I have an idea for a book

It's been circulating in my mind for a few weeks now.

I have the basic idea, the approximate plot. I just haven't got the end figured out. And I think that a good book is only good if it has a good ending. So I don't have much right now. But I will work on the idea for a while, let it brew. Maybe it will come to me, just like the idea came to me in the first place.

Maybe I'll get another writer to collaborate with me. Then again, maybe not. I don't have a good ending for this post too. So by my own rating, this post is pretty poor. Then again, maybe not :-)

One Two Carrefour...

For the non-Indian folk, the title does not make a lot of sense. For the Hindi movie watching Indians (and specifically those who watched the movie Ram Lakhan) should be screaming bloody murder right now :-)

Yep, this time we did a full shopping fest at the massive hypermarket called Carrefour. Now let me tell you something about Carrefour. It is really big, and yet is very efficiently organised. Staff there are extremely helpful (one guy went all over the place to search me & hand me some stuff that I was looking for), the layout is extremely conducive to shopping, some really convenient stuff is on display at the right places and the prices are really good.

When we first arrived in Singapore, we were told (by a few friends) that NTUC Fairprice is the best place to shop, mainly because it has a lot of stuff and the prices are really low. So we did shop at Fairprice, but the experience was not exactly the best.

Firstly it was EXTREMELY crowded. It was not organised (or at least my wife & I thought it wasn't). And it offered the same prices as Carrefour does. We actually checked it out.

And we got a variety of stuff in Carrefour that we didn't even see in Fairprice.

So my wife & I are completely sold on Carrefour as the hypermarket of choice.

Cold Storage, tho, remains our grocery store of choice, mainly because it is close to home, it usually has presence in the basement of almost every mall, and it's just convenient.

Thanx for tolerating this crap

My page load tracker showed me that since this blog has come up (less than a year), more than a thousand page loads have happened on this site.

Which means, quite a few people have come to read my trash. And the tracker also showed me that these people are coming in from all over the world.

WOW, I never anticipated people actually reading the crap that I dish out.

Thanx, Anyways!

Internet, meet my Daughter. Daughter, meet the Internet!

I created an email account on Gmail for my five year old yesterday. And she sent her first mail (she typed the whole mail herself) to.... her Grandpa!

No, she didn't send it to me, cause that would be a wasted effort, since I was sitting right next to her, showing her how to use the iBook on her lap. And since her Grandpa (my Dad) is the only one in the family who checks his mail on a regular basis (apart from the fact that he is the one who will most appreciate an e-mail from his grand-daughter), he was the obvious choice.

I am just waiting for him to see the mail. And I am sure this is going to be around for quite a while. I can even hear my Dad proudly say "She wrote her first e-mail to me!".

My baby's first e-mail! Whee!

What other company has this kind of freedom?

I vowed never to write anything about my place of work on my personal blog, but I am going to make this one exception.

The Founder, Chairman & CEO of the company that I work for was in Singapore this week. He is a legendary figure in the company & has, literally, thousands of "fans". He is like a Rock Star in the company.

And yesterday, some of us, the feet on the street, got spend time with him!

That he managed to squeeze some time in his already hectic schedule speaks volumes of his commitment to the company & its people. And it was a great experience standing around with him & chatting freely, asking him questions & getting candid answers.

And as I mentioned earlier, being the Rock Star that he is, some of us, one by on, sat next to him and clicked piuctures. I even got his John Hancock on one of my business cards!

I don't know any other company which has this kind of freedom. I don't know of any CEO who is as accessible or as friendly.

This is a great company to work for. It truely gives its employees the freedom to do their job.

My Little Princess

I have my wife to thank for this.

On the way back home from the local supermarket, she happened to see that there was this promotion happening at the mall. What they were offering was a complete makeover for kids. Complete with their favourite character's costume, make up, hairdo & a full offering of photo sizes.

So my baby dressed up as Cinderella! And she looked so pretty.

I get the photos in a couple of days. Can't wait to get my hands on them.

I have my Friends back!

And Google has made it! As you may remember quite well, I complained in my No "Friends" blog that Google Talk, when reinstalled, does not see my Friends list.

Well, true to the Google word, the list has magically reappeared! I have friends again.

What I am going to say next has got nothing to do with the Friends list, but I am going to say it anyways. Try out the new Google Desktop 2.0 Beta. It is really good, it collapses Google talk & Google Desktop search within the same space & gives you a neat sidebar (which you can hide) which houses al lot more apart from the Google stuff.

And this version of GDS also indexes your Gmail messages in case you want it to. So now you can read your mail, have ur chat and do a lot more from the same (hideable) sidebar. Cool, huh?

Who's Pink Floyd?

That's a question a collegue of mine asked me when we were driving down for a team meeting.

I don't think I can describe my expression when I heard that.

No "Friends"

I recently upgraded the hard disk on my notebook. That meant I had to go about installing all my applications all over again.

Luckily for me, I always keep my data & applications on seperate areas & so it's easy to destroy the OS & not lose the data.

The only surprise came from a Google product. I am not sure how many of you use Google Talk, but I must say it's a great IM tool which allows you to do Voice over IP. And the voice quality is quite good. So I am quite happy with the software.

But when I reinstalled the software, all my Friends were missing. Google Friends are the equivalents of MSN buddies or Yahoo contacts. The entire list of people who had joined my Friends network is gone.

I sent feedback to Google on this & am still awaiting their response. I hope they dont say my buddies are stored locally and that they cannot do anything about it. That would really be crappy.

Or maybe they'll just say "It's still in Beta, register your friends again".

Water, water, everywhere...

The recent floods in Mumbai, India & in New Orleans, USA brought out some startling facts. This is from a mail going around & since I dont know the person who has compiled this information, I cannot put a dedication here. Thanx Govind, for sending me the mail.

	New Orleans	Mumbai
Inches of rain	18	37.1
Population	484,674	12,622,500
Deaths within 48 hours	100	37
Number of people to be evacuated	Entire city (WOW)	10,000
Cases of looting & violence	Countless	None
Time taken for army to reach	48 hours	12 hours
Status 48 hours later	Still waiting for relief	Business as usual

I'm just wondering. Which country is the developed nation & which one is the emerging Third World country.

Kinda puts things in perspective, doesn't it?

Dumbledore's dead!

Now that "Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince" has been out for more than a month & half, I can say it out aloud. Dumbledore is dead! And for those who are annoyed at me saying it out aloud, they should be ashamed of not reading the book yet.

Since my shipment landed on the weekend, I have got a chance to get my books out & the one on top (since it was the last that went in) was the Potter book.

Now I have a hypothesis:

In the beginning of the book, when the new Minister for Magic meets with the Muggle Prime Minister, the PM screams "You're Wizards, you can solve anything with magic" and Fudge replies "The problem, Prime Minister, is the other side can do magic too".

Why am I telling you this? If Voldemort (Yeah, I'm not afraid to say his name out aloud :-) ) can split his soul into 7 Horcruxes to stay alive, who's to say Dumbledore cannot do the same?

Think about it. By all accounts from the book, Dumbledore should be around 100 years old. When Harry sees him in Tom Riddle's memory, he's already greying quite extensively. And that was 50 years before Harry came to Hogwarts.

Also Dumbledore should have been older to work with Nicholas Flamel (the guy who had the Philosopher's Stone) since he was supposed to be more than 300 years old.

Who's to say Dumbledore, in cahoots with Snape, staged his own death?

That's just a theory. I could be wrong (and most probably will be).

The second theory is: Snape killed Dumbledore (go away, you screaming people) on Dumbledore's instructions. Dumbledore sacrificed his life so that Snape can continue to be close to Voldemort & also help Harry to kill Voldemort.

And I think I know who R.A.B is. I think it's Regulus Black, Sirius' brother. He is mentioned in the "Order of the Phoenix" as being murdered either by Voldemort or on his orders. I think Voldemort killed him / had him killed because he destroyed one of his horcruxes.

What says you?

And I had already predicted (to a few friends) that Ron & Hermione would get together. But I have no proof to this prediction other than the fact that I "did" predict it!

So that's that.

Three shopping complexes and a house...

After that perversion of the famous title, I will quickly try and move your attention to the obviously different things that I want to say here.

We did the Holy Journey (called Teerath Yaatra in Hindi) to the three major shopping complexes here. We did Carrefour, Mustafa Center & IKEA. And lived to tell the tale.

Carrefour was for the basic stocking...stuff like kitchen napkins & what have you. Mustafa Center is a great boon to all the Indians here in Singapore. It stocks almost everything an Indian family would need to cook their food. And that too in an extremely convenient way (like grated coconuts, for example). And then there's IKEA.

A lot of people have failed (miserably, I might add) at describing how much IKEA has to offer. I believe I am going to fail in even greater proportions. That place is just teeming with great ideas & stuff that you see & go "Wow, that would go famously with...." So we bought loads of stuff, enough to qualify for the IKEA Friends clubs. Now we can go again and spend & hopefully get better prices (from the already fantastic prices) and a few other priveleges as well.

My daughter helped me build all the things that we bought at IKEA, so it was a great evening for both of us.

This move looks promising.

Land Ahoy!

The sight of land in the vast expanse of sea. The sound of sea gulls. The beautiful view of green vegetation on a piece of land. The idea of having land under your feet rather than the wood from the ship deck.

This would be the feeling of a ship crew which has been at sea for a while & who has just sighted land.

How is that relevant to me? Cause I just moved into my piece of land here in Singapore!

Yes, I am finally into my apartment (which I mentioned in my earlier post). My shipment from India landed on the weekend, so we have a few days of hectic unpacking to do. Also there is the bit about making the house a home. So we need to get quite a few things to make the place properly habitable for my baby, my wife and myself.

Stake is in the ground.