intermittent chatter

My 13 year old nephew - Manan - has his birthday coming up soon. He is a topper in his school and has stood first in his class all throughout. As with all 13 year olds, he is very fond of emailing, computer games, etc. We were wondering what to gift him this year! He wanted Counter Strike. But we were not too keen on gifting a computer game. He will waste time one it. Additionally, we have already gifted him Need for Speed, Brian Lara Cricket and a USB Wheel on his previous birthdays.

One idea was a guitar. He has mentioned it many times over that he wants to start learning it in the coming summer vacation. He already plays keyboards, although he is still a newbie. But a guitar wasn’t sufficient! After all its a gift from so many of us! We needed to give him something more. Something that will excite him.

After much thinking, I came up with an different gift idea and all of us agreed it will excite him. The new gift is a website!! A blog!! I will soon register a domain for him and install Word Press for him. I am pretty sure he will enjoy blogging and the sheer idea of having his own website will make him proud. He will flaunt it in front of his friends and feel really good! He has won prizes for his writings earlier at inter-class and inter-school events so he should be a good blogger and a blog of an intelligent 13 year old will make for a good reading! I am now looking forward to it.

I have a habit of reading thru the user’s manual of all the stuff that I buy. So was the case with the Nokia N70. But I must say I was completely disappointed. The user’s manual sucks!! It looks like a very hurriedly written document with just the bare steps of operations in it.

For example, I couldn’t even find out the memory card that it supports. I find the bundled 64MB card insufficient. I want one with more capacity. Now which one should I take? I know it can take RS-DV-MMC. But can the phone work with 1GB or 512 MB cards? Will it become slow? Will it give errors? I don’t know because there’s no information on the subject in the user’s manual or on the Nokia’s site!

A manual is a document that gives complete information not just steps on writing SMS or making a call!! One can easily figure out such things on their own anyway! I can say that all that I have figured out so far has been because of my inquisitiveness with a little bit of help from the tutorials provided in the phone. The handset is great, but the user’s manual is below par!

Today morning, it was pretty cloudy and there were some non-seasonal showers!! That really got the temperature down a couple of degrees and the sweet smell of moist clay filled the environment. Showers are on even now when I am writing this.

My twin daughters, Mahi & Meha, saw the rains for the first time. Last year, they were not even a month old when monsoon started. No words can explain the amazing mixture of expressions on their innocent faces. The initial reaction was of a little fear, then surprise, amazement and finally joy. They got very excited when I streched their small hands out of the window and few drops fell on their little palms.

Read the rest of this entry »

Today, I have so much to do that 24 hours look insufficient!! I took a break and blogged!

I had a holiday on Saturday and Sunday. But wanted to come to office on both the days. But I couldn’t come because Mahi wasn’t well. She is very fond of me and doesn’t go to anyone else when I am around. The heavy doses of medicine made her cranky and so I had to stay at home to look after her.

Now there is so much work to do and there’s so little time!

BTW, India won even the last one-day cricket match against Pakistan but the Indian juniors lost the u-19 world cup final to Pakistani juniors because of a spineless performance.

VSNL/Tata Indicom is going to dumps day by day. Earlier (a few years back), their whole database of users was sold and marketing calls started coming in. How do I know it was sold? Because the marketing caller had some info about me which was submitted only to VSNL while I took my first dial-up account.

Now they have started mailing their customers with clandestine adverts.

I am not against advertising in their mails. Everyone tries to optimise their revenues. But they are trying to take people for a ride by covering it up as an informational mail. Here’s an example. This is the mail that I received yesterday. Read the rest of this entry »

Pepsi Cafe Chino - I liked the new ad! The Kick of Cola, the Kiss of Coffee! PepsiCo has launched a flavoured variant of their popular cola drink and relied on Prianka Chopra and Kareena Kapoor to take them through the summer season.

This ad remided me of Coca Cola Vanilla. Coke relied on the charishma of Vivek Oberoi and a stupid vackao packao ad to launch their new variant. No wonder Coke Vanilla was a flop product.

Due to a public holiday on 26th January, newspapers are not published :(. So there’s nothing to read in the morning. I miss my daily morning dose of news (Times Of India, Economic Times and Mumbai Mirror) Not reading newspapers makes me feel that the day has started on a wrong note. On top of it even Mid-Day didn’t come today

Additionally, the cable is also not working and therefore no news channels as well. I am completely starved of news! But net has come to me rescue to some extent

I yesterday read in the newspaper about two infant twin babies dying in Surat, Gujarat during the operation. Doctors tried to separate them. One of them had all limbs and the other had none! But they died during the operation. May they rest in peace.

The story made me recollect the early days of my wife’s pregnancy. When we came to know that she was carrying twins, the first thought that came to our minds was about the disaster called Siamese Twins! Life is so difficult for them and consequently for the rest of the family members. But doctor confirmed that they are in two separate sacks in the uterus and therefore can’t be Siamese. We had a big sigh of relief.

So far all the known operations to separate the Siamese Twins have failed. Hope they soon find out something for them so that they too can live a healthy and peaceful life.

BMC (BrihanMumbai Municipal Corporation) is out on a road widening spree. At many places, they are carrying out this exercise without any logic or application of mind. I see 1 instance right in front of my eyes.

There is a building called Dani Sadan on Walkeshwar road (road from Chowpatty to Teen Batti). I pass this road everyday from my home to office. Recently, they (mis)used their power and bulldozers on the walls of this building.

Just some distance away from Dani Sadan on one side (about 200-300 meteres) is a Jain Temple touching the road. The wall of the Jain Temple and Dani Sadan were in the same line. Will BMC dare to demolish an old religious structure?

On the other side of Dani Sadan, at about 150 meteres (or less) is the entrance to the road leading to the Governor’s bungalow. This wall is upto Teen Batti. Now the wall of this road is also in the same line as the demolished wall of Dani Sadan. Once again, will BMC dare to touch this one?

Neither of these buildings/walls are going to be demolished for widening the road. Then what purpose is served by demolishing the compound walls of Dani Sadan? The road is narrow, no doubt. But what purpose is served by widening it in small patches? If they can’t widen the whole road, why widen it at all? Why is BMC wasting public money and time on carrying out this useless exercise? I really fail to understand this and there is only one answer to this. BMC officials are incapable of thinking with any commone sense. More than roads their thinking purview needs to widened

Here’s something that I received in email and wanted to share with people. I know, it must have reached their mailboxes many times over, but still I liked it and so wanted to share. So here it is.

Jerry is the manager of a restaurant. He is always in a good mood.

When someone would ask him how he was doing, he would always reply, “If I were any better, I would be twins!”
Many of the waiters at his restaurant quit their jobs when he changed jobs, so they could follow him around from restaurant to restaurant. Why? Because Jerry was a natural motivator.

If an employee was having a bad day, Jerry was always there, telling him how to look on the positive side of the situation.
Seeing this style really made me curious, so one day I went up to Jerry and asked him, “I don’t get it! No one can be a positive person all of the time. How do you do it?”

Jerry replied, “Each morning I wake up and say to myself, I have two choices today. I can choose to be in a good mood or I can choose to be in a bad mood. I always choose to be in a good mood. Each time something bad happens, I can choose to be victim or I can choose to learn from it. I always choose to learn from it. Every time someone comes to me complaining, I can choose to accept their complaining or I can point out the positive side of life. I always choose the positive side of life.”

“But it’s not always that easy.” I protested.

“Yes it is,” Jerry said, “life is all about choices. When you cut away all the junk every situation is a choice. You choose how you react to situations. You choose how people will affect your mood. You choose to be in a good mood or bad mood. It’s your choice how you live your life.”

Several years later, I heard that Jerry accidentally did something you are never supposed to do in the restaurant business.
He left the back door of his restaurant open and then in the morning, he was robbed by three armed men. While Jerry trying to open the safe box, his hand, shaking from nervousness, slipped off the combination. The robbers panicked and shot him. Luckily, Jerry was found quickly and rushed to the hospital. After 18 hours of surgery and weeks of intensive care, Jerry was released from the hospital with fragments of the bullets still in his body.

I saw Jerry about six months after the accident.

When I asked him how he was, he replied, “If I were any better, I’d be twins. Want to see my scars?”

I declined to see his wounds, but did ask him what had gone through his mind as the robbery took place.

“The first thing that went through my mind was that I should have locked the back door,” Jerry replied, “Then, after they shot me, as I lay on the floor, I remembered that I had two choices: I could choose to live or could choose to die. I chose to live.”

“Weren’t you scared?” I asked.

Jerry continued, “The paramedics were great. They kept telling me I was going to be fine. But when they wheeled me into the Emergency Room and I saw the expression on the faces of the doctors and nurses, I got really scared. In their eyes, I read ‘He’s a dead man. I knew I needed to take action.”

“What did you do?” I asked.

“Well, there was a big nurse shouting questions at me,” said Jerry. “She asked if I was allergic to anything.”

“‘Yes, to bullets’” I replied, “Over their laughter, I told them that I am choosing to live. Please operate on me as if I am alive, not dead.”

Jerry lived thanks to the skill of his doctors, but also because of his amazing attitude. I learned from him that every day you have the choice to either enjoy your life or to hate it. The only thing that is truly yours - that no one can control or take from you is your attitude, so if you can take care of that, everything else in life becomes much easier.