How do I explain?

How do you explain 'What is a magnet' to a 3.5 yrs old kid?
I tried explaining. He asked me 'is adhesive gum & magnet are same?'.
I took him out to shopping for magnets to practically show & explain the magnet and the difference between a magnet & adhesive gum. Surprisingly I couldn't get a magnet in any shop. Looks like magnet can be used to detonate a bomb and there is a restriction in selling magnets in shops now-a-days. :(

Another question I couldn't explain was 'why there are no dinosaur in the zoo' (when he saw the statue of dinosaur outside the zoo). How do you explain 'extinct' to a kid? I just told him that becuase of the bad habits all the dinosaurs are dead and there are no dinosaurs anywhere.

For the love of experience....

Last weekend I was crossing a check post in Andhra - Karnataka border, entering into Andhra side in my car. Police man in the check post saw me from 50 feet away and waived his stick to stop me. I did not have the registration & insurance papers at my car. Though I could have ignored that police man & drove away, I decided to pull over and pulled over after driving 100 feet away, just for the heck of experience to learn 'what worst could happen'. He never bothered to check my papers. Just with his broken tamil+telugu accent he asked me to pay 'entry fee' (you know what I mean!) of Rs.50. Ada devuda...!!!

Pursuit of (drinking) a good wine

My upcoming post.... - meanwhile please read my other posts

Elixir of Life - Recipe
Elivs, Golf, Wine and Me

FARMViLLE

Seriously, FARMViLLE is cool. I am a newbie for Facebook and FARMViLLE. I was always an ORKUT person. Just got myself into FB & FV. Started liking FV a lot. If you are not on Facebook why don't your try that out?

(I may sound naive for people who are already in Facebook and FARMViLLE. Hey, who cares?)

Bad year

It has been a bad year for my blog. I have posted only 8 blogs all this year. An important observation that I made was when I was actively blogging I was constantly in touch with my friends. When I went passive my contacts with my friends also went down. Blog had been an excellent medium (for me) to stay connected with my friends. I thought just blogging was a stress buster but I think staying in touch with my friends (due to active bloggin) had always been an excellent stress buster.

By the way, I have been thinking lately about ways of stress busting. This blog is a result of that.

Stress vs Sleep & Hair

I am becoming so worse at managing my stress now a days (that doesn't mean that I was any better before). I have even started physical activities like going for a long walk just to manage my stress level. Though a good thing to do that's not helping me much. I think it is time I learnt yoga & meditation. Stress is impacting the number of hours of my sleep. Lesser I sleep in the night higher the stress level next day. More stress again induces more sleep deprivation. It's becoming a spiral effect. I am losing so much of hair lately. I must blame it on the greater stress level and lack of sleep.

How do you manage your stress?

Who is liable?

Need judicial opinion on a situation.

There was a theft incident in the house that I am residing. INR 2000 worth of iron cover for man hole was stolen by some low life creatures. Moral dilemma is who is liable to replace this?

Is it the owner because he did not see this as a risk and secure the iron cover properly?

or is it me because I am residing in the house and am responsible for all the items that were provided in the house when I rented?

Don't suggest to get that low life creature. You know I can't.

Four Years & One Funeral

How would you feel losing someone who you knew for about 4 years, who spoke with you & whom you spoke with many times throughout the day, who travelled with you almost everyday, who slept with you almost every night, who woke you up almost every morning, whom you played with for hours and who was like a bridge to all your friends & family members?

I felt helpless & miserable when I lost someone like this just before New Year. I felt so lonely; I felt like an isolated island; I did not even want to celebrate the New Year; I could not talk to my friends and I could not talk to my family members.

I never thought four years would make me so attached to my Nokia 6610. I felt I lost someone very close to me. When the battery burnt and when I couldn't replace it and when I realized that that's the end of my cell phone...I can't explain in words how miserable I felt. With my poor brain memory I always depended on my cell phone memory to register the phone numbers. I lost the contacts of all the people I have maintained in my cell phone.

I even spent such an amount with which I could have bought atleast two new cell phones to replace the battery. But all in vain. I had to bury him. Let his soul rest in peace among the other souls of e-wastes.

Amen!

The Nine Year Itch

It's been thirteen years since my first on-stage appearance. It was during the first year of my college. After that there was no stopping. Made on-stage appearances for either to act or to sing around half a century times (no exaggeration, honestly!) during my four years of college life. After the college life there was a drought of such opportunities or I was too busy concentrating on the so-called career(!). Except for that one time Elvis act in Minneapolis there was nothing, literally.

Nine years after (my college final year) had an excellent opportunity to flaunt my acting skills. This time it was a bit different. I had on-stage for little time but almost three hours of off-stage but on-street facing the crowd performance.

Scottish Indian Art society celebrates important Indian festivals in Edinburgh. When they celebrated Dusshera this year I had the opportunity to perform the Ravan role from Ramayan. I had to undergo an hour and a half of make up to make me up as Ravan. Then I had to ride on a charriote from Edinburgh castle to Calton hill, an easy 2 miles distance via Royal Mile, acting Ravan, posing for the photos with strangers, followed by a small on-stage performance of Ravan's crucification at Calton Hill, 'I simply enjoyed it' would be too short a sentence to describe how much I enjoyed doing it.

Well, I must say that I had the medication for my nine years itch.

Click here to view more photos from the Dusshera parade published in local news paper Evening News.

Has this happened to you - Part 2

Is it happening only to me or to most of all who use toilet during long flight? I always end up not able to flush out properly at the end of ... you know what I mean. I would try flushing out about ten times with a bit of embarrassing thought of people waiting outside might hear me fighting with the flush. After a number of unsuccessful tries I would end up using the cup with water or tissue to clean up the residual ... you know what I mean.

Has this happened to you?

Tick Tick Tick

Dermatologist suggests a sugar test to diagnose the week-long itching in the hand. That tiny monster 'sugar tester' reveals above normal level of sugar. A blood test aftermath reveals high cholestral. Physician threatens with the fact about the high probability of getting heart attack even at early thirties. Is that the noise of biological clock ticking? That's loud and scary.

Jack, my best friend

It's very rare to get such a good & right companion. Jack is one such rarity to me. It was a winter evening in Minneapolis few years ago I was introduced to Jack by few of my friends when we were in a saloon having some fun. Initially I was not very keen with Jack. I had to stuck with him because of peer pressure. Later a week after I met with Jack since then our friendship started. He is very light but strong. He doesn't hang over with me all the time, an important character that I like about him a lot. I have introduced Jack to quite a number of friends. Most of them have liked him and even praised me for introducing him. His last name is Daniel's and he is from Tennesse.

Note: I dedicate this post to Sivasubramanian who has sent my friend to my home for a great rendezvous after a pretty long time.

Has this happened to you?

Two people are travelling in a car on a highway. Both are maintaining silence. One person breaks the silence and starts humming or singing a nice song. The other person immediately reaches to the audio player & starts playing a song. The first person is left with confusion whether it was spontaneous action or intentional action to stop this person from humming/singing any more. Has this happened to you? I seem to experience this quite often with many different people. I am not that bad a singer though.

Oh Patience, where art thou?

In my recent visits to passport office and BSNL office looking at the way they worked I analyzed how they could improve their productivity. That did help me in passing my wait time though. It was so visible that they were not being productive at all. In my few hours of observation I had hundreds of suggestions to improve their productivity. I was wondering whether did they have boss and did they really care about the employee productivity and etc.

Fast food, instant photos, online ticket bookings, faster time to market projects....I think with the way the world is evolving we are losing out the patience to wait. I could observe that evidently from the crowd when I was waiting in line at the passport office (even after an online appointment). Of all I did not have the patience at all. I wanted to slap the old lady sitting behind the desk and yell 'do you know what efficiency really mean?'. I didn't do it as I did not want to mess with my kid's passport.

A wise man in the line commented that these officies teach us how to be patient.

Losing Touch

Me: I think I am losing touch. Frequency of my blog postings has reduced a lot. I am losing all my creativity to think and write. Guess it's time I called it a day & wound up my blog.

Myself: Whoa...whoa...hold on pal. That's a hasty decision. I know that you have been busy with both personal and professional life. Now that you have got the breathing time you can restart where you have left.

Me: No, I think I am losing the creativity. Last one week I have been thinking of what should I write next. In fact I did start writing a few posts but they were not so good that even I wont read them. I had to scratch

Myself: Buddy, you say that you are 'losing' not 'lost', there is still hope.

Me: Huh...you are playing with verbs, smarty pants. Bottomline is the same. At least I should work on improving the creativity. I must surf net for the ways to improve the creativity.

Myself: You are trying to attack the symptom rather than the problem.

Me: What do you mean?

Myself: Lately your reading habits have almost vanished. Not even news papers. (I know that you are even ignoring emails that have more than a few sentences). That's the problem that you should attack first. More you read more you think and more you think more you write.

Me: oh yeah...I realize now that it's been sometime since I read something. What is happening to me?

Myself: You and your stupid 'Home Video' rental membership and the plan of 'catching up' the missed hollywood movies. That's the problem. You are spending your life in front of the idiot box watching all those movies that you rent out. You must stop it and get a real life.

Me: You are right. Let me quickly watch the 'Scent of a Woman', 'Bommarillu' and 'Scar Face' and come back soon. Thanks for the help man. I will rethink about winding up.

My Choices

1. MF or FD? MF
2. RD or SIP? SIP
3. Debt Funds or Equity Funds? Equity Funds
4. Growth plan or Dividend plan? Growth plan
5. Fixed or Floating? Floating
6. Penny stocks or Index stocks? Index stokcs
7. Rental house or Own house? Own house
8. Apartment or Independent house? Independent house
9. Futures or Options? Options
10. Long term or short term? Long term

This is purely based on my research and based on what has worked best to me. Five years from now my investment strategies may not be the same as above.

What's yours?

36 in 34

It was 28 when I finished the college. When it became 30 I thought it was just a temporary thing and I would go back to 28. But I could never go back. When it became 32 I thought it was just a temporary thing and I would go back to 30. But I could never go back. When it became 34 I thought it was just a temporary thing and I would go back to 32. But I could never go back. Now I am in between 34 and 36, fitting myself into 34 with a little bit of struggle. Soon will become 36. If I still think that it is a temporary thing I would be a big fool. As far as waisteline is concerned there is no coming back, aint it?

Next big problem is with the dilemma of what to do with the pants that don't fit any more. I have unused pants in various sizes.

Frog in a Car

If there is one species that I would want to be extinct from this earth it's frog. Ewwwww...they are not just ugly they are torturous too.

My wife & I were returning by our car after visiting my friend at his new home. I suddenly observed that there was a frog behind the steering-wheel, close to the wind shield. I felt all creepy and pulled over the car. I told my wife to get down immediately and I also got down. It was so dark in the night and it was a deserted street. I cursed God 'why me?’. I kept the car doors wide open and started choo chooing him. That son of a b... didn't move. I started shaking my car front & back manually. Nope, he didn't move at all. He must have felt cozy like an old man sitting on the rocking chair. I badly needed a stick. But it was so dark outside & I was afraid that I might grab some snake instead of a stick. Man that was really a horrible time. I couldn't control myself feeling philosophically that even a small frog can make you feel so small and helpless at times. I managed to find a stick with the help of my car's headlights. With one end of the stick in my shivering (honestly) hand I poked that ugly species. He must have eaten something so soft just before saying 'hi' to me, I could feel that smoothness in his stomach while poking. At last he started moving. I finally started smelling the success in my breath. what the hell, he jumped as if he was participating in the olympics for long jump contest. He went to the backseats' footrest area. Another poking in his butt, he jumped again madly. He was gone. Didn't know where did he go. Checked the car thoroughly. Nope he was no where. I assured my wife that the area was safe and asked her to sit in the backseat & she kept her legs on the seats so safely. I took the driver's seat, you wouldn't believe me, I saw that little devil once again at the same place where I saw him at first. Situation was back to square one. Again poking...jumping...poking...jumping. I don't know how did he manage to jump so long but within the car limits. Every time he jumped I took a few mins to figure out his new location. At the end came that one sweet little jump which made me the happiest man on earth at that moment, he jumped outside the car. He was gone for real.

Later, my wife & I did a detailed analysis of how the frog would have come into the car when all the doors and windows were closed. We found that from the ground frog could easily jump into the engine area thru the gap available. And from the engine area there are openings to come inside the car. When we had parked the car near my friend's home frog would have decided to pay us a visit. I can not forget that freaky night.

If there is one species that I would want to be extinct from this earth it's frog. Ewwwww...they are not just ugly they are torturous too.

(just click on the picture to enlarge if you disagree with me that frogs are ugly)

That one skill...!!!

If there is one skill that I badly want to learn & excel it is the questioning skill.

In my entire school & college life I hardly remember asking any questions in my classes. Most of the times I never had any questions or I was afraid of opening up. I always give a nasty look at the people who raise a lot of questions. Guess I was so jealous of them. It is when I started my career & during my initial training of my job I pushed myself so hard and set goals myself of 'opening up' to ask questions. I started asking at least one question in almost all of my training sessions. Honestly, I felt so good with a sense of great achievement. (By the way, quality of the questions that I raised is out of scope of this discussion).

Even now I am so jealous of people who ask really good questions. I don't know how they learnt that skill. Is there a way to learn the skill of asking good & right questions at right time? Please help me.

Contrariety

Two scenes that I observed today morning; I am not able to express my feelings properly in words.

Scene 1:
All the windows are almost closed to create enough darkness in the day & to reduce the noise from outside. Fan is running in an optimum speed to keep the room temperature neither too high nor too low. Room is tidy & clean with regular cleaning up and proper maintenance. TV is running on mute. People in the house are speaking in husky voice. A 4 months old kid is sleeping in that room, possibly peacefully.

Scene 2:

National highway. 4 lanes road. Constant traffic of roaring heavy vehicles speeding anywhere from 80 kmph to 120 kmph. Regular honking noise from the vehicles overtaking eachother. Series of trees grown in the middle of the road are acting as road separator. On the branch of one of those trees a hanging cradle. A few months old kid is sleeping in that cradle. Mom is out there among those road workers.