Preeti Shenoy. Before I provide my thoughts on the book, let me mention that this is the first book I have read that is not a biography, an autobiography or a book on Spirituality. The book revolves around a character who is enthusiastic, bubbly, full of life person. It explains in great details her life in the state of Kerala during her college years. After overcoming the initial fears in an all girls college, she transforms herself into this popular, outgoing personality. Few chapters are also dedicated on her dilemma in starting and continuing love relationship with a boy. The story then moves to Bombay where she gets in to a reputed business school to do her MBA. From enjoying the new surroundings to her increasing interest in reading books, devising news ways to retain information etc, she excelled at everything. In the process and without realization, she was also getting a bit reckless, a bit edgy with s...

Finally, the boxes have moved out and we have the house all to ourselves. All the promised amenities are not yet ready. However, the play area ia ready and it is nice to see kids in the complex enjoying their new toys. The adults have become kids and have started enjoying playing gully cricket and reminiscing about the good old days. It is serious fun and a very good exercise for folks like me in IT who get limited exercise. Lots of needless running sometimes and some rustiness adds to the charm of playing gully cricket. We bought a bat and ball and it felt like I was 7 yrs old again and wanted to go ask my mom for money. Ok, that was a joke! Forming friendships is extremely important in a new complex and we have been fortunate that through various activities like cricket, Holi festival etc, we have good friendship. As in any new complex, we have challenges with water softener plant etc but they are being addressed.

It's been a long time that we have waited for the interiors of the new house to be finished. The paint is being applied to the walls and the wait is finally going to come to an end. We had a house in the US but we only did minor changes in the house. We had upgraded one closet and the master bathroom. We were lot more into savings and since the house was in a good shape, we never really thought about upgrading kitchen or else. Hence, when we bought this place at Rohan Mihira, we wanted to do things our way, the way we always wanted our kitchen or the master bedroom, the storage space etc. to be. Needless to say, things have come out pretty good. Most of our requirements have been met and we could not have asked for anything more. The storage space as far wardrobe and kitchen is concerned, has been addressed. The house should look beautiful post the painting. Abhinav's room has come out the best and I hope he likes being in it. We should be moving in about 1 month's...

Happy New year! It is quite common to adopt new resolutions in the new year just to put them aside as few months pass by. Even though I am aware of this fact, here are my New Years' resolutions: 1. Re-start my 5am routine Meditation Spiritual reading Exercise for 30 minutes 2. Less reading of Politics and more spiritual and technical reading 3. A lot more family time and take my son to the park at least 4 days a week 4. Reduce procrastination (small or big) I am sure that these are resolutions that are not only achievable but will lend a balance in my life. What are your resolutions? Do comment.

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...

The last few days have been very run of the mill kind of days.  Basically, I have been busy with work.  I want to watch the T20 matches but the matches that start at 6:00pm have been usually quite boring ones with Ireland or Netherlands or Bangladesh or one of the minnows playing.  By 9:50pm, I am too tired to stay up till midnight to watch the second T20 match of the day. Yesterday night, I did watch India stink up the joint against the West Indies.  Dwayne Bravo is in sublime form right now.  Though, I have to say that many Indian batsmen played terrible shots to get out.  Dhoni doesn't seem himself with the bat and watching them struggle against the bowling of Kieron Pollard, Suleiman Benn etc was horrible to see.  Anyhow, we need to win the remaining matches against Egland and South Africa to have a chance to qualify. We have been searching for a house to buy in Marathahalli, Brookefield and Whitefield areas.  We have finally liked one place and are thinking about booking this ...

I think there have been quite a few posts written on it but I seriously feel strongly about a need to drive some sense into the drivers.  Some things I would like to tell the drivers here: Making a right turn does not mean you come into the right lane (blocking oncoming traffic) to make a turn When it says "No Free Left turn", it precisely means that.  When the light is red, you CANNOT make a left turn.  Please do not expect the guy in front of you to move if the light is red no matter how much you honk. When there is a traffic jam, no amount of honking will get you out of it Please be considerate to pedestrians and don't stop you car 1 feet from the pedestrians feet, as if you are the king of the road If you pass a car/truck/bus etc on the left, once in a while please expect to get hit as well Just because the lane for oncoming traffic is empty does not mean you start driving in that lane When making a right turn at light, there is only lane to turn right. ...

It has been blustry and damp since last night.  While coming back from work, we had rain all the way home on Airport Road.  At night, winds started howling and I love the sound of winds blowing through the small crevices in the closed windows.  The wind was and is cold even this morning.  My son finally ordered me to put some socks on for him, something he has not worn in close to 6 months. My son had his second day in nursery at Vibgyor School in Marathahalli yesterday.  The school decided to split kids in his playschool class between 7 sections of nursery.  So, now all the friends of my son are split up.  He hated his 1st day of school.  However, for the second day, a friend of his from our apartment complex got admitted into his section.  I thought that would make a difference!  No way!!  Both were crying incessantly.  It was like triveni sangam of Ganga-Jamuna-Saraswati in full flow from the eyes of the two.  Luckily, an old teacher of DS saw him crying and took him to the class.  ...

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This is an old post that I had written on blogspot about 4 years back when I was in the US.  It is still applicable and I still feel the same way. ********************* I have been meaning to write on this topic for a while. Ever since I arrived to USA for my undergraduate studies, I have heard arguments between Indians born in the US about what is bad about India and Indians living in India who find bad things, or things they can laugh about and point to say that people are the same everywhere. Having been in the US and India almost an equal amount, my thinking is a bit different on this. I am more indian as far as thinking is concerned i.e. more social, less win at all costs etc. type of thinking. So, my thinking follows the perspective of those Indians living in India. My brother(s) waste no time in telling me how this or that is not right in the USA. Admittedly, that is true. You can always find things that are not good in the US. However, one thing we Indians should keep in mind i...

This is a review about the restaurant called Zaica on Brookefield Road which goes towards EPIP.  This is a place which is right above the Nilgiris grocery store. The restaurant ambience is good.  You are greeted warmly by a lady upon your arrival.  The seating space is good and the place is clean.  When it is hot outside, please do not sit near the glass window.  For some reason, the circulation of A/C is horrible there. I have only gone there only for lunch so, we had buffet.  The buffet is quite simple and doesn't contain too many items.  They have couple of soups (veg and non-veg), 2 starters (each for veg and no-veg), some raita/salad. The starters are generally ok.  Their sweet corn soup was quite good (different soup everyday) and this is from a perdson who does not like corn at all. For lunch, they had different varieties of paneer tikka (awadhi, achari, white etc) each occasion I went there plus another appetizer.  They have generally 2 entrees.  I have been there a few tim...

I am not a politician or even a writer. However, I am concerned with what I am seeing in India. There are couple of aspects that really worry me about the country. One is when politicians try to brand themselves as secular/non-communal and others who subscribe to another ideological theory. I have seen the Congress party claim that BJP is communal. Why? Because it has affiliations with RSS, who in turn has affiliations with VHP? However, if you look at the dictionary, ‘communalism’ is defined as follows: Main Entry: com•mu•nal•ism Pronunciation: -n&l-"i-z&m Function: noun 1 : social organization on a communal basis 2 : loyalty to a sociopolitical grouping based on religious or ethnic affiliation - com•mu•nal•ist /-n&l-ist/ noun or adjective If you read the above dictionary meaning of communalism carefully, then Congress itself is guilty of being communal, as they so frequently like to label their opposition. Congress has been in power for greater part since India's...

Next few days I will publish my old posts from blogspot, where I used to maintain the blog in 2006.  Here is one of them.  This is close to my heart and I feel this still applies in 2009 and going forward. *********************************************************************************** Power of Nature It has been seen recently that nature's fury has been striking at various places. Places like Gujarat (earthquake and recent floods), Mumbai (37 inches of rain in a day), Orissa (floods), Tsunami (South Asia), Famine (parts of Africa), floods in Czech republic, heat waves in various parts of the world and now the hurricane and destruction of New Orleans, Biloxi and parts of alabama in the USA. I am not a scientist by any means and don't wish to get into a scientific debate on what is causing this. However, one simple thing I learned long back is that when you hurt or mess with nature, it will strike back with all its fury and wrought destruction, no matter how powerful you th...