637 : When do you tell your boss – Stanley Bing from Fortune

I like Stanley Bing, and I like the way he decimates everyday corporate reality….a la Dilbert. Here in this article, he covers my favorite anguish – the boss’ desire “to be on top of things”. Read on to have a laugh and a fart :-)

(You can catch it at http://stanleybing.blogs.fortune.cnn.com/2009/06/16/when-do-you-tell-your-boss/ I have reproduced it here for easier reading)

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There have been several kerfluffles around my office recently, all revolving around the same issue: What do you tell your boss and when? This would seem to be a simple question, but it’s not. First, it depends on the boss. Some guys (and in that category I, as always, include women guys) want to know nothing until it rears up and bites them in the butt, and then you should have told them. Others want to know what color tie or scarf you’re planning to wear next Thursday. And the target moves. On Monday, Chet may want to know everything. On Tuesday, you can’t rouse him from his slumber.

So what’s a poor employee to do? Take this quiz and see how sensitive you are. How you score may determine whether or not you have a future.

1. You have a big party coming up and you’re trying to decide what canapes to serve. Do you tell the boss?

a. No, that’s ridiculous.

b. Of course! She likes to know every little detail!

c. Not really, except I make sure to have those little empanadas she likes so much.

2. You’re going on vacation next month. Do you tell the boss?

a. No. My life is my own!

b. Of course. He likes to know every detail.

c. I’m going to check the dates to make sure it coincides with his vacation as much as possible, but in the end I’m going to do what I have to do, making sure that he and his assistant know what my plans are.

3. You’re going to have a meeting with a bunch of people about something that may or may not happen sometime in the future. Do you tell the boss?

a. No! I’ll tell him about it when he needs to know.

b. Of course. I don’t floss without telling him everything.

c. Yeah, I’ll shoot him an e-mail, just an FYI. Some people are attending who may mention it to him and then he’ll feel like he’s out of the loop. He hates that.

4. Your division is about to make a big deal with another company. It’s going to be announced next Tuesday. Do you tell the boss?

a. I’ll tell her Tuesday morning. You know, give her a “heads-up.”

b. I’ll tell her about the whole thing right now, before we even talk to Law and Public Relations. She’s going to want to go over this thing from top to bottom!

c. I’ll get all the moving pieces started, and then dial her in, probably on Friday. That will give her the weekend to go over the paper and think about what we might have missed.

5. You’re getting a divorce. Your life is a shambles. Do you tell the boss?

a. Definitely! He’ll feel really sorry for me!

b. I’ll mope around until he asks me what’s wrong. Then I’ll tell him everything. For a LONG time.

c. I’ll mention it. Since it’s not about him, he’ll have limited interest in it, but he ought to know in case I flake out a little bit in the coming months.

SCORING: Score yourself 1 point for every a. answer, which is a low score because you’re a really stinky communicator and a bad employee. Score yourself 2 points for every b. answer, because while you’re a suckup, you’re erring on the right side by reaching out and trying to make your boss aware of things. You’re likely to be a pretty big pain in the a**, though. Keep that in mind. Score yourself 3 points for every c. answer, because you’re clearly trying to address the issue with subtlety and modulation. You may not get it right every time, but you’re trying to play it a situation at a time and neither tell too much or too little. So good for you.

As always, the higher you score, the higher your score. Give yourself a point for trying. Trying counts.

636 : Eyes

Yesterday, I strayed into those eyes. They looked calm, content and reassured. And yet, there was a sense of becoming, a pregnant precursor, a forebode in them.

As if you were staring at life and death at the same time….and that my friend, can be the closest I have gotten to epiphany.

635 : Knower of tongues – Mirza Ghalib

If there is a knower of tongues, fetch him:
There is a stranger in the city,
And he has many things to say.

(Mirza Ghalib, translated by SR Faruqi, from the first page of “The enchantress of Florence” By Salman Rushdie)

634 : Music 51 : Dhan Te Nan (From Kaminey)

Should go straight up there with the top songs for 2009. If I were to rate for this year, I would put

1. Arziyan (From Delhi 6)
2. Masakalli (From Delhi 6)
3. Dhan Te Nan (From Kaminey)

Of course bubbling under, is Pehli Baar Mohabbat (from Kaminey again!!). This year has been a drought. Hardly any good songs coming our way.

Dhan Te Nan is outstanding gushes of vocals from Sukhwinder and Vishal Dadlani. Lyrics are cool (Gulzar) and music is riffy and rocky (Vishal Bharadwaj)

I have added my own translations where I think it would matter.

[Aaja aaja dil nichode, raat ki matki tode,
Koi goodluck nikaale, aaj gullak to phode] -2 times

(Come on, lets squeeze the (items in the) heart,
                     Lets break the vase of the night,
Remove the good luck (out) of the (broken) part,
                    Today, lets break the piggy bank (right!!)

[Hai till till taala mera teli ka tel,
Hai kaudi kaudi paisa paisa paise ka khel]- 2 times

(My bottle is made of several drops of oil,
This game of money is made of coins and coins of toil)

Chal chal sadko pe hogi dhan tan,
[Dhan te nan, te ne ne na…. ]– 3 times

Aaja aaja dil nichode, raat ki matki tode,
Koi goodluck nikaale, aaj gullak to phode…
Aaaja aaja….

Heyyy…aaja aaja…

Aaja ki oneway hai yeh zindagi ki gali,
Ek hi chance hai,
Aage hawa hi hawa hai agar saans hai to,
Yeh romance hai.

(One way street – that is this life,
                           This is the only chance (we) have,
Future looks windy, if the breath is rife….
                            Then this is a romantic wave….

Heyyy…
Aaja ki oneway hai yeh zindagi ki gali,
Ek hi chance hai,
Aage hawa hi hawa hai agar saans hai to,
Yeh romance hai.

Yahi kehte hai yahi sunte hai,
Jo bhi jaata hai jaata hai,
Wo phir se aata nahi.

(This is what we have said and heard,
One who goes never comes back again…)

Aaj ya kal nichode, saath ki matki tode,
Koi goodluck nikale, aaj gullak to phode.
Hai till till taala mera teli ka tel,
Hai kaudi kaudi paisa paisa paise ka khel
Chal chal sadko pe hogi dhan tan,
[Dhan te nan, te ne ne na…. ]– 3 times

[Koi chaal aisi chalo yaar ab ki samandar bhi pull pe chale,
Fir tu chale uss pe, ya main chalu shehar ho apne pairon tale]- 2 times

(Walk the walk in such a way that even the ocean clings to the bridge,
Then, whether you and me walk on it, (dont matter), we are the (still) the rulers of the ground beneath our feet!!)

Kahin khabrein hai, kahin khabrein hai,
Jo bhi soye hai khabron mein unko jagaana nahi.
(There is news here and there,
Lets wake those who are still sleeping (inspite of being part of the news))

Hooo aaja aaja dil nichode, raat ki matki tode,
Koi goodluck nikaale, aaj gullak to phode…
Aaja..aaja…

[Hai till till taala mera teli ka tel,
Hai kaudi kaudi paisa paisa paise ka khel] -2 times

Chal chal sadko pe hogi dhan tan,
[Dhan te nan, te ne ne na….] – 3 times

633 : The confused Buddha

My name means “Buddha of Infinite Light”. Well, thats where the similarities end :-)

I want to practise non-violence, but my life often makes it difficult for me to do it. I tried giving up egg, honey, leather and have returned to all of it.

Yesterday, I had a piece of chicken. What was going on within me? Confusion and a sense of spatial divorce (whoa!! figure that out!!)

I had got Pest Control done at my home a day before, must have killed around 800 bugs at least. I paid for it, initiated it knowing fully well that I will murder lives….

Would Buddha have signed up for this…never!!

This goes to one of the Zen Stories. A disciple asks his master, “ I am having to kill chicken to feed myself, but I would rather not kill the mother hen, who has potential to bless more lives…I would rather kill the baby chicks.”

The master pauses and thinks, if you do have to kill for meat, then kill an elephant. With one life you can feed a village.

632 : Avoid the Yellow Fever (Review - The Yellow Chilli @ Powai Hiranandani)

Sri – Smi, Vivek, Vinod and Pratibha (and 3 motley kids) had all congregated at the “new do” (we are family men, so “do” never refers to a speak-easy) @ Powai……the esoteric (name only !!) “The Yellow Chilli”.

10 Reasons why you MUST visit “The Yellow Chilli” @ Powai

1. You like standard dishes served to you with exotic names, but with little else.
2. You like to order starters which never reach your table (We ordered starters, waited for 45 minutes, before we realised the order had mistakenly been not punched in…how convenient. And oh by the way, if you ask the host, “whats for starters”, he says, “we have aperitif”…ah!! minnows like me need to learn some french)
3. You like Margarita’s served to you warm and fuzzy…a la red wine @ 18 degrees or so.
4. You like Indian breads (rotis, naans, kulchas) served cold and rubbery.
5. Your little toddler hurts yourself, she pukes, the tiny one cries, but no help is forthcoming. (You are born alone, you die alone…so might as well, handle yourself @ “The Yellow Chilli”)
6. Managers in ties keep floating around only to collect cash and checks. (Cash is king, service is incidental).
7. You like going to restaurants where the your host cannot describe the dish, cannot pronounce it, and worse still has no clue that minor customization is the first cornerstone of a good desi restaurant (try asking a dish to be slightly more spicy.)
8. You walk into an empty restaurant (at 7pm), but they ask you to wait outside for 10 minutes, because they are “ preparing the table”.
9. Mint @ the end of the meal, will be delivered to your table, only if you ask for it. (Ah, the joys of eating Chicken Tikka and stinking there after).
10. You write a big “zero” in the “tip column”, and a big rant in the feedback form, and the manager reads it, smiles, says “thank you” and walks away. Buddy….take my advice, conversation (sometimes) helps.

Meal for two will cost 800, and it will be a watershed moment in your gastronomic history. This is your chance, go write the pages of  your memory….before this place closes down.

This is one heck of a memorable meal. I hope I live to tell this to my grand-children of its notoriety :-)

631 : Rains @ Hiranandani Powai on 4th July

Shot from a high rise….

 

Someone told me long ago theres a calm before the storm,
I know; its been comin for some time.
When its over, so they say, itll rain a sunny day,
I know; shinin down like water.

I want to know, have you ever seen the rain?
I want to know, have you ever seen the rain
Comin down on a sunny day?

Yesterday, and days before, sun is cold and rain is hard,
I know; been that way for all my time.
til forever, on it goes through the circle, fast and slow,
I know; it cant stop, I wonder.
Yeah!

(Have you ever seen the Rain, by Creedence Clearwater Revival. My personal favorite though is a version of the same song played-live by REM+Dire Straits)

630 : First Rains @ Hiranandani Powai, shot on 26th June 09

Oh, where have you been, my blue-eyed son?
And where have you been my darling young one?"

"I've stumbled on the side of twelve misty mountains
I've walked and I've crawled on six crooked highways
I've stepped in the middle of seven sad forests
I've been out in front of a dozen dead oceans"

"I've been ten thousand miles in the mouth of a graveyard
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard
It's a hard rain a-gonna fall"

"Oh, what did you see, my blue eyed son?
And what did you see, my darling young one?"

"I saw a newborn baby with wild wolves all around it
I saw a highway of diamonds with nobody on it
I saw a black branch with blood that kept drippin'
I saw a room full of men with their hammers a-bleedin'"

"I saw a white ladder all covered with water
I saw ten thousand talkers whose tongues were all broken
I saw guns and sharp swords in the hands of young children
And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard
It's a hard rain a-gonna fall"

"And what did you hear, my blue-eyed son?
And what did you hear, my darling young one?"

"I heard the sound of a thunder, it roared out a warnin'
I heard the roar of a wave that could drown the whole world
I heard one hundred drummers whose hands were a-blazin'
I heard ten thousand whisperin' and nobody listenin'"
"I heard one person starve, I heard many people laughin'
Heard the song of a poet who died in the gutter
I heard the sound of a clown who cried in the alley

And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall"

"Oh, what did you meet my blue-eyed son?
And who did you meet, my darling young one?"

"I met a young child beside a dead pony
I met a white man who walked a black dog
I met a young woman whose body was burning
I met a young girl, she gave me a rainbow"
"I met one man who was wounded in love
I met another man who was wounded in hatred

And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall"

"And what'll you do now, my blue-eyed son?
And what'll you do now, my darling young one?"

"I'm a-goin' back out 'fore the rain starts a-fallin'
I'll walk to the deepths of the deepest dark forest
Where the people are many and their hands are all empty
Where the pellets of poison are flooding their waters"
"Where the home in the valley meets the damp dirty prison
And the executioner's face is always well hidden
Where hunger is ugly, where the souls are forgotten
Where black is the color, where none is the number"
"And I'll tell it and think it and speak it and breathe it
And reflect from the mountain so all souls can see it
And I'll stand on the ocean until I start sinkin'
But I'll know my song well before I start singin'

And it's a hard, it's a hard, it's a hard, and it's a hard
It's a hard rain's a-gonna fall"

(A Hard Rain’s gonna fall – Boy Dylan, remains one of my all time fav. songs – read the lyrics carefully, better poetry is hard to come by)

629 : I am incorrigible

Still tracking markets. Still expect them to fall by 30% at least. Why? Well, in the first place, there was no reason for them to rise.

I am 100% cash at this point.

(Hic!! Hic!!) every time I have said something like this, the markets have gone and done the exact opposite of what I expected them to.

You bull out there, I am your best friend :-)

628 : The river which cracked

Ever tried throwing a pebble into a river,
It cracks, there are ripples on the edge of its sliver,

Seconds pass, the deviant wave is gone,
The river is still again, pregnant….waiting for another dawn

627 : Canon SX1IS + EX 270 (Camera at Hong Kong)

On 17th of this month, I bought the Canon SX1IS and the EX 270 canon Flashlight.

I paid about the same price I would pay @ US. I bought the camera from Fortress on Henessey Street and the Flashlight from Hing Lee Camera @ Central.

Both places bargaining worked. I would highly recommend both these camera Shops to visitors in Hong Kong.

626 : Confessions of a re-reader : Verlyn Klinkenbor (from NYtimes)

I re-read books all the time and could not agree with Verlyn more.

The link is at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/30/opinion/30sat4.html?_r=1 have copied the article below for easier reading.

 

Some Thoughts on the Pleasures of Being a Re-Reader

• By VERLYN KLINKENBORG

Published: May 29, 2009

I’ve always admired my friends who are wide readers. A few even pride themselves on never reading a book a second time. I’ve been a wide reader at times. When I was much younger, I spent nearly a year in the old Reading Room of the British Museum, discovering in the book I was currently reading the title of the next I would read.

But at heart, I’m a re-reader. The point of reading outward, widely, has always been to find the books I want to re-read and then to re-read them. In part, that’s an admission of defeat, an acknowledgement that no matter how long and how widely I read, I will only ever make my way through a tiny portion of the world’s literature. (The British Museum was a great place to learn that lesson.) And in part, it’s a concession to the limits of my memory. I forget a lot, which makes the pleasure of re-reading all the greater.

The love of repetition seems to be ingrained in children. And it is certainly ingrained in the way children learn to read — witness the joyous and maddening love of hearing that same bedtime book read aloud all over again, word for word, inflection for inflection. Childhood is an oasis of repetitive acts, so much so that there is something shocking about the first time a young reader reads a book only once and moves on to the next. There’s a hunger in that act but also a kind of forsaking, a glimpse of adulthood to come.

The work I chose in adulthood — to study literature — required the childish pleasure of re-reading. When I was in graduate school, once through Pope’s “Dunciad” or Berryman’s “The Dream Songs” was not going to cut it. A grasp of the poem was presumed to lie on the far side of many re-readings, none of which were really repetitions. The same is true of being a writer, which requires obsessive re-reading. But the real re-reading I mean is the savory re-reading, the books I have to be careful not to re-read too often so I can read them again with pleasure.

It’s a miscellaneous library, always shifting. It has included a book of the north woods: John J. Rowlands’s “Cache Lake Country,” which I have re-read annually for many years. It may still include Raymond Chandler, though I won’t know for sure till the next time I re-read him. It includes Michael Herr’s “Dispatches” and lots of A.J. Liebling and a surprising amount of George Eliot. It once included nearly all of Dickens, but that has been boiled down to “The Pickwick Papers” and “Great Expectations.” There are many more titles, of course. This is not a canon. This is a refuge.

Part of the fun of re-reading is that you are no longer bothered by the business of finding out what happens. Re-reading “Middlemarch,” for instance, or even “The Great Gatsby,” I’m able to pay attention to what’s really happening in the language itself — a pleasure surely as great as discovering who marries whom, and who dies and who does not.

The real secret of re-reading is simply this: It is impossible. The characters remain the same, and the words never change, but the reader always does. Pip is always there to be revisited, but you, the reader, are a little like the convict who surprises him in the graveyard — always a stranger.

I look at the books on my library shelves. They certainly seem dormant. But what if the characters are quietly rearranging themselves? What if Emma Woodhouse doesn’t learn from her mistakes? What if Tom Jones descends into a sodden life of poaching and outlawry? What if Eve resists Satan, remembering God’s injunction and Adam’s loving advice? I imagine all the characters bustling to get back into their places as they feel me taking the book down from the shelf. “Hurry,” they say, “he’ll expect to find us exactly where he left us, never mind how much his life has changed in the meantime.”

625 : Music 50 : Yeh Na thi Hamari Kismet ( Mirza Ghalib – Chitra Singh)

5 hours ago Ek Fankaar http://ekfankaar.wordpress.com/2009/06/22/ye-na-thi-hamaari-qismat/ updated this on his site.

This is a song, I grew up listening to. I love Chitra Singh in this song. I will never get over this song. 

And the meaning explained by our friend is brilliant, to say the least.

Thank you stranger, you made my day.

624 : Movie 25 : Last King of Scotland

One of the most intense movies I have seen in recent times.

It is superb is the depiction of the fact that a man in power is a man lying to himself constantly. It repeatedly demonstrates how Amin lives in a make believe world and rationalises his own actions in the guise of a greater cause.

Did I like it? I loved it.

Forest Whitekar as Amin, and James McAvoy as Dr. Carrigan, both are immensely brilliant in their roles.

The movie also seeks to touch the fickle nature of power and its associated need based friendships.

More of the
Movie at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Last_King_of_Scotland_(film)#cite_note-3

 
James McAvoy at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/James_McAvoy

 

Forest Whitaker at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forest_Whitaker

 

Go watch it, 9 out of 10 for a great effort. It makes you wince, it makes you enter the live of Amin, and that as per me is the ultimate compliment for the director.

623 : Movie 24 : Jai Veeru

 

]

Jai Veeru (Kunal Khemu, Fardeen, Anjana Sukhani, Dia Mirza) has to the crappiest movie I have seen in recent times. Even Jimmy (parts of which I had the pleasure of watching) and Drona rank above this one.

God knows that the editor was cutting sniping, the director must be a cannibis bhakth, and the music, the dialogues, lesser said the better.

Having cribbed so much, I must admit its a good movie to watch with a huge gang. You can laugh your way through this torture.

I would give this 0 out of 10. 

Post 622 : Insight 8 : The Joy of Less – Pico Iyer

Another brilliant one from NYTimes….

Article at http://happydays.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/07/the-joy-of-less/ reproduced here for easier reading.

June 7, 2009, 10:35 pm

The Joy of Less

By Pico Iyer

“The beat of my heart has grown deeper, more active, and yet more peaceful, and it is as if I were all the time storing up inner riches…My [life] is one long sequence of inner miracles.” The young Dutchwoman Etty Hillesum wrote that in a Nazi transit camp in 1943, on her way to her death at Auschwitz two months later. Towards the end of his life, Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “All I have seen teaches me to trust the creator for all I have not seen,” though by then he had already lost his father when he was 7, his first wife when she was 20 and his first son, aged 5. In Japan, the late 18th-century poet Issa is celebrated for his delighted, almost child-like celebrations of the natural world. Issa saw four children die in infancy, his wife die in childbirth, and his own body partially paralyzed.

In the corporate world, I always knew there was some higher position I could attain, which meant that, like Zeno’s arrow, I was guaranteed never to arrive and always to remain dissatisfied.

I’m not sure I knew the details of all these lives when I was 29, but I did begin to guess that happiness lies less in our circumstances than in what we make of them, in every sense. “There is nothing either good or bad,” I had heard in high school, from Hamlet, “but thinking makes it so.” I had been lucky enough at that point to stumble into the life I might have dreamed of as a boy: a great job writing on world affairs for Time magazine, an apartment (officially at least) on Park Avenue, enough time and money to take vacations in Burma, Morocco, El Salvador. But every time I went to one of those places, I noticed that the people I met there, mired in difficulty and often warfare, seemed to have more energy and even optimism than the friends I’d grown up with in privileged, peaceful Santa Barbara, Calif., many of whom were on their fourth marriages and seeing a therapist every day. Though I knew that poverty certainly didn’t buy happiness, I wasn’t convinced that money did either.

So — as post-1960s cliché decreed — I left my comfortable job and life to live for a year in a temple on the backstreets of Kyoto. My high-minded year lasted all of a week, by which time I’d noticed that the depthless contemplation of the moon and composition of haiku I’d imagined from afar was really more a matter of cleaning, sweeping and then cleaning some more. But today, more than 21 years later, I still live in the vicinity of Kyoto, in a two-room apartment that makes my old monastic cell look almost luxurious by comparison. I have no bicycle, no car, no television I can understand, no media — and the days seem to stretch into eternities, and I can’t think of a single thing I lack.

I’m no Buddhist monk, and I can’t say I’m in love with renunciation in itself, or traveling an hour or more to print out an article I’ve written, or missing out on the N.B.A. Finals. But at some point, I decided that, for me at least, happiness arose out of all I didn’t want or need, not all I did. And it seemed quite useful to take a clear, hard look at what really led to peace of mind or absorption (the closest I’ve come to understanding happiness). Not having a car gives me volumes not to think or worry about, and makes walks around the neighborhood a daily adventure. Lacking a cell phone and high-speed Internet, I have time to play ping-pong every evening, to write long letters to old friends and to go shopping for my sweetheart (or to track down old baubles for two kids who are now out in the world).

When the phone does ring — once a week — I’m thrilled, as I never was when the phone rang in my overcrowded office in Rockefeller Center. And when I return to the United States every three months or so and pick up a newspaper, I find I haven’t missed much at all. While I’ve been rereading P.G. Wodehouse, or “Walden,” the crazily accelerating roller-coaster of the 24/7 news cycle has propelled people up and down and down and up and then left them pretty much where they started. “I call that man rich,” Henry James’s Ralph Touchett observes in “Portrait of a Lady,” “who can satisfy the requirements of his imagination.” Living in the future tense never did that for me.

Perhaps happiness, like peace or passion, comes most when it isn’t pursued.

I certainly wouldn’t recommend my life to most people — and my heart goes out to those who have recently been condemned to a simplicity they never needed or wanted. But I’m not sure how much outward details or accomplishments ever really make us happy deep down. The millionaires I know seem desperate to become multimillionaires, and spend more time with their lawyers and their bankers than with their friends (whose motivations they are no longer sure of). And I remember how, in the corporate world, I always knew there was some higher position I could attain, which meant that, like Zeno’s arrow, I was guaranteed never to arrive and always to remain dissatisfied.

Being self-employed will always make for a precarious life; these days, it is more uncertain than ever, especially since my tools of choice, written words, are coming to seem like accessories to images. Like almost everyone I know, I’ve lost much of my savings in the past few months. I even went through a dress-rehearsal for our enforced austerity when my family home in Santa Barbara burned to the ground some years ago, leaving me with nothing but the toothbrush I bought from an all-night supermarket that night. And yet my two-room apartment in nowhere Japan seems more abundant than the big house that burned down. I have time to read the new John le Carre, while nibbling at sweet tangerines in the sun. When a Sigur Ros album comes out, it fills my days and nights, resplendent. And then it seems that happiness, like peace or passion, comes most freely when it isn’t pursued.

If you’re the kind of person who prefers freedom to security, who feels more comfortable in a small room than a large one and who finds that happiness comes from matching your wants to your needs, then running to stand still isn’t where your joy lies. In New York, a part of me was always somewhere else, thinking of what a simple life in Japan might be like. Now I’m there, I find that I almost never think of Rockefeller Center or Park Avenue at all.

---

Pico Iyer’s most recent book, “The Open Road: The Global Journey of the Fourteenth Dalai Lama,” is just out in paperback.

Post 621 : Insight 7 – The Limits of Control by Lenonard Miodinow from NYTimes

 

Great insight read. Tells you how once you have lost it all, and adjusted to it, its difficult to be “innocent” again…or at least thats how I interpreted it.

Article at http://happydays.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/06/15/the-limits-of-control/?scp=2&sq=limits%20of%20control&st=cse

Reproduced below for easier reading

June 15, 2009, 9:36 pm

The Limits of Control

By Leonard Mlodinow

My mother had always feared domestic animals, but now as a plump neighborhood cat ran up our driveway, she gazed at the feline, and revealed that 70 years ago she had had a pet cat. Her 87-year-old eyes teared up. Her cat was white, she said, and so thin you could see its ribs. Still, she loved to cuddle it. It wasn’t a house cat – it couldn’t have been, because she was imprisoned at the time, in a forced-labor camp the Nazis set up in Poland, the country where my mother was born and raised. Back then she was as emaciated as the cat, but still she shared her food with it. It gave her comfort she said, and it was a way of fighting back, to help this animal that, like her, the Germans planned to let die.

The need for control can inspire great achievements, such as dams, medicines and chocolate soufflés, but it can also lead to sub-optimal behavior

The psychologist Bruno Bettelheim concluded that survival in Nazi concentration camps depended on “one’s ability to arrange to preserve some areas of independent action, to keep control of some important aspects of one’s life despite an environment that seemed overwhelming.” Studies suggest that, even in normal conditions, to be happy, humans must feel in control. We are currently confronting economic hardship that, though a far cry from the horrors of World War II, has eroded the feeling of self-determination for many of us.

Eliminate control, and people experience depression, stress and the onset of disease. In a study of elderly nursing home patients[1] , one group was told they could decide how their room would be arranged, and could choose a plant to care for. Another group had their rooms set up for them and a plant chosen and tended to for them. Eighteen months later 15 percent of the patients in the group given control had died, compared with 30 percent in the passive group.

 

The need for control can inspire great achievements, such as dams that prevent flooding, medicines to ease our lives, and perfectly confected chocolate soufflés. But it can also lead to sub-optimal behavior. Though people generally view “control freaks” in a negative light, that need makes us all vulnerable to making bad decisions – especially when it comes to money. Studies show that people feel more confident they’ll win at dice if they toss the dice themselves than if others toss them [2], and that they are likely to bet more money if they make their wager before the dice are tossed than afterward (where the outcome has been concealed)[3]. They’ll value a lottery ticket more if they can choose it than if it is given to them at random[4]. And in a well-known 1975 study in which Yale University students were asked to predict the results of coin tosses, a significant number of presumably intelligent Yalies believed their performance could improve through practice, and would have been hampered if they’d been distracted.[5] In each of these situations, the subjects knew that the enterprises in which they were engaged were unpredictable and beyond their control. When questioned, for example, none of the lottery players said they believed that being allowed to choose their card influenced their probability of winning. Yet on a deep, subconscious level they must have felt it did, because they behaved as if it did.

That people are prone toward feeling in control even when they are not probably endowed our species with an advantage at some point in our evolution. Even today, a false sense of control can be beneficial in promoting a sense of well-being, or allowing us to maintain hope that a bad situation can improved.

My mother’s illusion came to an end when, one day, her labor camp cat stopped coming. She never learned exactly what happened to it. Unfortunately, that became a template for nameless outcomes by which her sister, her father, and most of her friends disappeared. Of her many illusions of youth that the Nazis snuffed out, the feeling that she could control her destiny was one of the most difficult to accept. But for my mother, and for all those who lived through similar experiences, surviving meant not only possessing a special toughness of body, but also of mind. She found a way to face the world without the illusion of control, of dealing with life as it comes, day to day, without expectation.

On a far different scale, we face losses today. To economists our plight is a “severe downturn,” but to me it feels like a roller coaster ride in which I discover, first, that I have no seat belt, and then, that the concession operator is Norman Bates. Given my jitters, it is a comfort to know that my mother survived a far worse experience and yet maintained the capacity to be happy when, for instance, her grandchildren hug her, or she discovers a tasty new sugar-free dessert. But more important is what I’ve learned from the fact that the current events don’t seem to bother her.

It’s not that my mother hasn’t lost money, or that she doesn’t need it. She isn’t bothered because her early experiences of utter powerlessness taught her to give herself up to what she calls fate. Understanding my own need for control – and exactly why I cannot have it – I now take comfort in letting go of the illusion, and accepting that despite all my efforts and planning some aspects of my future are beyond my sphere of influence. That realization has given me permission not to kick myself for the losses I have incurred. That can be a liberating thought in trying times like these, or any times at all.

---

Leonard Mlodinow teaches randomness to future experimenters at Caltech. His books include “The Drunkard’s Walk: How Randomness Rules Our Lives” and “Euclid’s Window: The Story of Geometry from Parallel Lines to Hyperspace.” More of his writing and information about his work can be found at his Web site.

Post 620 : Departure by Kumiko Makihara from IHT

The actual article at http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/20/opinion/20iht-edmikihara.html?_r=1&scp=1&sq=departure&st=cse

Republished below for easier reading.

By KUMIKO MAKIHARA

Published: June 19, 2009

TOKYO — My brother peered into the coffin lined with dry ice and tugged at the sheet of gauze that had frozen onto my grandmother’s cheek. “Let me do it,” I said, pulling the cloth away with the sound of tearing Velcro.

“You’re a lot less squeamish than I am,” he marveled.

Those are the only words of approval I recall from members of my family at the time of my grandmother’s death, even though I felt I had held down the fort while they were away.

I was reminded of that intense time many years ago as I watched this year’s Oscar-winning Japanese film “Departures,” about an undertaker and the dramas that play out around the deceased.

I was in my late 20s, a journalist basking in selfish freedom. One night after dancing at a reggae club, I came home to a message from the retirement home where my grandmother lived. She had suffered a heart attack.

When I arrived at the hospital, my grandmother was struggling to speak. “Eighty-eight!” she blurted out; perhaps a reflexive answer to all those dementia tests that had asked how old she was. She turned to the woman we had hired as her caretaker and said, “I caused you a lot of trouble.” She asked after my mother several times. I like to believe she wanted to apologize to her daughter-in-law for the years of belittlement.

Throughout the night and the following day, the caretaker, my great aunt and I kept vigil, rubbing my grandmother’s feet, holding her hand and sometimes laying our heads on her body to catnap.

A young German man I’d met a few days before in Seoul while covering the Olympics showed up, having followed me to Tokyo. I was touched that he had navigated the train system to the suburban hospital, hours away from the city center. But the whole time we sat in the café, I worried that my grandmother would die, and I would not be there.

“We could do surgery,” the doctor told me, to keep the heart alive until my parents and brother arrived from the U.S. I declined, unable to justify any more torment to her body. My grandmother died just before midnight.

Life gone from the room, nurses wiped the body clean and laid it on the bed in a purple cotton kimono, hands clasped together on the chest. A breeze blew in from a window, sending the curtains billowing. I thought I saw my grandmother raise her arms just as she had done the day before. I scanned the room for otherworldly signs.

At home, a relative had already turned the pictures around to face the wall to banish any festive signs, the first of many rituals. We lay my grandmother on a futon in her bedroom, head north like the position of Buddha at his death.

I rose at dawn, put on a black dress and saw the German guy off at the airport terminal. We joked that my grandmother really must not have wanted us to get together. And we never did.

When I returned, the house was stirring. My great aunt and her daughters were making rice balls and stewing vegetables for the anticipated visitors. My parents and brother arrived from New York.

My brother removed his shoes at the entryway and turned them around so he could slip back into them easily, a practical and polite gesture. “How thoughtful he is,” my mother observed, in habitual praise of the favored son. I lashed back, listing in a high-pitched voice all the family duties I had fulfilled over the last few days. My mother wondered aloud what was wrong with me.

The funeral director droned on about how the deceased must be well prepared to make her treacherous journey over to the afterlife as we tearfully placed straw sandals by her feet and banged nails into the coffin with a small stone.

At the crematorium, the staff propped my grandmother’s photo onto a large easel, and we placed our palms together and stared into the coffin for the last time, wanting to hold on to her body as the casket was eased into the furnace.

An hour later, my family surrounded a table of charred remains. Starting with the bones of the feet and moving up the body, according to tradition, we worked in pairs to pick up the gray and white remnants and transfer them to the urn. My brother and I carefully balanced a piece between us, delicately holding it together with chopsticks and, at least for that moment, standing on equal footing.

kumiko makihara is a writer and translator based in Tokyo

Post 619 : Times of India vs. IHT

5 days @ HK and I was reading “International Herald Tribune”, the International edition of NY Times, and I must say, it was so more pleasant to read on the content, on the mind and in a real sense it left me more “enriched”, and then I came back to rape obsessed “TOI”, the contrast could not have been more stark.

The NY Times is outstanding in terms of editorials and content. Times of India…well, lets say, I am sure I am going to un-subscribe.

Post 618 : We love rape

I am getting tired of my morning newspaper…quite frankly…I really am….BCCL (the promoters of Times Of India) seem obsessed with “Rape”.

The Sunday Times on 21st June 2009, had almost 14 different items on Rape. Guys, this is my weekend, I want to know the next book to read, the next movie to watch, not really who raped whom.

At this point, I almost feel raped by Times Of India. At the rate they are going, they will soon need have “Rape” as a page heading in addition to “Metro”, “Nation”, “International”, “Business” and “Sports”

Come 1st of July, I intend to stop newspapers, if my spousey signs up for the idea.

Post 617 : What moves us and why?

What attracts us to a diving deep into a photo, a painting, a piece of music, a book – do you ever wonder, just I like “everyday” what makes us relate to an image clicked by Ansel Adams in 1970. Why do some paintings have such profound effect on us, that they continue to provide us a glimpse of their beauty, everytime we stare at it.

I can’t help but marvel at the masochism of the wirings within our brain.

At this point, the answer is printed in our DNA, in the search of our own little truth, we try and dive into anything mysterious, anything that is un-explained but yet “real”, a bit like the wind or the air…or even the “you” and “me”.

Post 616 : Duality encountered

Floating on the battleground,
                Both the adversary and the ally,
Compete with me range-bound,
                No time to count the toll or the tally

Tomorrow is another day,
              So says the mother whale 
The sun kills the silhouette with the ray,
               Question - who will win, and who will fail?

Post 615 : Poetic Justice

The seer was born deaf and dumb. Heightened by the inability to cross the aural boundary,  even as a kid he chose to communicate in verses. As he grew into a seer, he continued to sparkle with couplets.
Years have passed, he is no more, all we are left are his poetic words on paper.

And…we continue to make no headway with the secrets contained within them. The meaning in the words seemed to be locked with a secret un-breakable code.

Post 614 : Racial Slur

I am surprised at the outrage against the Aussie “racial” behaviour with respect to Indian students.

Its not as if racism is an alien concept to us? We deal with it daily.

Would you eat at a local “Rambharose Hindu Hotel”? Will you be ok if your daughter marries across community (green vs. orange)? Don't you suck up to white skin all the time?  Will you share your cafeteria table with your janitor? Why would you greet a mere acquaintance with a broad “good morning” but completely ignore your apartment’s watchman (security guard)? I come from the IT industry. Why do we all push all our antennas up, when we are hiring “gultis”?

Get the drift? Discrimination based on sex, race, creed is fundamental in our DNA. We are living in a glass house, and what is the age old advice about “throwing stones”.

Meanwhile, we will hope Dhoni and his team take revenge on the Aussies in the ICC T20.

Post 613 : We are all just one step away from happiness, all homes are short of just one more room…

Have been through an upheaval in the past 2 months. Whats this “upheaval” been about? Put it simply, I am 33.

And?

“And”, nothing really, its just that 33 gone and my life looks like a mid-summer’s dream – its neither here nor there. Is this what they call a mid-life crisis? Am I bored of my life, either personal or professional?

Facts first
1. I am one among the lucky few, who truly enjoys my job. I like it, and would be incomplete without it. Could I something else? Of course yes, but that does not take away the fact that I have fun during my work day.
2. Somewhere along growing up, I acquired this “truth” – that a life that does not touch the zenith, is not a “life” at all. If you are not a Picasso, or a Beethoven, or a Warren Buffet, or a Buddha – you have not even scraped the sublime mystery of your cells. To live is to elevate – to fly – to go beyond everyday – to connect with the “larger unsaid” which we commonly call as “beauty/art/craft”. In my head meandering along has absolutely no merit, if you walking or running to a destination – well, thats another matter.
3. I am not a “normal” guy. I am (very slightly) disadvantaged in terms of health, slightly advantaged in terms of upbringing (too much freedom – was allowed to float around), and veer towards the weird – A book of poetry, a brilliant rendition of Raag Marwa, a sublime photo of the ripples in water, all of these give me more joy than “normal” things. Am I old-worldly –maybe yes, at least I sound like one.

So where is this conversation headed?

I am 33, and nowhere close to the zenith. It does not appear that my current path is leading me anywhere in that direction. And that, my friends is the root of the beast. I dread to be dying anytime soon…..

(- Title from a couplet by Javed Akthar)

Post 612 : Summertime Rocks by Dhruv, Ashu, Kailash from album Smoke

My third and (hopefully) final post on the same song. Very few songs give you pure undiluted hope. This song invariably makes me want to smile.
(Another song in this category  is “Aa rahan hoon mein by Bombay Vikings”….Its a song full of promise for the future).
Go reach out for both, they are possibly songs full of genius quotient.

Post 611 : Japanese Names…

Have been dealing with a lot of Japanese recently. Must admit, they are an intriguing set of people (romanticised by the likes of “The Last Samurai”).

When you deal with them, you are supposed to address them by their last names e.g. Shimura San equivalent to Iyerji, sharma ji. Most surnames end with vowels, and invariably with an “a” sound. Spousie and I were thinking of Indian surnames which sound Japanese, came up with none….except imaginary ones like

Phataka San (kya phataka hain!!)
Tamata San
Batata San

:-)))

Post 610 : Summertime Rocks (Dhruv, Ashu, Kailash Kher – Smoke) - Lyrics

(Excuse my transcription errors, had to hear this for over 20 mins before I could come up with this version).

(Kailash in hindi, Dhruv in English)

Har pal jaate hai zindagi se, 
kyun naa jee lein khushi se , oh o oh!!

Rishta hai mera bandagi se,
kehta huun har kisi se, toh sunoh

Its summertime and rocks
Its summetime and rolls

Kisne hai jaana kal kya hoga zindagi mein
Kya kya judega pal jo beeta is kahani mein

Dil ki sunta hoon, khush rahta hoon
Man hi man yeh kehta hoon, Toh sunoh

Its summertime and rocks
Its summertime and rolls

A morning dance, because it is the summertime
I’ll take my chance, because the world is all mine
I need romance, on the sunny strokes

Its summertime and rocks
Its summetime and rolls

(Lovely music interlude)

We got a good thing going just take it from me,
Lets stretch this moment to infinity
Without any  grand plans, without any goals….

Because,
Its summertime and rocks
Its summetime and rolls

Kisko bataoon mere dil mein kya kya hota hain,
Mein jhoomo gaawoon gham se tho mera samjautha hain

Because,
Its summertime and rocks
Its summertime and rolls

A morning dance, because it is the summertime
I’ll take my chance, because the world is all mine
I need romance, on the sunny stroke

Because,
Its summertime and rocks
Its summertime and rolls

Will you take a little trip through peasely pots and traffic lights that glow
An oriental wonderland with sand instead of snow
This little playground is a doctor for my soul

Because,
Its summertime and rocks
Its summertime and rolls

A morning dance, because it is the summertime
I’ll take my chance, because the world is all mine
I need romance, on the sunny stroke

(note the guitar riffs)

A morning dance, because it is the summertime
I’ll take my chance, because the world is all mine
I need romance, on the sunny stroke

Yeh joh lamhe pyar ke hain,
yehi zindagi hamari
Isme joh pyar miley bas (followed by incomprehensible line….)

Yeh joh lamhe pyar ke hain,
yehi zindagi hamari
Isme joh pyar miley bas (followed by incomprehensible line….)

Yeh joh lamhe pyar ke hain,
yehi zindagi hamari
Isme joh pyar miley bas (followed by incomprehensible line….)

Post 609 : Life is a lesson, you’ve learnt (it) when you are dead…

My strategy of going onto cash murdered me. My erstwhile portfolio has surged another 50% from the point I exited, pre-election.

Its a whipsaw, you lose most of the times and win when it least matters :-)

I hope to make it all back. I am down, but not out!!

(Feel like a complete jackass!!)

Post 608 : You know you have strayed too far when….

Not been posting regularly due to some legacy health issues and an idiotic work schedule….hope to be back at my sporadic posting spree in the next few days.

Post 607 : Cash is king (and possibly dumb!!)

Four days ago, moved out of the markets and into cash. Its rare, if never that I hold cash in my hand. I believe markets fall-rise-oscillate-gyrate, stay invested…that is the smartest way to be.

I am now 90% cash, 10% stock. Why this “proselytion” to a newer faith? In my 15 years of being invested, never even in post dotcom bust(y) days have I ever held cash over the market.

Devina Mehra puts in in this interview, we are all ignoring the elephant in the room, assuming it will go away – I think I could not sum up my own apprehension better.

Elections are not just an elephant, it represents a herd on a rampage. How long before they make their presence felt in the room.

My reading 3rd front might be a good possibility (dont look at me like that, I did not vote, and I am not responsible for it!!). If that assumption is correct, a 40% shave off the market does not seem too far-fetched. Mr. Karat’s gang is capable of all this and more.

Like any other bet, this bet of mine can go all horribly wrong. How horrible, with the sensex at 15PE, and gloomy shadows for the next 3 qtrs, is your guess vs. mine…..

Post 606 : Beauty Contest with a difference

RIYADH, Saudi Arabia (May 6) - Sukaina al-Zayer is an unlikely beauty queen hopeful. She covers her face and body in black robes and an Islamic veil, so no one can tell what she looks like. She also admits she's a little on the plump side.

But at Saudi Arabia's only beauty pageant, the judges don't care about a perfect figure or face. What they're looking for in the quest for "Miss Beautiful Morals" is the contestant who shows the most devotion and respect for her parents.

More here

I am wondering, will it be judgmental on my part, if I mention that I found this “amusing”?

Post 605 : Silence by Sirpi Balasubramaniam

Wide world am I
Said the lamp

Beautiful am I
Said the wick

Pulsating life am I
Said the flame

The oil
Born of toil
Filling the lamp
With sweat and blood
Uttered no word.

(From Pg 54, Tamil new poetry, translated by Dr. KS Subramanian)

Post 604 : Writer’s block

A poem, a haiku or a collection
                 A few words in my head are taking shape,
Search the mirror, nothing but my own reflection
               Maybe…. just another bootleg collage  that wants to escape.

Post 603 : Lost cause…these times will never return

One sentence of Gulzar's which still evokes the poet in me is……
“Mein Kya Batau, Ke behta darya (tha), jab (mein) aa raha tha, tho( mein) jaa rahan tha…..”

translated would be…
What do I describe (about myself),
(I was) the gushing river,
(While you fancied that I was) streaming in,
(I was actually) on the course out…..

Post 602 : EVM’s off network hence hack proof

This is from TOI, link here. “Unlike in the US, the EVM used here is a standalone machine that cannot be connected to any network, making it impossible to hack in.”

Guys, I suggest we move our PCs off the internet (that could be part of Mulayam’s or Advani’s agenda) – that we can claim “India does not have (software) virus attacks. we are always off the network.”

I can see the future, and its asinine.

PS

I dont think the IISC professors have heard of flashing the memory/EVM machine. Look a simple Lamington road electronic store can hardware mod an iphone or WII, do we think the EVM is more sopho than that.

post 601 : Redux (I surrender my right to vote)

Refer to http://spinningawheel.blogspot.com/2009/04/post-598-i-surrender-my-right-to-vote.html

Quite a few zealots are writing into me – panning me for my post.

A few observations :

1. With the 10-20 odd conversations I have had with people on this topic, I am not surprised almost all the counterparties invariably said “We must vote”. It is fashionable & politically correct to say that. (Its very akin to having a debate on honesty vs. fibbing, invariably all will say “honesty” is the way to go….who wants to sound ethically bankrupt).

2. Taking point 1 ahead, its important to distinguish between what is politically correct and what is pragmatic. We all bribe pandus (at least I always do) – in my 16 years of driving, I have been caught 8 times (5 on the bike, 3 on the car) and have always paid 50-100 rupees and escaped the red tape. Do I think it is “correct”, of course not, will I still practice it, “of course yes”. Why? because I am more worried about the 1 day of productivity I will lose at office. Yes, I will have to spend 1 day at the RTO. Had it been a 15 minute process and having 5-6 service points across the city, I would always prefer to take the “correct” route. Anyone who has been to the RTO office will tell you, that without “grease” its difficult to even reach the right counter.

3. Its fashionable for zealots to say “You are part of the problem, do your bit”, and then another zealot added “you think 33% taxes are enough to exempt you from your duties””. Look buddies, I don’t/can’t scream histrionics like you do, but hear me patiently, if you will. I believe in capitalism, in the innate virtue of selfishness, and the necessity of each cog to function properly.
I work in the software industry, do I continue to tolerate an inefficient coder in my team beyond a point, no I don’t. Do I take shit from my manager long enough, no I don’t. In both the cases, I dont step into their shoes, I either move on, or I replace.
Just because my house-cleaner does not clean my house well, do I start cleaning up, without rejecting her completely.Of course not, I give her/him sufficient warnings and then the boot.

4. Last zealot argument, “vote for the lesser evil”, yeah right, “and bees and birds deliver babies!!”.
Come on, buddies, what is to choose between a Jaya Prada and Azam Azmi, or between a Sadhu Yadav and Mukthar Ahmed, or between Manmohan and Advani. Will any of them work for me, will my voice (anti-reservation) be heard at all, will my life be any more secure, will POK issues be resolved, will Kasab be hanged…..

You folks are deluding yourself. Its time we accept things we can fight, and things we cannot. Just as, we cannot change our heights, or our parents – we cannot change the environment. I repeat my favourite question, look around you on the floor “How many people do you think have the same issues as you?”. If the answer is “many”, you are lucky, you are part of the lumpen, then you must vote. Me….an earthbound misfit, I.

Post 600 : Drive to a village and back….(Mumbai – Chiplun – Goa – Mumbai drive)

Prologue : Wifey and me decided it would be good to drive around. We almost zoomed in on Hotel Hillock, Mount Abu or Orange County, Coorg as the places to be driving to….but then for some reason both fizzled out. We were supposed to drive out on Friday (24th April), but right until 22rd night, it was almost a “no”.
On 23rd, on a whim, we decided to drive down to good old Goa. It did help that close friends and colleagues were moving base there as well (for vacation, I mean).
Our first long trip on the Honda City, now 5 months old.

Travelogue : 25th April 2009 (Saturday 8am) to 29th April 2009 Wednesday (11pm)
Cast : Sri, Smi, Kavin aka Suresh and Kavya

Odometer for the trip : 1194 kms door to door, costing exactly 70 litres of petrol. An average of around 17kmpl, not as good as the Santro’s 20 on long drives, but thats the price you pay for comfort.

Route :
25th - Day 1 –> Panvel Chiplun (250 through NH17 – 4 hours 30 mins including breaks)
26th - Day2 –> Chiplun Panaji Candolim (330 through NH17 7 hours including breaks)
29th – Day 5 –>Candolim Panaji Chiplun Panvel Mumbai (590 via NH17 13 hours including breaks)

Stays:
25th  - Day 1 – @ QualityInn Riverview Chiplun – 4.7k for the night including meals. What I like about this place (second time I am living here) “outstanding food” probably the best food @ a restaurant attached to a hotel. Rating 5 on a 5. Meets all my expectations from a good hotel.
26,27,28,29 (morning) – 3 nights 4 days @ Taj Holiday Village – 24k including all meals. I was slightly disappointed by the place. Breath-taking rooms and “below average” everything else. On a rating of 5, I would rate this as 3. Very so-so place. Not Taj like at all.

Life in a village:

Day 1
- Left early (by our standards) at 8am
- Halted at Kamat’s Panvel for breakfast (once you enter NH17 20kms into it)
- Straight drive from there (930) to Chiplun at 1pm
- Chiplun @ 255kms
- Bought Rajapuri Mangoes at Roha
- Stay @ QualityInn Riverview Chiplun
- Lunch consisted of arahar kokum dal, Lal Mat chi subji (red spinach), bhakar vadi chaat (bhakar vadis spiced up with onions, chillies and masala), masala bhath, poha papad, sol kadi and fresh lime soda
- In the evening we had a walk on that property – it has orange shrubs(really tiny ripe oranges), water apples, pine apples and a garden which has a great overlook into the Vaishista river (The last image is a tiny snail)

- Dinner was Alu Paratha, Ajwain Paratha with rice and raita

Day 2
- Breakfast was eggs for me and thali pith and medhu wada for wifey
- Left hotel at 830am, except for a rest break – drove straight until Sawantwadi – where we ate at Kamat’s (another favorite of ours) – batata wada with awesome sweet raita and mirchi dipped in sugar-garlic water, misal pav
- Bought wooden toys from a store we like on the Sawantwadi circle. This is a shop we visit everytime we pass through the place.
- 4.30pm we reached Taj Holiday Village having driven 335 kms. This is on Candolim beach – very shady approach roads and absolutely no signage from Taj along the way to help you. (Sadly, this place was not recognized by Vinod’s garmin, which we had borrowed for the trip, whereas it recognizes QualityInn perfectly as a destination).
- Rooms at Taj Holiday Village are way above usual. It is the attention to detail that is completely missing from this experience.
- Food at Holiday Village was way below Taj quality and I wont waste too many words on it – my keyword “avoid”. (I love Taj Land’s end at Mumbai, Taj Banjara @ Hyd, Taj Calicut….so believe me I am not biased at all).

Day 3, Day 4
- Great supermarket called Newton near Candolim, 3kms before you hit Taj Village and 4 from Fort Aguada. Its probably at par with a place in Mumbai.
- Visit to Fort Aguada, a sad slur on what is supposed to be a heritage monument (with a Sintex Water Tank)
- Our room had a garden which had a mango tree – brought about 4 mangoes down using a iron rod.

Day 5
- Drive out from Goa at 9am, headed to Chiplun.
- Reach Chiplun @ 4pm, decide to drive straight through instead of a halting at Chiplun.
- Halt at Sawantwadi (70 from Goa), Raigad (400 from goa), Panvel (500 from goa) – all at Kamat’s. We also halted at Madhuban at Ratnagiri and Abhiruchi @ Chiplun.
- Reached home at 11pm.
- Mangoes @ Ratnagiri – we bought 4 dozen at 600

Highlights of the trip
- Beboo and his cutesy life, Nona and her race against food :-)
- Quality time with dear friends (not to mention a bumbling “sister” and her avenging son…)
- Wifey and me bonding big time during driving (imagine sitting in 5 sq ft with a person for 14 hrs straight)
- Good food at Chiplun
- Beboo’s final day revenge on me (because I had passed a slur on his mom :-) (also maybe I had re-christened him to “Suresh”)

Lows of the trip
- Without cribbing much, Taj Holiday Village is a sad excuse for a Taj. Go to Club Mahindra or Mariott at Goa.
- Fort Aguada – what a sad historical monument
- Heat @ Goa
- (Not really a low but worth a mention….) a big marine liner dotting the Taj Village shore (photo below). Supposedly abandoned by Salgaonkar’s for years. I wonder (if that is true) how come there is no move to clean it up…..My point is such a large thing cannot be an orphan. There must be quite a few licenses, ownership details available….but then, this is the magic of a land called India.

 

Post 599 : He looked at the balls…and then he smiled!!

Picture this : I am in the men’s room, here enters this Surd (Sardar) who is getting into the act of peeing. Within a few seconds (as he gets into the act), he starts singing in a loud (really loud) voice (I think it was the Gazab song from Bips-Neil Mukesh starrer “Aa Dekhen Zara”…not sure, “think”….).

So far the scene is startling enough. I don’t comprehend this (situation) well(enough), “How do you pee and sing at the same time”, that too with a club song, which, though you are (just) mumbling aloud, (but) in your mind it is playing in 24 track with the thumping bass, making your whole body (and the pee trajectory) sway.

I am telling myself. “Ha! That’s an unusual…thats kinky.”

By now, I am curious enough to turn to (try and) look at “the face”, to figure out the source of my mirth, at the same time being careful enough not to trespass on his modesty. What I see next completely (searching for an adjective…after a lot of thought….)  befuddles me.

The guy is smiling, (yes, I mean a broad grinned smile), and he is looking down on the “little one”…How weird is that….whoever smiles while peeing.

To clarify (for non-males), male-peeing requires focus, attention and a complete body posture stability. It requires you to set your mind on the act, get it done, take a sigh of relief, zip up, detox your hand and quickly get back to life.

Where is this post going? I don’t know. Just that singing and smiling while peeing is a very alien concept to me.

Post 598 : I surrender my right to vote….

The more I think, the more I am convinced that this drummed up hype of “Jaagofying and voting” is clearly a case of “brainless brawn”.

I realize that I might be appearing un-patriotic, and irresponsible, but then “appearances be damned”, I guess I have the right to an opinion. (Guys keep the hate mail coming…I am sure “The Art Of Jingo” is an important aspect of your everyday valour….)

Voting almost seems to be a “for a choice” between the devil and the sea (I excluded “deep blue”, I would like to work for them one day…:-))

Some of my meditations on this topic are as follows (in no particular order):

1. I look at a Varun Gandhi and wonder, does he represent me? On the other side of the fence, does his cousin represent me.
2. Does Narenda Modi and his shining Gujrat entice me to move to Gujarat?
3. Do Mayawati, Laloo, the Thackeray’s ever feature in any movie save my nightmare?
4. My mom votes every year – she does not vote for an agenda or a candidate, she votes for a party. Even if Kasab stood on the BJP ticket, she would vote for him. Same with my dad. Do I have any such strong affiliations?
5. When I look at the people around me, my colleagues at office, neighbours at home, immediate and far flung family – I struggle to see how they can elect anyone “sensible” (which should be read as someone I relate to). Note, my colleagues, neighbours and family represent the intelligentsia educated fraternity of this country.

What do I expect, do I expect utopia? Here are some of “the simple life things” in a very random order

1. Clean and drivable roads.
2. A playground where my kids can play.
3. A sense of culture and belonging (which I sorely miss….I feel for more Pandit Bhimsen Joshi than I feel for India….is it really “my country”, whereas Panditji is “mine”, he is a part of me, though he is far away in Pune, a complete stranger to me….point is, I don’t get a feeling of belonging in India). On the topic of culture, is breaking mosques my culture? Is beating north Indians my culture? Is bribe-eating pandus (cops) my culture? Are insatiable politicos my culture? Is the current bollywood representative of me? Is the current music (Abhijeet Sawant and the ilk) my culture? Get the drift….what happened to street plays, what happened to classical music, what happened to kutcheris, what happened to Taraporewala Aquarium, what happened to Haji Ali?
4. Healthcare – a simple stroke victim recently ran up a bill of 8L in our family. I am not sure how many people can afford that? Does that mean we let the others die.
5. Accountability – My boss screws my happiness, every time I make a small mistake. He judges me by (mutually agreed) targets he sets for me. Can we see some semblance of goal-report card model in polity.
6. Transparency – Every year 100 million fucking bunnies like me pay 31% tax and 2.2 % cess on top of it. The 2.2% cess is for education. Pray, what and who are we educating. The Muncipal school opposite the L&T office at Powai is ghost town with crumbling walls. 20L and it can be made into a nice spanking school…..Is my 2.2% not enough?
7. Merit. An actor who is also a gun totting terrorist can stand in elections, anyone heard of “social contribution?” A SC student can get into AIIMS with 60% marks, whereas general category cannot get in with even 97% (for God’s sake, you jackasses we are talking future doctors here), a girl can get into IIM far easily as compared to a guy (+ve gender bias)…..

Each of these examples are fairly easy to implement/correct if we have will (both political and collective). The point is we have neither political will nor collective will.

As I said before, there is corruption, root level decay in something as simple as my apartment society office (I live at Raheja in Powai). Large scale misadministration is apparent to even a non-involved person like me. another example from my housing complex – every maid who has to work in the Raheja Vihar complex has to pay the Security guard Rs.200 a month as “maintenance charges”.

If the decay is so fundamental, and so ingrained in our DNA, what is the point we are making. Where is the choice, how is A going to be better than B or C or Z or Abu Salem?

Okay, some smart jackass said vote for Meera Sanyal (“she represents the educated YOU”….you kidding, in my eyes, she’s an uglier looking Aishwarya Rai, a dumb blonde to the core…her plugs on TV are hilarious…she has no context of her own bank’s problems…lets completely skip the nation bit).

Others say why not vote for Capt. Gopinath (the ex-Pilot ran a populist private airline company…yes, you heard right, like Ratan Tata, capt runs companies which do “charity”… how can we believe he will ever stop farmer subsidies and national rip off).

Is it all gloomy and doomsday? Not really, I think if each of us worked hard for our sense of completion – a la Ayn Rand, we could bring this nation a better report card…..but that preachy theory is for another day.

Voting Card:
I pay 33% of my hard earned wealth as taxes. The cash hungry politics want my vote(or do they?) and yet they cannot get a simple voting card right. I have voting registration from two different constituencies, both with incorrect/incomplete information, inspite of me having filled it correct 4 times recently at multiple places on each of the forms.

 

Voting machine:

I wonder how much effort does it take to tamper a BHEL voting machine. Various ways in which you can do it:

1. Switch the DRAM in which the votes are stored.
2. The names on the voting panel are written on paper, like a phone fast dial….switch the paper names before voting, and then reverse it before sending it for counting.
3. Don’t booth capture the booth, but capture the machine in transit and replace it. “BHEL EVMs – by the elected MPs, for the elected MPs, of the elected MPs”

I can provide another 50 ways of doing it. Its all there easy to find on google.

I am not only the tiny 1% of India which is educated, but even within that 1% I am off the standard deviation curve, which means I am totally not representative of the nation.

My alienation/estrangement is complete, not just with the polity, but with the world as a whole. Why right do I even have to choose a representative? Hence, I voluntarily give up :-) (The modern pink slip….companies force you to resign rather than chuck you out, “its better for YOUR career.”)

28^th April is a day to relax, a holiday for me. While India does Jaagore.com, I will do extended dream catching.

Post 597 : Human Willpower. How Amazing. Petronas

Sri and Smitha (Srikanth Ramasubramanian & Smitha Shetty), Vivek (Menon), wifey and I were having this heated debate on whether “Lance Armstrong training a week after a 5inch metal was inserted into his shoulder” is plain mad or is this what is called “willpower”.

I argued ferociously that willpower is all that we live by….and anything but victory or completion, is equivalent to “death” – I am sure Lance thinks like that. His battle against cancer, his heroics in Tour de France are not just legion, but are superhuman. I have said this before and I say it again, between a million dollars in the bank and successfully (and comfortably) running the 42k marathon, give me the later any day. I want to run 42k before I die. (Will I? Well, thats another digression!!…I also want to climb to the top of Everest…my wife says “yah! yah! and you are build of Krypton Mortar!!”)

Sri’s point (and fairly logical one at that) was, when you train 7 days post a shoulder bone breakage, you need be classified as “obsessively mad” – a journey (that according to Sri) goes to no end. “Its just as meaningless/crazy to an outsider as it meaningful to Lance” .

I posed this to myself:
1. I am practing for the Tour De France.
2. I break my knee bone.
3. Will I stop and give up training this year, and hence ensure that I can compete for the next few years? Or will I, endure all, go give it a shot, risk permanent injury and never again drive in Tour De France

Honest answer:
1. I will just all out this year. For me winning this year is more important than winning in the next 5. They will take care of themselves, if I am alive. I sincerely believe, life is too fragile and on-the-edge to plan for the next 5 years.
2. Thats how I am, rolling, living on the edge and believing that “the end” is never more than a probability event away from you.

Is this obsession? No? Is this approach crazy? If you define “crazy” as anything outside standard deviation, then it bloody hell is.

Lastly, two quick ad-lines:

1. Adidas screaming “Impossible is Nothing”…and hell, I really believe that. Everything is possible for a cost. Question is, can you afford it?
2. In the recent Sepang Grand Prix, saw the Petronas TV ad – it shows 2 pugilists (boxers) in a the death of a match. They are both battered, bleeding with swollen eyes. One of the boxers hammers the other on the cheek – a fatal right…..the other one collapses onto the floor of the ring. The refree starts counting. The camera pans on the face of the fallen boxer and shows the “counting fingers” from his blurred vision. He can hardly see. “Imagine being subjected to 5-g G forces”.
Cut to a next scence where fireman are fighting raging fire. The copy says “ Imagine being inside a pressure cooker at 50 degrees”.
Cut lastly to a chopter rescue mission on the high seas, where a person jumps into the deep sea. Copy says “ Imagine your heart rate beating at 210 bpm”

Then it pans out to a Williams car running on the Forumala1 Track “That is what a Formula One Driver goes through”.

Final Copy "Human Willpower. How Amazing."

Gives me the goose pimples!!

The Petronas Ad at.....

http://www.youtube.com/v/7weqB5SA480&amp

Post 596 : A Mega Flop or a Nano Success

 

 

Since I have heard about the Nano (the Tata one, that is), I have never really liked the idea. It is flawed and for various reasons. Here are my few bits.

1. It seems a ridiculous to design a car around a price point. Can you imagine if we started doing that with software (“I will develop whatever I can in 1L, make it behave like what is supposed to be e.g. trading system, it wont be the best trading system, but I am sure it will work”). This hare brained theory assumes there is a price point for everything in the market. That is the most muddle headed assumption in my head….wait, a minute, I stand corrected….there is indeed a price point demand for every item in the market, whether YOU can sustain business at that price point is upto debate (actually its not a debate, the answer is YOU CANNOT).

2. Is Tata Motors connected to the “Sisters of Charity”', I mean is this a business or is this altruism?

3. I firmly disagree with the notion that such a ridiculous business plan can make money.

4. Lets move on to safety. How can the Nano frame be safer than a Mobike (Ratan Tata’s famed example, “I saw a family of 4 on a bike and wanted to give them safety”). This is nutty. You replace a 2 wheeled coffin with a 4 wheeled one.

5. Give me one Tata car which has been a commercial success AT THE RIGHT TIME. Lets rewind a bit. Indica was way ahead in 1999 when it came out with a SMALL BIG car concept. Its reliability and sturdiness was very suspect, right until XETA 2007. They have finally got it right with Quadrajet Vista? Will you buy an Indica Vista today? No way, A-Star, i10 are way ahead in that league.

 

Original Indica

  new Indica Vista
- Example 2 – Safari was a phenomenal aspiration of a  car (I always wanted one when I was growing up). Till 2004 it was un-reliable and expensive, and now that they have a Dicor 2.2 under 13L, will I buy it? Are you Nuts, give me a Scorpio on the lower and Montero 18L on the higher side.

- Example 3 – SUMO a good utility vehicle could have grabbed the Armada market. What did it do? Nothing “Kuch log sumo chalate hain” was their crappy ad. And now in 2008, they launch Sumo Grande for 7L. Give me a Scorpio.

Original Sumo

Sumo Grande

6. Mr. Ratan Tata, please fire your brand managers. WhoTF wants a Vista which is still called an Indica, whoTF wants a Grande still called a Sumo?

7. Tata Motors has “call center vehicles, LMV and taxis” in their DNA. Even a Indigo XL lost out in the brand war inspite of a decent platform and a good pricing.

 

 

So whats my point with all of this screaming?

1. Nano will sell – will be a hot seller in the first year (just like the Safari and Indica were in their initial years).

2. In about 12 months everyone will realise what a rip off this car. I am sure it will acquire the reputation of a “Coffin” car, a la Maruti Omni Van.

3. By then Renault will come in with a solid offering in that segment and so will others who will see big business in that area. (Heard Suzuki and Skoda are eyeing that segment).

4. Tata will take 7 years to mature Nan0 by when the market will be dead and long gone.

 

 

My prediction:

1. Nano is bound to fail (eventually).

2. Tata Motors today (4th April 2009) trades at an EV/EBITDA of 8.61. My bet is the whole market will be re-rated (MOVE significantly up) in 12 months from now, and YET, on 1st May 2009, Tata Motors will trade at an EV/EBITDA of less than 8.61

 

Conclusion:

Call me non-patriotic (yeah for some reason the “nano coffin” is equated with Indianness…holy crap), call me a cynic, call me a rude bunny, a crack jack fuckup….whatever suits….I think I have only 1 question to idiots who will spend 1.8L on a power steering AC Nano

Why will you not buy a 2005 Santro Xing XP, or a Spark DS with all the features and a million times more reliability than a Tata. (I speak from experience, I rode a Santro for almost 5 years, its reliability is legion)? You will get that car for 1.8L or much lesser ….

I rest my case.

Post 595 : Brilliant Airtel Ad (Dil Ki Baat Bata Kar Toh Dekho)

From http://www.rahmanism.com/2009/02/dil-ki-baat-airtel-tv-ad.html

Gives me goose pimples, every time I see the video. Its brilliant!!

Nigahein nigahoan se mila kar toh dekho.
Naye logon se rishta bana kar toh dekho.

Hasratein dil mein dabane se kya haasil hoga,
Apne hoanth hila kar toh dekho.

Khamoshi se kab hoti hai khwahishein poori,
Dil ki baat bata kar toh dekho.

Jo hai dil mein use kar do bayaan.
Khud ko ek baar jata kar toh dekho

Aasmaan simat jayega tumhare aaghosh mein,
Chahat ki bahein phaila kar toh dekho

Dil ki baat bata kar toh dekho

Picked Translation from http://rapidraja.blogspot.com/2009/02/airtel-tv-commercial-dil-ki-baat.html

(I actually think this is an amazing translation!! Really brilliant job)

Hold that gaze , Do linger a while
Make a new friend ,By sharing a smile
Ardent desires ,Struggling for voice
Unshackle your lips ,That the heart may rejoice

Give life and expression ,To the song in your soul
Let yearnings see light ,Don't fear losing control
The sky with its bounty ,The world with its charms
Is yours for the taking ,So spread wide your arms

Let your heartbeats play out ,Their tune without guile
And between two hearts ,You'll have traversed a mile

Post 594 : Zandu Balm Ad (from old days)

Zandu balm, zandu balm; peeda haari balm,
Sardi, sar dard, peeda ko pal mein door kare
Zandu balm.... (pause with music) zandu balm!!

Post 593 : Ghajini Theme song…

On a random note, most desi’s would remember Priya Tendulkar’s Rajani (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Priya_Tendulkar), and the thumpy theme song it had, which went, “Rajani Rajani Rajani….”

We should have used it for Ghajani what say?

(I think I am getting demented…)

Post 592 : Four Elements

Within your nature
Is every element,

So listen to
Some sage advice;

You are demon
And wild beast
And angel
And Human...

Whatever you cultivate
That you will be.

- Baba Afdal Kashani

(from Love's Alchemy by David Fideler, Sabrineh Fideler)

Post 591 : What is a recursive cloud….

I read the article below (Subverse) after I read Sridhar Mahadevan's "Deciphering the universe Video Game". I am sure we all have mediated on a similar thought like Sridhar (at least I have). Loop this thought, tie it into the first article, and what do you have?

You have characters in a game (us) trying to create machines (further games) which will further behave like us. Also parallely we are trying to create games which mimic our real life. (Read Second Life by LindenLabs).

Where does all this lead to?

A game created within a game created within a game....and this can go on. 'n' levels of recursion and mutiple levels of stack.

One last thought to ponder upon - what happens when a character in the 'nth' level of the game, raise a "who am I, what am I doing here?" type of question.

How ironic is that?

--------------------------------------------------------------

From TimesofIndia.com 2nd April Thu 2009

S U B V E R S E

Computers vs brains by Sandra Aamodt and Sam Wang

Inventor Ray Kurzweil, in his 2005 futurist manifesto, The Singularity Is Near, extrapolates current trends in computer technology to conclude that machines will be able to out-think people within a few decades. However, any comparison with computers misses a messy truth. Because the brain arose through natural selection, it contains layers of systems that arose for one function and then were adopted for another, even though they don’t work perfectly.

An engineer with time to get it right would have started over, but it’s easier for evolution to adapt an old system to a new purpose than to come up with an entirely new structure. As a result, brains differ from computers in many ways, from their highly efficient use of energy to their tremendous adaptability.

In the brain’s wiring, space is at a premium, and is more tightly packed than even the most condensed computer architecture. One cubic centimetre of human brain tissue, which would fill a thimble, contains 50 million neurons; several hundred miles of axons, the wires over which neurons send signals; and close to a trillion synapses, the connections between neurons. The memory capacity in this small volume is potentially immense. Although we’re forced to guess because the neural basis of memory isn’t understood at this level, let’s say that one movable synapse could store one byte (8 bits) of memory. That thimble would then contain 1,000 gigabytes (1 terabyte) of information. A thousand thimblefuls make up a whole brain, giving us a million gigabytes — a petabyte — of information. To put this in perspective, the entire archived contents of the internet fill just 3 petabytes.

To address this challenge, Kurzweil invokes Moore’s law, the principle that for the last four decades, engineers have managed to double the capacity of chips (and hard drives) every year or two. If we imagine that the trend will continue, it’s possible to guess when a single computer the size of a brain could contain a petabyte. That would be about 2025 to 2030.

This projection overlooks the dark, hot underbelly of Moore’s law: power consumption per chip, which has also exploded since 1985. By 2025, the memory of an artificial brain would use nearly a gigawatt of power, the amount currently consumed by all of Washington, DC. Compare this with your brain, which uses about 12 watts, an amount that supports not only memory but all your thought processes. This is less than the energy consumed by a typical refrigerator light. 

A brain’s success is not measured by its ability to process information in precisely repeatable ways. Instead, it has evolved to guide behaviours that allow us to survive and reproduce, which often requires fast responses to complex situations. As a result, we constantly make approximations and find “good-enough” solutions. This leads to mistakes and biases. 

Still, engineers could learn a thing or two from brain strategies. For example, even the most advanced computers have difficulty telling a dog from a cat, something that can be done at a glance by a toddler — or a cat. We use emotions,the brain’s steersman, to assign value to our experiences and to future possibilities, often allowing us to evaluate potential outcomes efficiently and rapidly when information is uncertain. 

If engineers can understand how to apply these shortcuts and tricks, computer performance could begin to emulate some of the more impressive feats of human brains. However, this route may lead to computers that share our imperfections. This may not be exactly what we want from robot overlords. 

This gets us to the deepest point: why bother building an artificial brain? As neuroscientists, we’re excited about the potential of using computational models to test our understanding of how the brain works. On the other hand, although it eventually may be possible to design sophisticated computing devices that imitate what we do, the capability to make such a device is already here. All you need is a fertile man and woman with the resources to nurture their child to adulthood. With luck, by 2030 you’ll have a full-grown, college educated, walking petabyte. A drawback is that it may be difficult to get this computing device to do what you ask. — NYTNS

Post 590 : Attachment

Whoever's chained to the world
Suffers more.

Whoever's free of attachment,
Like a dervish,
Suffers less.

A donkey with a louder bell
Always attracts a heavier load.

-Abu Said Abi lKhayr

(from Love's Alchemy by David Fideler, Sabrineh Fideler)

Post 589 : Movie 23 : Ghajini (How mindless can mindless be?)

This has to Aamir’s response to Drona (http://spinningawheel.blogspot.com/2008/11/post-449-movie-16-drona-or-what-good.html). Its the most inane, idiotic movie I have seen in the recent past.

Wait a minute….

Its not really like Drona. Drona at least tried to have a plot, and in that attempt provided some hilarious moments.

This one can take you towards slumber as easily as Calmpose.

Things I hated (not dis-liked…note the word is hated):
1. Asin is a complete washout. In my opinion she is neither gorgeous nor is she smart. I think she comes from the cow family (especially her expressions and asinine (or bovine) hamming).
2. Aamir Khan 6 pack is gruesome….it makes you want to eat Lays and Amul Shrikand….give me love handles any day over this grotesque physique.
3. If Asin is a cow, Zia Khan has to be from the dodo family. No expressions, no acting, no remote attempt at looking gorgeous. She zombies her way around even while hamming. (I think Mr. Murgadoss measures hamming as a competence during screen test…most of the screen cast here are toppers in the score…average 7+ out of 10)
4. The nameless (jackass) of a villian…who is neither scary, nor is funny, nor is iconic, nor is menacing….infact he is just a robot who utters some inane dialogues.
5. Rajni style fight scenes look good on the ‘King"’…leave the man his genre. We don’t like the sight of a man spinning 20 times in the air, getting the elevation of a missile and land 10 metres away. I think that only looks good in a Rajni movie….Not when a tiny Aamir knocks a punch with his left hand….
6. Aamir bhai…whats with the constipated face in the happier avtaar as well (in the film that is). …..is it piles or hammeroids or fissures or a plain case of botox!!
7. Absolute lack of a screen play, characterisation. I am sure Murgadoss, while smoking pot (on the pot),must have thought “who needs a script, screen play, characterisation when you have a dumb bimbo, a over-acting femme and a 8 pack ugly bald man!!….this will sell, this is what my audience wants, lets give it to them!!…fuck the rest of the movie-making process!!)

Things I liked:
1. Nothing…. read my lips….N O T H I N G…..not even the over-done AR Rahman music and under-sexed Gulzar lyrics.

Another wasted 3 hours of my precious life!! Rating 2 out of 10.

Post 588 : Weight Watcher 21 : Death (finally) caught up with me….

A personal loss in the family, and a chaffed leg…both were causes for me to take a 35 day break from exercising.

The thing with trying to be fit is, your mind almost always like to be a sloth. Give it a chance and it will slip into non-action.

The good part is, in April I have already finished 2 days of 3 where I have followed some sort of fitness regime.

In Feb it was 12 out of 28 and March was 3 out of 31, taking the total now to 784 days of which I have worked out on  369 (tracking since 5th Feb 2007).

Here’s hoping April is a much better month…..