"He can put the ball on Crouch's eyebrows"

England meets Croatia in a crucial Euro 2008 qualifier later this month and the crucial decision for England Manager Steve McLaren is to decide whether to play David Beckham or not. The decision is further complicated by the bunch of injuries plaguing the England side.

The doubts for Beckham's choice is more from the point of view of how the strategy for the game will be. As Croatia's chief scout Goran Vicevic says: "The one thing we must do is stop Beckham. He can put the ball on Crouch's eyebrows."

Such is the fear of the Beckham free kick delivery. He will be targeted so much when he is in possession of the ball that Croatia will try to make it difficult for England to deliver long balls to the lanky Peter Crouch. However, this will actually work in England's favor. If Croatia try too hard, they will concede fouls at strategic Beckham range points which the guy will use to exploit the Croat defense. And also take advantage of Crouch's 6'7" frame.

Hope they win. Or at least draw the match. Or else it's adieu to the Euro 2008 competition.

I am so, so, SO proud of her!

My daughter had been preparing for a debate contest at school the whole of last week. The topic of the debate was "The excitement of Television is more than the adventures of a book". She came back from school (the day the debate contest was announced) saying that it was not really a choice. For her, it was obvious... Reading was way better than TV. And I know this for a fact as she spends more time reading on an average in a day than she spends watching TV.

Question was: what was she going to say and how was she going to say it convincingly. So we (the entire family) worked on helping her with what she wanted to say. She tweaked the content to suit herself and then made sure she could say it as she wanted it.

The day of the preliminaries, she came back glowing (so my wife tells me...I was travelling). She had been shortlisted as one of eight students who had made it to the final rounds. That night when I spoke to her on the phone, she was bubbling away with facts on how the rounds went and I could feel her amazement at the fact that most of the students had picked Television over books. To her, it did not make sense. She kept saying that using her imagination while reading a book was the most fun part of reading, something that she could not do while watching TV.

So the day of the final contest arrived. This morning, 18 students (8 from the third grade and 10 from the second grade) gathered to present their views in front of more than a hundred and fifty students, more than 50 parents and scores of teachers. The confidence these little ones showed while standing on stage, holding their microphones proudly and saying what they believed in (and had rehearsed) was outstanding. That day, they were all winners. The outcome was only a formality. Most of the students did not think so, though.

My daughter was one of them. 

She was in the contest to win! I can still remember the expression on her face while the marks were being announced. The contest had been fought so closely that the difference in the 3rd place and 2nd place was just a couple of marks. So was the case between the 2nd place and 1st place.

And when they announced her name as the winner of the debate, her face was radiant as she stepped forward to accept the applause. She had made the effort, she had performed flawlessly and she deserved to win. And that desire showed.

I am so proud of my little baby. She has shown that she can achieve whatever she wants if she just puts her mind to it. She has the instincts of a winner and I hope she keeps it up. I was grinning from ear to ear the whole day!!!

Objects in the rear view mirror (appear closer than they are)

I was driving home the other day and I saw a guy hitch a ride with a complete stranger on a bike. Now this is a fairly common occurrence in India and there are a lot of people who either hitch rides or who give rides to people they don't know. I myself have done it several times, both sat behind someone who took me in the direction I wanted to go (and did not have the money in my pocket to get there) or dropped someone on my way.

That simple occurrence triggered off a chain of memories in my mind.

In a flash, I had gone back 15 years to a cold night just before my Physics examination for the XIIth standard exams. Now most people in India know that this is probably the most important examination that one would have to take and this make or breaks your life (even though at that time, we did not take it as seriously). The outcome of the exams and the marks you get in those exams pretty much decide whether you get to do the vocation of your choice or you get your choice made for you. So it was not uncommon to get bunches of old question papers and solve them under simulated exam conditions to see how well you can do.

As I approached my Physics exam, I did what almost everybody of my age was doing. I had solved another year's question paper and wanted it to get corrected. The authority for us at the time was a professor by the name of Sumant. Unfortunately, Sumant Sir had recently shifted houses and all I had was his address. His telephone connection had not shifted yet and so there was no way to get in touch with him. Mind you, this is way before cell phones made their appearance in India.

That led to me riding around the area where he stayed on my bicycle for almost an hour around 9:30pm and still not being able to get to his house. At that time, I was running low on patience and high on anxiety. Luckily for me, a guy was getting out on his bike for an evening ride. I stopped him to ask for directions and I think he figured out my state from my quivering voice. So he asked me to park my bike near his house and offered to take me to the house himself. In that state of mine, that was a God sent. So I rode up to Sumant Sir's house with this very kind man, thanked him profusely, then got my paper corrected (100/100 just in case you want to know) and then walked all the way back to my bike at what was already 10:30 in the night. The next day, I thought I had cracked my paper and felt that I had done the right thing
by getting that boost of confidence the night before.

That memory triggered off another one from the same year. This one had to do with Mathematics (my favorite subject amongst all of the ones we had for the year). I remember sitting waiting for Professor NM Kulkarni (NM as he was referred t0) on the first day of class. Then a sudden commotion amongst students meant that NM had arrived. This guy had a very different way of teaching. On the very first day, he came on stage (there was an actual stage to facilitate us being seen by him, really short as he was) and wrote a differential equation on the board and asked us to solve it. Only three of us in a class of more than hundred got it. He asked us our names and then started the lesson. Only later did I realize that he had done this at other classes as well and noted the people who had solved the problem he had given.

When all classes got together (more than 400 people), he moved the bunch of us to one long bench in the middle of the classroom. That was a bench that we all had to sit on and it was an unwritten rule which forbid others to sit there. I remember this very peculiar way of his. Every time he had taught us something, he would come the next day and write about 50 equations for us to solve on the board. We would probably take around 20 minutes to crack the ones on the board while the rest of the class struggled with them. As we waited, he would come to our bench and scribble an equation on the bench top with his chalk and walk away. That single equation was enough for us to scratch our heads for the better part of the class. Only twice in all the times he had done that did I look at the equation and go "That's easy" and answered it immediately. I remember his expression when I called him to tell him that it was done. All the other times, it was a fight to get the equation solved. Gladly, most of us never let him down and always had an answer for it by the end of class.

I also remember riding my bicycle to his house (this one I knew quite well from having gone there too many times) after the exam and discussing the paper with him. I also remember him telling me exactly how much I would get (I got exactly those many marks). When I last spoke to him, he told me how he still had a solved paper of mine which was all correct even with the optional problems. He had called it the most perfect paper solved amongst the recent batches. Too bad that I had not done the same during the actual exams.

But no harm no foul. I went on to do exactly what I wanted to do and then on to other things. And finally to blogging here. It's funny how fresh these memories are in my mind. Meatloaf was right. Objects in the rear view mirror really do appear closer than they are.

I love you, ComedyCentral!

Oh Boy! This is going to be good...

I have a habit of checking up on the ComedyCentral website every morning for last night's installment of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. This is usually how I start the day and those few moments of laughter are the best way I have found to start it. Whenever the Daily Show is on vacation or there is no broadcast, I usually have to resort to watching older clips just to keep me going.

Imagine my surprise - and a pleasant one at that - to see that ComedyCentral has completely revamped The Daily Show website and have added a timescale which allows me to browse all the available videos ever since Jon Stewart took over as host of the show in 1999. Oh, this is fantastic news.

For someone who follows every single episode of the Daily Show and who thinks that Jon Stewart is absolutely great, this is a God send...To be able to see shows from 1999 will keep me occupied for a while now. I highly recommend you to go and have a look yourself. It's all there.

How do you play with this?

Recently, Facebook has invaded our office in a way you would not imagine. There are so many of us on Facebook everyday that it's not funny. What is amazing about the portal is the amount of stuff that you can do there. Ever since they opened up their API, zillions of applications have been made available on Facebook and it's just an interesting place to be.

One of the applications that a few of my colleagues and I use quite a lot is the Scrabbulous application. It's a scrabble game on Facebook where you can invite your friends to play with you. As you can see from the picture below, this the problem:

The rack that I have got has five Ts, an N and an E. While that makes TENT, there needs to be a place on the scrabble board to put that up. And this has been the problem for the last couple of games. The one before this, I was getting all vowels. I had three As, two Os, an E and a U. This game, I am only getting consonants. Before I took this picture, I had three Ts, two Ns and two Ds. What does one do with this?

In my stats, it will say that I lost miserably in these couple of games. And I don't feel bad about losing. What I do feel bad is losing because of such shitty tiles that I am getting. And this anguish will never be recorded on my profile.

Almost feel like resigning this game.

Now I can appreciate why it's called the Grand Canyon

As you might have noticed from my previous post, I was in Las Vegas for a company conference. As my golf buddy, Saday, was also going to be at the conference, we had decided to make a little trip of our own after the conference. The plan was to go to the Grand Canyon, which is a ~250 mile drive from Vegas, so that we can see one of the grandest creations of nature.

Saday's friend Ashish was going to join us in Vegas for a couple of days and then we would embark on our little road trip towards Arizona. Other than this, we had not planned on anything. While we were at the conference, we came to know about this thing called the Skywalk which had been build at the West Rim of the Grand Canyon. What these highly ingenious (and capitalistic) people had done was build a semi-circular walkway jutting over the Canyon. The most striking feature of this walkway? It's made of glass! And the view from there was reputed to be truly awesome, despite the fact that the surroundings themselves were awesome in their own right.

The conference ended on the 1oth evening and we were scheduled to leave for the Grand Canyon the next day. Thanx to Ashish, we had hotel reservations and a car already booked for us before we left. Ashish had even left in the morning for the airport to pick up the rental car. Fortunately for us, we got a FWD Subaru Outback which is a wonderful car to take out on a drive in the outdoors, especially if it's a dirt road, something that was to be expected on the way to the Skywalk.

Our itenary was to go via the Hoover Dam into Arizona, then take the Pierce Ferry road onto the West Rim. The drive would be around a hundred and twenty miles and we were hoping it would not take us more than two and a half hours. The Outback proved itself to be a stroke of good luck as it seemed to make the journey feel a lot more effortless than it was. We stopped at the Hoover Dam for a short while to admire this effort of engineering made so long ago and to marvel at the sheer size and scope of the structure. Just the flood hole of the dam was an intimidating sight. But it was not the Hoover Dam that we wanted to see. We wanted to see the Skywalk and we wanted to get there before 3:30pm which is when the last tickets get sold off. Also we didn't want to miss the sunset at the Canyon.

The last 30 miles to the West Rim is a pure dirt track and it was quite treacherous driving on the road. That was compounded by the cars ahead of me which were throwing a bunch of dirt onto our car. That was the main distraction for us which kept us from looking at the lovely Joshua Tree surroundings which littered the sides of the road. Finally when we pulled into the parking lot of the West Rim, the car was as filthy as you could imagine. But that was nowhere close to enough to dampen our spirits as we looked forward to getting to the Skywalk.

What did dampen our spirits was the fact that the Skywalk tour would cost us $81. That is a lot of money and we were not sure if the experience for the Skywalk was worth it and whether we should do it at all. Finally one of us prevailed and we bought out tickets for the tour. Boy! am I glad we did that!

As we approached the Skywalk, we could appreciate the scope of the construction. From our vantage point, the view was breathtaking and intimidating at the same time. And the Skywalk was built at a point facing the opposite wall of the Canyon so that the sun would set lighting up the Canyon wall as you stood admiring it. Nothing is allowed on the Skywalk for fear of cracking the glass walkway. So we had to leave our cameras and our cellphones in the lockers provided (for a charge, of course) and then proceed towards the Skywalk. They also make you wear these covers for our shoes so that we don't scratch the glass surface or stain it. So with these sleeves on our shoes, we were made to wait behind a curtain in an effort to dramatize the effect of walking onto the Skywalk.

The dramatization worked!

As the curtain came away, the effect was phenomenal! An all glass walkway jutting over the canyon! Before we arrived at the Skywalk, we were talking about how it would not be a big deal walking on the glass walkway and why it should be fine. Let me tell you...we were scared witless when we walked onto the glass. As I stood on the edge of the opaque area and considering my first step onto the transparent glass, sparks ran through the soles of my feet and it was an exhilarating few moments as I took my first few steps on the clear transparent surface. Saday and Ashish immediately dove for the opaque sides of the walkway, but I wanted to overcome this knee buckling effect the Skywalk had on all of us. After more than 10 minutes on it, we were finally acclimatized to walking on something that made one think that they are walking on air. I even have a picture of the three of us on the Skywalk which I bought from the staff (we obviously could not take our own pictures).

After only a minute of being there, there was a unanimous agreement that the money spent on the Skywalk was completely worth it. So much so that we did not feel like leaving. Mainly because the sun was setting and it was throwing the most amazing light on the opposite wall of the Canyon. We did have to leave though, and thankfully so, otherwise I would have missed this picture that you see on the right side. As we were coming back from the Skywalk after collecting our belongings, the sun was right behind the tour bus stand and the lone staff member sitting there to help the visitors was illuminated perfectly from the back by the sun. This is one of my favourite picture from the trip, one that I want to blow up in size and hang in my house. Trust me, the photograph looks a lot LOT better when seen at the native resolution captured by my 8 megapixel Nikon 8700.

Immediately after taking the above shot, I took my next favorite picture. The same tour bus stand, but this time with the sun on the horizon. The couple of pictures that I took just after the Skywalk provided the icing on the cake. This was one of my more memorable tours and I highly recommend it for anyone who is interested. The only suggestion I will make to anyone who is going there is to not underestimate the Skywalk. One of the staff on the walkway pointed us toward what looked like bushes from the Skywalk. He said they were actually large trees which were looking like bushes from out height of 4000 feet from the Canyon floor. That was when we realized that our concepts of distance had gone out of the window and that we could not comprehend how far some of the points in the Canyon were. The scale of this natural structure is awesome in the true sense of the word.

This was the final shot of the day at the Grand Canyon, the sun just settling below the horizon. When I say horizon, I mean the horizon as you can see from the Grand Canyon. Being 4000 feet from the floor of the Canyon tends to expedite sunset. What it also does is enhances the colours when the sun is setting and this picture is testimony to that. It is also the same time when I realized the genius that is the human body. The appreciation that these two eyes gives us is far more than any camera can capture and amplify. The sights that we were surrounded with and the light we were bathed in was just fantastic. Too bad my limited vocabulary is too feeble to describe it. What I can say, however, is that anyone who has a chance should see these sights at least once in their life. They will be memories you will cherish for a really long time.

We left the West Rim after sunset and that was the time Ashish got in the mood to do a little bit of Rally style driving. In a place where there is no cell phone reception and where the visibility is made really poor with the last cars leaving the West Rim, the man was pushing his luck sliding in and out of corners. Saday and I breathed a huge sigh of relief as we got off the dirt road and onto a paved road, on the way to the South Rim.

We had booked ourselves at the Motel 6 which was about 50 miles from the Grand Canyon National Park South Rim entrance. By the time we reached and had dinner, it was already 11:30pm. There was a lot of debate about whether we should get up early to catch the sunrise (Ashish had asked around and found out that sunrise was to be at 6am). It would take us at least an hour to reach the National Park and we would have to leave around 4:30am if we had any hope of catching sunrise. After a lot of discussion, I prevailed and we slept with the idea of waking up at 4am to take some amazing pictures. After we saw the pictures that we had taken that day, there was no contest on whether we should carry on the next day.

Wake up at 4am we did and left for the National Park entrance. After paying our entry fee of $25, we figured out that Mather Point would be our best bet for the right sunrise pictures as the sun came up over the horizon. We were not disappointed. The only thing is, we were there almost 45 minutes ahead of the actual sunrise, mainly because we did not take into account that sunrise would be a little later at the Canyon.

I had become so shutter happy that I was clicking pictures every couple of minutes. The only thing that stopped me was the fact that it was extremely cold. And the little wind there was not helping either.

So after setting the camera up on the tripod (yes, I carried a tripod for the trip knowing I would need it for some great pictures), I spent most of my time alternating between keeping myself warm and clicking pictures.

It was all worth it when the sun peeked above the Canyon top and I caught the first light of the day at the Grand Canyon's South Rim. It was a great sight and the light that it threw on the Canyon walls and the shadows it created was an amazing site. A photographer's dream! Suddenly, standing in all that cold and waking up early to get to sunrise felt like a small price to pay after being treated with such a glorious display of light and colours.

In the first light of the morning, you could see all the reds and yellows that made the Canyon walls. You could see the rock formations and the abrasions made by wind and water from the Colorado river as it chiseled it's was through rock over millenia. And standing there appreciating the scale of this gigantic structure made me realize why it is called the Grand Canyon. The scale truly makes it grand.

I want to end this post with a picture of the Canyon wall at sunrise. This is just one of the more-than-hundred photos I have clicked during this most amazing trip (and there is no reason to pick this particular one). But it is one of the most breathtaking picture sets I have taken in a long time.


This post would be incomplete without mentioning my thanks to Saday and to Ashish. Saday is the person who engineered this trip and got Ashish involved. And Ashish made the whole trip worth it for all of us. From taking care of a lot of logistics to the banter in the car to the song singing sessions to the dinner arguments, it was one heck of a trip, memories of which will stay alive in my mind for a long long time. And in the process, I got to know a great person in a short time of two days.

Thanx a lot, guys! You guys made this trip worth it and I would not have had anywhere close to this much fun without you. Thanx for making the trip a memorable one.

"You finished WHAT?"

The women in my life came back home last night! My daughter, my wife and my mom landed from their vacation last evening and it was so great to see them at the airport.

My daughter has gotten a new hair cut and she looks absolutely adorable! Not that she did not look adorable before, but she looks cuter still after the hair cut. And this is despite the fact that I would have preferred her to grow her hair for a while. So it was great to see her walk out of the airport looking that cute. And the hug that I got from her after more than two weeks said everything that she did not. She just clung on to me as I lifted her in my arms. Now she's grown to almost 4'6" tall, so she's not exactly a small kid. But lifting her up after all this while was something that I did not even have to make an effort for.

As I had thought, they were carrying enormous amount of luggage for three people. Luckily, the Laura has more than enough boot space to accommodate all that they had got and more. After they had put all the stuff in, I even had a fleeting thought that I needn't have taken my golf kit out as it would have still fit in!

My mom was seeing the new car for the first time and she completely loved it. For her, it is perfect as it is not very low to sit in and has a lot of space for her to relax her legs while still leaving enough room for people to sit on the back seats. All the way, she was commenting about how nice the drive was. And my daughter was pointing things out to her ("This is the sunroof, this is the music system, you can connect the iPod", etc.). All in all, it was an eventful drive home. The painful part was carrying the luggage from the basement parking to the house. Once we did get everything inside, then it was time for my daughter and wife to parade all the latest acquisitions that they have made during this vacation of theirs. Luckily for me, I had a few acquisitions to parade as well.

So all the stuff I bought for my kids in Vegas came out. So did the MacBook that I bought for myself. As did the iPhone. Since I have not blogged about this before, I need to tell you that I have successfully hacked the iPhone and am using it as my communications device as we speak. When I bought it in the US, the one that I got was one with the latest released firmware (version 1.1.1) which Apple had released recently to stop all the unlocking that was going on to avoid going on the AT&T network. After almost a week's worth of effort, I could not get it cracked. Until the day I landed back in India. That night, there was a new procedure available with which I could hack and get it to work. Since then, I have helped at least five of my pals to crack their respective iPhones. But more on how wonderful this device later.

My daughter was going on about a Famous Five book that she read. It just so happened that I remember which book she was talking about and knew the plot. So we have a very interesting discussion on the story and how it turned out. Then I realized that she had finished the 2nd Harry Potter book, started the 3rd, then moved to a Famous Five book, finished that and was already halfway through that. All this in a 10 day vacation!

I was so surprised at the rate at which she was reading that I could not believe it to be possible. But when I heard her describing the story and the characters in such detail that I knew she had not only read the book, but also visualized it vividly in her mind. That to me is a sign of really reading the book rather than understanding the words in the book. After finishing her first Famous Five book, she made sure that my Dad would pass all my old novels to her. And she has carried all of them back so that she can read them. And she is looking forward to the next book fair where she can buy more Enid Blyton books.

That makes me feel so proud of her. Once she starts reading, it's like an uncontrolled nuclear reaction. It will just push her to read more and more. And the more she reads, the million more perspectives and experiences that she will be exposed to. And that, I hope, will enrich her and make her an even better person than she already is. Being a big believer in reading and the benefits of imbibing information through books, this is exactly how I would have wanted my child to be. And she is everything that I would have ever wanted.

So my sweetheart is back. And I am waiting for my other daughter to arrive shortly after. No no, we are not expecting. I'm talking about my sister's daughter who is my second daughter. I love that little devil to bits. Everything that gets bought gets bought for both my daughters without exception. I cannot imagine buying something for one of them. It's impossible.

So the little one arrives on the 1st of this month and will be here for a couple of weeks. That should be a fun two weeks.

What happens in Vegas gets blogged

I was in Las Vegas for a company conference until last week. And what a week it was.

To begin with, there's the long flight into the US from India. Not only is the flight a long and painful affair, there's a lot to be desired when it comes to comfort in traveling. I had heard that Jet Airways had started flying to the US in their brand new aircrafts and so wanted to know how the experience would be. That meant that I would have to fly, not from Bangalore, but from Mumbai to Brussels and then to Newark to catch a connecting flight to Las Vegas.

Luckily, Mumbai is a great city to be in for me. Not only is a large part of my family there, but most of my closest friends are there as well. So the flight to Mumbai was a nice affair. A couple of drinks at our old watering hole (On Toes at Juhu) seemed to seal the deal. After the drinks, I was primed for a nice long sleep on the flight into Brussels. Or so I thought.

My first impression of Jet Airways (International flights) was that these people were still grappling with the process of flying people abroad. Different people had different, and completely incoherent, views of what needed to be done. While one person pointed out a queue to stand in, another person said that my passport had to be scanned into their system (for whatever reason). After waiting for almost an hour in a queue just to reconfirm my seat, I was through to immigration. This part of Mumbai airport I was completely and pleasantly surprised. Immigration and customs took just a couple of minutes and then we were at the boarding gate. There again, Jet showed their amateur status by having chaos reign as they announced boarding. It took me a full 30 minutes to get boarded. Luckily for me, I had hounded Jet for more than 3 weeks to allocate the emergency exit aisle seat for me. As most of you who know me personally, I am 6' 4" in height and that can be a serious problem on longhaul flights. The emergency exit seat gives me the space to stretch and the possibility to sleep. I think I drifted off as soon as the plane took off. The only problem I felt was the seats were not the most comfortable. My bum was hurting like crazy and that woke me up from my deep slumber. After that, it was a fight between the aching buttocks and the sleep that was threatening to overwhelm me. The aching bum won.

Brussels airport was like any other European airport. Nothing to do, very few places to eat, extremely expensive and generally sterile for my taste. Luckily, the stopover was only for a couple of hours which I used to freshen up and have a coffee. Then it was back on the flight and a long flight into Newark. This time, I could not sleep a wink and so I watched three movies in a row before I got fed up and fired up the iPod to listen to some music. A couple of hours of good music and then the landing at Newark's Liberty airport.

Like any other airport, the security was as paranoid as ever. "Take you shoes off, take your laptop out from the bag, not a single metal thing in your pocket, take your belt off." It was crazy! And the queue was really long.

Finally, the Las Vegas strip was visible from the air and we landed at McCarren airport. Thankfully, the conference had bus shuttles running every few minutes to the hotel. So the ride was alright. We were booked at the Paris Hotel on Las Vegas Boulevard which is bang opposite The Bellagio. Like all American hotels, this one is also drab and with the bare minimum furnishings. For some of us who have been pampered by our stays in Indian hotels, the difference is stark and the prospect uninviting. But we have to stay there for a few days and so we had to suck it up. The reason I am saying we is because we had to share a room, one of the cost saving measures employed at the conference.




Here are some of the pictures from Vegas...




For all the stuff that they have made there (The New York New York has replicas of the Status of Libery, the Brooklyn Bridge and the entire Lower Manhattan skyline, the Paris has the Eiffel Tower, the Venetian has canals with gondolas, Caesar's Palace is built in the Roman design), the city is still fake. Everything there, from the place to the people, is all fake. All artificial. It's a place built for sin and it fits the bill completely for it.

They say what happens in Vegas stays in Vegas. And I am sure a lot must be going on. The day before I was to check out, I got a call at 4:30 in the blessed AM (while I was fast asleep) and the lady on the other side said that the girls were heading to my room now. In my groggy state, I asked why they were coming to my room. That's when the lady (and I say lady for lack of a better word) realized that she had called the wrong room and promptly hung up. Someone was having to have some fun Vegas style at 4:30 in the morning. All the best to him and may his energy levels be up. I was dead and fast asleep in a few seconds after I hung up the phone.

When we checkout out of the hotel, we were heading towards the Grand Canyon. But more on that tomorrow. Cause it deserves a full post with pictures and details. But suffice to say it was a fantastic trip.

Mysore, No sore

On the occasion of Gandhi Jayanti...ok, ok, that's just an excuse for going out on a drive, we headed out to Mysore. The reason we gave ourselves was that the last time we had gone down to see the famous Mysore palace, our daughter was only 9 months old. So she has not seen a real life palace. Since we needed only an excuse to go on a long drive on such a fine national holiday, go to Mysore we did.

Not to take anything away from the reason for the holiday. As one of the finest examples of India, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi (we call him Mahatma Gandhi here in India) was the inspiration for people like Dr Martin Luther King and Nelson Mandela to choose the path of non violence as a form of protest. It is, to a large extent, to Mahatma Gandhi's credit that I am a free Indian with the freedom to write the kind of crap that I do on this blog.

Coming back to the topic, the decision to go to Mysore was an easy one to make. For one, it's just 150km from Bangalore. Secondly, the roads are pretty good to get there. And it would be a nice idea for my daughter to see how the kings of yesteryears lived.

So we left around 8am, wanting to get there without too much sun on our heads. When I started the car (oh, my lovely car), I could see that the car had 3/4th of the tank full. Enough fuel for the trip and more, I thought.

The drive was a breeze. The way the car handles, the ease with which it negotiates traffic, the comfort for the whole family (my daughter was sleeping sprawled on the back seat...and being as tall as she is, she still managed to sleep fairly stretched!). I had to rub my eyes when I saw the dashboard tell me that I was getting 16.7 km/l as my mileage. And all this while clipping on at 120km/hr on cruise control.

Even when I decided to floor it, I was pleasantly surprised to see that the transmission was humming on in the 4th gear way past the 120kmph mark and then still in 5th gear at the 140kmph mark. Only when I backed off the pedal did the 6th gear engage. I could have kept it floored for some more time (mainly to discovery the top speed of the car), but was sure that this was not the road to try these stunts on. What with people (and cattle) crossing the road at random intervals and from all possible places, it was the riskiest thing to do.

And then I discovered something about Indian traffic. No matter how fast you go, you will get slowed down by slower moving traffic and will lose your momentum. Not to mention your fuel. So instead of zipping around, I was driving at a fast, but not too fast, speed and watched as my fuel efficiency rode to newer heights. All this while making good time and enjoying the ride, not to mention the scenary.

And when the trip ended, I still had a lot of fuel left in the car. It was something I had never experienced when I was driving my old car (not to take anything away from it).

All in all, we had a lovely trip. Clicked a few pix (some I will post here tomorrow). A lovely day.

Happy Gandhi Jayanti!

I love my car!

The Laura is finally here!

And boy, is it great! All we have been doing the whole of the weekend is drive around in the car and discovery, or rather re-discover, the pleasure of driving. And the feeling is pure luxury wrapped in a lovely bun of exhileration.

I am yet to figure out a lot of the features of the car (there are so many of them) and that is a first for a technogeek like myself. The first thing I do with most new things is sit with the manual and understand how to operate it. This car has, for the first time, more features than I can manage to remember how to operate. And kudos to Skoda for that.

The performance of the car is fabulous, the handling amazing, the sound from the 12 speaker system sheer poetry. The comfort of the car is breathtaking. And I love the fact that after my wife took a test drive and then I unlocked the car to start driving, the car remembers my driving seat preferences and puts the seat exactly where I want it.

We are going to go on a long drive tomorrow, the place is just an excuse to take the car out. And I am hoping that it will be a lovely journey, not because I doubt the car and it's performance, but more because of the experience of getting to the place (traffic, etc.) and the stuff that we will do there.

Pictures and details coming soon to the blog.

Watch this space.

Laura Lovegood - Part II

Just heard from the car dealer...the car will be available this evening!!!

Yippeeeeeee!

So I can pick up the car this evening and the number plate will be available by tomorrow afternoon. Until then, I have to drive the car without the plates. Which should not be a problem as the car has been registered and I will get all the papers in my hand today itself.

Can't wait to get my hands on the car keys and can't wait to drive my new car.

Man, I'm so excited!

Laura Lovegood

Since we have moved back, we have been looking at buying a new car. Not that we have a problem with the old one, but that's been around for more than 8 years and is a bit cramped for us now (not that it was no cramped then...but that was all I could afford at that time). The specs this time were that the new car should have a lot more space, be more comfortable (three out of the five people in my family hover around the 6 ft mark), be powerful (my input to the list), be economical (my wife's input) and be cool (my daughter's input). Finding something which fit the bill was going to be a challenge.

Going by size, we thought we will get an SUV. Naturally, all the usual suspects were in contention. The Ford Endeavour, the Honda CRV, the Mitsubishi Pajero, the Chevy Forrester. Of these, I personally think that the CRV is a bit to cramped for my taste and definately not value-for-money. The Pajero, from all the reviews I have read, is an old version which they are hawking into the Indian market at a hefty premium. And Chevy is not exactly a great brand in India, mainly because of their support capabilities from what I have heard. So it came down to the Explorer.

When the car arrived for our test drive, I was impressed with the size of the thing. It could intimidate any vehicle on the road! The seating for the front passenger and driver are extremely comfortable. The beast has some power too. The diesel engine delivers a fair bit of punch and the car is quite manouverable in traffic. But what I didn't realize, and something that my wife pointed out to me, was that the seating for the back seats is not exactly comfortable. She was sitting in the back for most of the test drive to judge just that. As I got out of the car to check this (and by this time, I loved this car), I had trouble getting into the back seats with ease. This was going to be a BIG problem. Mainly because my mom has recently undergone a hip replacement surgery and so getting in and out of the car would be a problem for her. That nixed it.

When we got back, my daughter was all for the Endeavour as she loved the third row of seats which, she said, was just perfect for her "and her dog". We had to do a Strengths Weaknesses listing on paper as part of our evaluation. Obviously the car failed.

So one afternoon, my wife and I were just going around town doing some shopping for the house and we happened to pass the Honda showroom. I had sat in my friend's Civic and so had had that experience, but I wanted to know how the Accord feels. When we walked into the showroom, I distinctly remember feeling like the people there were pushing the Civic more than the Accord...almost like they did NOT want to sell the Accord. They did not even have a brochure for the car! So we had a looksie. We sat in the car, absorbed the marketing banter and then took the car out for a test. I was intent on the Automatic transmission (as most people in Bangalore will attest to the traffic conditions and the incessant gear changes that one has to make). The car felt quite agile and responsive...until I stepped hard on the throttle. It took almost a second for the car to upshift and rev up to go the way I wanted it to. Sure, it has a few nice things...like F1 like gear paddles to shift up and down in a semi manual mode. But overall, it felt OK. They did not have an Accord available for a test drive.

So we left the showroom and were circling back towards home when we noticed the Skoda showroom. In we went.

I was promptly shown the Skoda Superb, an Audi A6 class car which has all the trimmings that you would expect from a luxury car. It is immensely spacious, has a bunch of features and is very comfortable. Looks great too (to someone like me who likes European styling more than the Japanese look). The only problem was price...too darn expensive.

So the guy then smartly manouvered us to another car which he claimed has almost the same number of features as the Superb, but was a bunch of money less expensive. The moment I sat in the Laura, I was in love. The dashboard stole my heart! Clean, elegant and informative. They had achieved perfection. And then the guy started to talk.

The car has a bunch of features which are mindblowing. Nowadays, every car has ABS, but this one has Acceleration Skid Restrain which manages skids and slides, it has traction control (they call it the Electronic Stability Program) which makes for a smoother ride around twisty terrain, it has SIX airbag protecting the entire cabin, has an electronic tyre pressure monitor, it has a four point parking sensor which tells you exactly what is how close to the car. And this is only safety. It has another bunch of stuff that makes the spec sheet drool worthy.

And then there is the car.

We took the car for a spin (all three of us had to do it together, of course) and so the car needed to come home on a weekend for us to drive it. The moment I turned the ignition (actually, even as I just held the car key in my hand, I knew this was it), I loved the way the car behaved. Not a waggle, not a murmer, not a tremble. Commendable for a diesel.

Once on the road, the car purred along and behaved better than my small car traffic. The way it handled sharp turns and roundabouts, I was amazed at how a car of this size handled it with such grace. When stepping on the power, it roared away instantaneouly (no lag) and gave me the feeling that I was extremely under control even at extremely high speeds. The car just feels safe and solid all around.

The individual climate control was under continuous threat from my daughter (who insisted on sitting up front in "her new Girl car") as she twiddled the knobs and set the temperature until she felt comfortable. Then we opened the skyroof and just the look on her face made it all worthwhile. We had connected our iPod to the car's music system (12 speakers...more than the number in my home theater) and were happily enjoying the thump of the music system. I even tried enabling the parking system in traffic. It was so responsive that the display would light up mometarily when a bike went past us, so fast that the indicator would come on before I could see the bike come around!

As we entered the basement of our complex (to see if the car will fit in the parking space), the lights came on by themselves (I was told that the wipers would come on by themselves too if it were raining and that the sunroof would close by itself as well). The lit dashboard looked even better. We stepped out of the car to admire the lines and the Skoda guy continued badgering us with the features of the car.

Intelligent rear view mirror to cut glare, air drag coefficient of 0.30, huge boot space (my daughter actually climbed into it and sat there comfortably while we closed it!), nice little touches like lights under the side mirrors which enable stumble free access to the car, a nice sun screen to pull up to avoid the Sun scorching one's back. I can just go on and on.

So there we were. Stunned and pleased as punch with the car. So much so that we did not even feel like looking at anything else. In our mind, we had bought the car. It was only a matter of logistics before it came home.

That day, Laura Lovegood was born. Taking off from the Harry Potter character (Luna Lovegood), my daughter pounced on the fact that the car is called Laura ("so she's a girl, Pappi") and christned the car Laura Lovegood. She even got home and made the car a birth certificate. She was clever enough to leave the day of birth space blank!

So now we have been waiting for the formalities to be completed. There was a lot of running around to be done, following up with my office Finance team, the leasing company and the Skoda dealer in Bangalore. Finally I have been told that most of the formalities are done and that the car should go in for registration tomorrow. If all goes to plan, we will have our new car, the lovely Laura Lovegood, become a part of the family by tomorrow evening. Hopefully!

Until then, it's just waiting for the "World's Most Beautiful Car" (as they called it at the Italy Car Show).

Blitzkrieg

I wasn't going to post today, but Yuvra Singh's assault on the English bowling lineup deserves this one.

As you will watch below, Yuvraj hit 6 sixes in one Chris Broad over to hit the fastest fifty in any form of cricket. Only the second batsman in the history of international cricket to achieve this feat, Yuvraj completely decimated this over, launching one ball after another over the boundary.

Kingsmeade was on fire!!!

Phew!

This weekend was a killer!

If you had walked into the house on Friday, you would have seen a zillion boxes lying around. And this is despite my wife's steller attempts at unpacking a lot of stuff. Most of the unopened boxes were in my daughter's room as her room was the one that needed setting up the most. Mainly because of all the furniture we had bought for her.

Her whole room is to be a Princess room with the furniture in baby pink (what else?) and white. The modular stuff that we bought included a desk, a bed with a side table and a cupboard. The people who came to unpack for us tried to setup some of the stuff (mainly the cupboard), but they took so long in figuring out how to do it that I told them to drop it saying I will do it myself. That meant the weekend.

So on Saturday morning, I had to tear down some of the things that they had done (they had used components of some other part to build parts of the desk) and start afresh. Surprisingly, it took far less time while I was working alone as compared to the three people working to put up the cupboard. After an hour and a half, the desk was completed and installed. Another 45 minutes and all the drawers and movable parts were in. A few more minutes and the side table was done.

While I was in the middle of all this, the guys who were going to mount my plasma TV on the wall had come up. That put a STOP sign on my woodwork as I watched with trepidition as these two people first put the brace frame and then hoisted the tv (read...my heart) onto it. Now that this was done, we moved to the second room where we needed the smaller (older) tv to be mounted on it's frame as well. This chore completed, I returned to the woodwork, only to realize that it was time for lunch.

And this is no ordinary lunch. It was my favorite festival of all. Ganesh Chaturthi. This is the festival where we traditionally bring an idol of Lord Ganesh to our home and honour him for the time that he is with us (a day and a half as per our family's tradition). Because of our recent move from Singapore, we had no choice but to have the idol placed, not in our house here in Bangalore, but in my sister's house in Mumbai. This would also be the 2nd time that I have missed the festival in my entire life. I hope it never happens again. Some of my oldest childhood memories are associated with this festival and I absolutely love these two days every year.

So it was back to the carpentry and in a short while, the room looked like the one that my daughter would like and no longer like the store room that it was looking like just a few hours earlier. Most of the boxes (which were full of my daughter's stuff anyways) were promptly emptied by my wife and daughter and put in their rightful place as soon as the furniture was up. That significantly reduced the number of boxes left in the house. During all this time, I tackled the other boxes in the master bedroom which were unopened.

My Home Theatre system!

So it was another hour or so to set up all the cables, connect all the components, test the setup, configure the amplifier to suit the new environment. And then, as a bonus to myself, I also set up the Wii!

As you might recall, I bought the Wii sometime back (my daughter's birthday, to be precise) and have come to love this gaming platform. So this was connected and tested (Prince of Persia, of course) and because of the place where we have installed the TV screen, there are no shadows and unnecessary lights that fall on the screen. This makes the colours richer and a lot more fun. It is also a bonus because the screen is now almost at my eye level. This makes playing the game a lot more fun.

So all in all, it was a fairly exhausting, but fun, weekend!

PotterMania strikes again

My daughter has always been a Harry Potter fan, ever since she watched the first Harry Potter movie. She likens herself to Hermione, because she's the clever one who manages to help Harry get to wherever they are going. She steadfastly refuse to be Harry, even though the story is all about him.

All this while, she has been intent on just watching the movies and has refused to read the books. Only recently, the books that she has been getting at school have been a little too puny for her taste. Reason: She has finished reading the book before she has gotten home from school. So obviously, she needs something to read which will at least last her a week. Now I have been asking her to read the Harry Potter books saying that the book is always a lot more fun than the movie and that it has more information that the movie can never have. All this time, she has patiently refused.

Until this last week.

I came back home from office to find my daughter burried in the Philosopher's Stone, the first of the Harry Potter series. Granted that she was only on the first chapter, but she was so completely engrossed in it that she did not even notice that I had entered the house. When she did finally look up, the first thing she said was "You were right...the book IS more fun than the movie! And it has a lot more information than the movie!"

YES!!!!!

Until last night, she has chomped through almost half the book and has to be dragged to bed as she has school the next day. That too with an assurance from my side that she can pick up where she left off when she comes back from school. Now there is an unwritten rule in the house to not disturb anyone when they are reading (something that my wife is not completely in agreement with, but gets over-ruled by my daughter and I). So she uses that to convince my wife to let her continue reading.

The rate at which she is reading, she will probably finish the book in the next couple of days. And then there is going to be that unavoidable disection of the book and the inevitable comparison with the movie and how it falls short and where it is wrong.

I look forward to that discussion :-)

85,79,92

Before you think this is about some statistics, hold on. I am talking about something completely different.

The sabbatical is over!

I can play Golf again :-)

As some of you might remember, I had given up on the game a few months ago after a few fairly disasterous rounds. The biggest reason to do so was that I was not being able to give enough time to the game and as a direct result, the game was suffering. Well, that is no longer the case as I am in the middle of familiar company and back with my old golf buddies (all of whom have gotten a lot better since I left).

So to inaugurate the game again, my buddies and I went to the Bangalore Golf Club (BGC), my favorite course in Bangalore, for my first round in three and a half months. And the tee shot set it all up. All that practice on the driving range years ago paid off. The ball soared off the 5 iron and drew slightly (as it usually does for me) and landed squarely in the center of the fairway. A nice approach and I was on the green in regulation. And just like that, I had my par.

All in all, the round was about discovering which parts of my game worked and which I needed to work on. And so I was not entirely disappointed with the 85 I carded that day.

The very next round was a revelation. All parts of the game came together and I was hitting the ball as sweetly as I could imagine. Wherever I missed the green on my approach, I either made an up and down or put it in the hole. The whole round was almost blemish free save for two holes where, both times, I got really bad breaks. Once my ball came to rest right next to a tree and I missed two strokes trying to get it out. The other time, my tee shot found a fairway bunker and the ball was lying on the upp slope of the bunker, right next to the lip. A desperate 9 iron out of the bunker and then a excessively drawn 5 iron later, I found myself on the downslope of a greenside bunker. Needless to say, had these two holes not been that bad (the only double and triple bogeys of the round), I would have played lower than my current lowest score.

So there is still hope.

Or so I thought. Until I played on the last weekend. The highlight of the round was that I kept toeing the ball almost all through the round. Just could not figure it out. I rarely miss sweet spot on my clubs, one of the biggest reasons to buy the completely unforgiving Mizuno MP-32 set of irons that I am playing right now. This entire round was an education in how to play unforgiving irons when one is not hitting the sweet spot.

All in all, I have had a yo yo of a few rounds. But there are glimpses of the game that can be. So as a true golfer, and therefore an optimist, I look forward to the next round this weekend.

Until then...

The left side moves faster

Aah...finally back in Bangalore. Yes, we have finally moved. The Singapore chapter of our life has come to a close and a new chapter begins in Bangalore.

My wife and daughter had moved in ahead of me, mainly to get the school admissions done. While we had spoken to the admissions personnel at the Vidyshilp Academy School in Bangalore, the enrollment confirmation required my daughter to sit through an interview with some of the teachers of the school to test her on English, Math, Hindi (her language) and Physical Education. While we had no apprehensions about three of th four parts, her language preference in Singapore had been French and she had not had a lot of exposure to Hindi (apart from the stuff that we taught her at home).

The feedback we got from the interview was fantastic. She found all the questions on Math quite easy (it's her favourite subject at school after all). When she was asked what her hobby is, she said she liked to read. When asked who her favourite author was, she firmly replied "Roadl Dahl". From the teacher's expression, it was clear that she was surprised, but not convinced. So the teacher asked her to name some of the Dahl books she had read. And so "The Twits", "Charlie and the Chocolate Factory", and other names were rattled off. I think that sealed it. Her other interviews also went well and she was admitted to the school. She has already started going to school and has already made friends. The school had it's Parent-Teacher-Meeting last weekend and, even though she had been there only for a couple of days, all the teachers had very positive things to say about her.

That made me feel immensely proud of my daughter. She has adapted to her new surroundings in a new city with the utmost ease and is making both me my wife feel guilty about how we are handling the change ourselves.

Then there's the house. Some of you may know that I have my own house here. We bought this about two and a half years ago. The last few days (I have landed here on the 30th of last month) have been completely consumed with making the house habitable. Nothing could have prepared me for the shock as I entered my house. The condition that it was kept in was - to use the most appropriate word here - appalling! After just one look at the place, I knew there was a lot to be done.

So the whole of the weekend and then some more was spent on getting the house upto scratch. The painting is done, the plumbing is fixed, the curtains have been drycleaned (they hadn't been washed for 2 years!), the floor is cleaned, the loos are fixed and now the place looks like something that I can stay in. We also managed to get in some appliance shopping on the weekend. So a huge 490 litre refrigerator and a washing machine has been installed in the house. So has the AquaGuard water purifier. A lot of the carpentry has also been taken care of. So it has begun to feel like the home we had lived in before we left for Singapore.

Of course, the bulk of our stuff has not landed yet. I understand from my movers that the container has landed in Bangalore, but is now awaiting Customs clearance. Hopefully that will be sorted out in the next few days and hopefully (again) my stuff will have come home by the weekend. So (hopefully) the house will be completely functional in a few days.

My first day in office was a revelation. The welcome very warm and it immediately felt like the place I had left only a couple of years back. What was fun was the laughter and the converstation that flowed through the day. It is one of the things that was a big differentiator to the days in Singapore. The fact that so many people were busy with the things that they do and yet managed to squeeze a little bit of time out of their busy schedules to have a laugh and just kick back and relax. The camaraderie was palpable.

What took me completely by surprise was the very short time it took me to adjust to driving in Bangalore. I had become used to taking cabs and busses and trains in Singapore and also the driving style in Singapore. But within my first few minutes behind the wheel, I was back at weaving in and out of the Bangalore traffic which, by all estimates, has only become worse since I left. The key to getting ahead and getting to where you are going is to stay, not in the fast lane which is on the right side, but on the left side. That side, contrary to normal traffic conventions, moves much faster than the traditional fast lane. It's surprising how much you tend to miss when you are in the middle of these situations, but notice only when you have been in a different environment.

All in all, this week has been about getting the house in a condition decent enough to live in and about buying all the things that we are not carrying from Singapore. Rest is something that we will have to take one step at a time.

And hopefully, now that most of the changes have happened, I will be able to blog more often. Here's to hoping.

America to the Rescue

Watch this part of last night's episode of "The Daily Show with Jon Stewart". Watch as Jon, very astutely and yet with a lot of hillarity, points out the root cause of all the conflict that the United States is in the middle of right now.

No one could have said it any better or with more clarity or with more humour. I love this show!

Update: Comedy Central has taken this video off...you can watch it at http://www.crooksandliars.com/2007/08/23/daily-show-three-generations-of-america-to-the-rescue/

Happy Birthday, India!

My country turns 60 today! And what a wonderful 60 she is!

I was looking forward to posting today, what with all of us Indians celebrating Independance Day. But then I recieved a mail with the most amazing video which pretty much encapsulate everything that I wanted to say. It's a video with some of the greatest musical personalities India has produced. And guess what, they are all performing in a lovely rendition of our National Anthem. See for yourself.

Isn't it awesome?

Yeah, so we are all excited about today, because it is a day of immense pride for us as Indians, but on a more personal note, because tomorrow is when our stuff gets packed to be shipped to India. Yep, the wheels are finally moving.

Starting tomorrow morning, all our stuff will be packed up and boxed. Some of the stuff that we have asked delivery for should also be landing tomorrow. Then day after tomorrow, all of that will be loaded in a container right at my doorstep and the container will leave straight from my house to the docks to be loaded on the vessel which will take my family's personal effects to our home.

So we are at the last couple of weeks in Singapore. The last couple of days has been just catching up with all my customers and saying my goodbyes, thanking them for all their support. It is maily because of my customers that I had a good time in Singapore. Without them, it would be really boring. And it was doubly reassuring that all of them (at least they said that) they would like to keep in touch. I have been asked expressly by all of them to send my contact details once I settle down in India, something that I absolutely will do. After that overwhelming response, I think I did something right in my tenure here in Singapore in the last two years. It made all the effort worthwhile.

The next couple of weeks will be a riot of lunches and coffees and drinks with all the people will miss when I go back. In this short two years, I am really happy to have made some great relationships with the people I have interacted with. And I intend to keep in touch with all of them even after I have moved. I just hope they reciprocate the communication.

All in all, a very pleasant week and a big boost of confidence for me.

Miles to go before I sleep

As I said yesterday, we're moving back to India. And that means a whole lot of things to get done...without forgeting that I have to get my work done and passed on before I can leave.

What do I need to get done? Get a relocation company signed up so that my stuff here (which has, over the last 2 years, become quite a bit) and delivered to my house in Bangalore, get my phone / cable / broadband / utilities settled, get supplies that I want to take with me to India, organize my taxes and finances, get my daughter's school organized in India. Oh, and to finish reading the Harry Potter book the 3rd time. And to crack the Prince of Persia: Rival Swords game once and for all.

Just kidding.

I am already done with the Harry Potter book a few times, and last night, I finally beat the Vizier and completed all the levels of the PoP game on the Wii. It took a while as I stuck on the Terrace level for some time now. But I think I finally have it covered. So now, I have started playing the game all over again, just cause I love it!

Coming back to the relocation, the most anxiety is being caused by the school and the admission for my daughter. We have already called the school that she was a part of before we moved here and discussions are on, but it will only end when they finally admit her and we pay the fees. So until then, we are in limbo.

Which probably means that my wife and daughter will leave a little sooner than me and I will join towards the end of the month. Hopefully, by then, everything will have been settled and I can close this chapter of my life and look forward to opening the next one.

News, news

After not posting even once in the whole of the last month, I can now explain why I did not even feel like posting.

Coming the end of August, I will be leaving Singapore for good to go back to India! There, I said it. The discussions involving the decision have been going on for over a month now and they have been the cause of an immense amount of stress on both my family and myself. In that atmosphere, I really did not feel like posting much.

So I am going back to my home in Bangalore, to work in the same company that I work for here, only now in India (again). I will be working for the person who has been my longest standing boss in my very short career. It will also mean that I will be back in the town that has been very good for me, will be living in my own house (yippee!) and will be in a place where I have friends.

Not to say that I don't have friends in Singapore. Au contraire. In this short period of 2 years in Singapore, I have had the pleasure of working with some great people in my customer environments and a few of them have actually become more friend than customer. I am really glad that they have been so open and so accepting of me and that they felt that I did some amount of good in their environment. I am quite sure that most of them will not mind staying in touch with me after I move. Some of them have even told me so. Which makes me feel really good about the work that I have done with my customers, the relationships that I have built and the positive way they look at me. Like the song in The Sound of Music, "... I must have done something good..."

I have also had the privelege of knowing some great Singaporeans. They too have been open and accepting and have introduced me to a great party time whenever I'm with them. So a big thank you to these wonderful people. I hope to catch up with them at least for one party before I leave.

So that's the biggest news so far. A few other things have happened since I last posted (My daughter is back from India from her vacation, the last part of the Harry Potter book is out and has been read twice already, I have bought all the available seasons (1-8) of Seinfeld, etc.), but nothing is as big as this one. So I will leave this post at it.

Wish me luck.

French Class, Prince of Persia & the MRT

What do all of these things have in common? Nothing except three seperate experiences I had.

So French classes, huh? Yep. My wife and I had been wanting to do this for a while, especially since our daughter is learning French at school and we wanted to at least understand what she was learning and to participate with her. It would also help us if we travel to some parts of Europe (we have been wanting to go there for a while now). So we picked a class that my wife found on the Net.

Our teacher (for lack of a better word) is a cute half French half Italian blonde called Letizia. She made the two hours that we spent in class a fairly engaging experience. But what I found most surprising was this: She had been living in Singapore for around 7 years and had only started to pick up English after she moved here. That fact was so evident as she proceeded to talk Singlish through the entire conversation. While speaking French, her accent was like you would expect a French person's. But while conversing in Engish, she sounded as much like a Singaporean as anyone I know. The same expressions, the same gramatical constructions. I was quite surprised about this fact.

On to the Prince of Persia. As you might have noticed from a few of the posts, I am fairly engrossed in this game. Whenever possible, I try to complete at least a level in a day so that I can feel better (why else?)

Yesterday, I finally defeated the second monster, the one who moves really fast and the one you need to slow down time to fight with. It took a while (she's cheeky to kill, but I finally did it. Problem was...it took a while before I could save tha game (there was no water receptacle in sight for a while). So obviously my wife got pissed off about me spending a lot of time on the "stupid game" as she calls it. But that was not it. After playing the game for 45 minutes, I was completely drenched. My shorts were soaking wet and so was my t-shirt. I actually had to take a bath at 11 in the night before I could get into bed. How playing a video game could cause all of this...Go figure.

Then there's the MRT and the inevitable journeys one has to take when one travels in Singapore. Most of the time people don't bother with sitting down, even when there are seats available. And a lot of time, I have seen people offer their seats to people who need them. Today, I saw the opposite for the first time.

I was sitting in the MRT going towards office. There was one seat available across from me which had not been occupied despite there being more people in the train. At the next station, two people got on, both eyeing the same seat. The guy who entered from the door closer to the seat moved towards it and had even turned to sit down when the guy, who actually entered from the door further away from the seat, rushed up to it and slid into it from behind the other guy. This guy was left standing with a dumbstruck expression on his face. I'm sure he was experiencing something like this for the first time.

Three completely different experiences, but all in the span of 24 hours. Not a bad deal, huh?

Is he completely daft?

I'm not sure about most of you, but I deligently follow The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, one of the funniest and yet incisive political show in the US. While it comes on Comedy Central, the show has become a major success and is credited as being the reason for the Democrats regaining control of the Senate as well as the Congress in the US. It is also a multiple Emmy and Peabody award winning show.

It is mostly because of Stewart that I am paying a keen interest in what is happening in the Presidential campaigns in the US. Also I like Barack Obama a lot. And the affection is also thanks to The Daily Show (Obama came on the show and was probably one of the wittiest and most forthright politcians I have seen).

For a while, I could not see all the videos and so made it a point to go instead to iFilm, which is where a lot of The Daily Show videos are compiled. They are also neatly arranged by episode and so it's a great place to go to for these videos. Recently, I have noticed the sight slowing down and so have chosen to go to the mothership directly.

So every day, I go to the ComedyCentral website to see what Jon said last night. The best part of the site is that you can not only see last night's episode (in parts), but also parts of earlier episodes. So huge is the success of The Daily Show (and it' sister show The Colbert Report) that they have a seperate grouping in the Comedy Central video archives. Here you can see a lot of interviews Jon and Steven have conducted and with very influential people.

As I was sifting through the videos, I was listening to all the presidential candidate interviews that Jon has done. The most frequent on the show (from this lot) is John McCain. If you watch two of his earliest appearences, he starts both shows off with the same comment:

"What happened to the couch you had earlier?"

The first time, I can understand, but not after you come back again in another year and say the same thing. Is McCain completely daft? Some of his answers are also hilarious.

But fact still remains...He is the only Republican that Jon Stewart shows any respect towards. The rest of them are usually treated with utter disdain. Not that he spares the Democrats. They get chewed up as well. As he said during his interview on CNN's Crossfire (this episode that you HAVE TO watch):

"The absurdity of the system provides us with the best material. The only way it
would be hard for us to mock (the Democratic administration) is if their administration is less absurd than this one. But it will be hard to top this (the Republican Administration) one."

He makes watching news (even if it's fake news) worth watching.

The fat guy in the Arena is dead

Before you get flustered, nobody actually died. This is a game that I'm talking about.

I am, of course, talking about playing the Prince of Persia: Rival Swords game on my Wii. As most of you who have grown up playing PoP (one of the most engaging games to come out as I was growing up) would know, the game is more about discovering your way through the palace and fighting different types of palace guards and using different techniques to get to the Princess without getting killed. As you can see here, the graphics for the original game are not as cutting edge as the games that we see today, but you have to remember, this game came out around 15 years ago. Forget the internet, most people did not have computers where I grew up. Not only was this the only thing that we had at that time, this was way better than we expected to see on the tiny yellow phosporous monitors that we had in those days.

The Rival Swords version for the Wii does not disappoint. With the same discovery oriented layout, the game also has the advantages of motion sensitivity that the Wii offers. So now, you actually have to wave your hands in a sword fight and actually make a stabbing motion when you want to cling to something with your dagger. And the interface is as good as I would want it to be. I'm sure a lot of people want better graphics for their games, but since PoP is more of a "get to a point" kind of game, the graphics are not so much the key. And for me, the graphics are just fine.

So coming back to the fat guy in the arena. I was stuck on this level for a while. The fat guy is a huge monster who is a bit more difficult to kill. The voice in the Prince's head kept saying "Go for his eyes...he cannot kill you if he cannot see you". But I was having a lot of trouble timing my speedkills (I was swinging too quickly). So after a while, mostly by accident, I realized that I need to wait till the screen changes colour and the motion slows down a trifle. There is also the distinct blade flashing. So using all those, I managed to get both the eyes of the fatso and eventually brought him down to his knees. I then had a lot more trouble timing my final speed kills. By the time I finished with the guy, I was physically exhausted.

But now that he's gone, I have moved through the temple garden and onwards. In fact, I have come to the second of the horrible monsters which were created when the leading lady of the game (Kailina) was killed. This lady moves super fast and I need to accumulate enough sand credits so that I can use them to slow time down. Haven't got rid of her yet, but hopefully tonight I will dispose off her. I know I am closer to the end. And the game has been throughly enjoyable.

It'sbeen 9 days

For the first time in her life, my daughter has gone (by herself) on vacation to India. Sure, she's surrounded by people who she is comfortable with (my mom, my sister, my brother in law, my other little girl), but this is the first time in her life that she's staying without either of her parents with her. And from the looks of it, she's having a great time.

And we (my wife and I) are the ones having the trouble living without her at home.

She's out there having a whale of a time, what with going to a lot of parties, playing with a lot of kids her own age (something she does not get a lot here in Singapore), going to all the fun places with her little sister, watching plays. Boy, is she having a lot of fun!

And my wife and I are adjusing to a silent house, things to do by ourselves on the weekends and in general a lack of energy at home, mostly because of our little one. But we're really glad that she's going on this vacation by herself. One, because she'll have a good time and be engaged all the time with something to do. But second, and more important, she's grown up to handle herself. There aren't either of us there to take care of her every little thing. Nobody making her go and brush her teeth twice a day (though she still does that with us telling her to do it), nobody to tell her to behave (which she does without anyone telling her) and all the time in the world to do what SHE wants to do without being told. And that to me is the best vacation of all.

When we were dropping her to the airport, she was laughing and upbeat all the way through check in. Even when we stood with her in the queue to enter the immigration zone, she was having a lot of fun and smiling. Only when we stepped back saying that we could not go through with her beyond that point did it sink in for her that she was going by herself and that we were staying back. And that is when the tears started rolling.

So we got out of the queue, me carrying her in my arms in a bear hug and whispering words of encouragement and reminding her of how much fin she was going to have once she lands in India. People are waiting for you to get there, I reminded her. There was even a Princess Party organized in her honour. She didn't want to miss all of that, did she?

After the sobbing subsided and she was smiling again, we assured her that she had to only say that she was not having any fun any more and either of us would be there to pick her up and get her to Singapore. She had the final word. So she stepped through immigration, waved cheerfully at both of us and gave me a big thumbs up. It was only when she went out of sight did I realize that I had tears in my eyes as well.

It's an occupational hazard for me to travel and miss her when I'm not around. But that has been too few and far between since I moved here. By choice, I had wanted a local role so that I could compensate in some way for all the travel I had done when I was in India. Leaving her at the airport made me realize how much more closer we had grown these lat few years.

It was back to the office and most of the time I could not keep my mind on works as I looked, every now and then, at my watch to see if it was time for her flight to land. And finally when it did, I could hardly hear through the din that my daughters were creating in the car. My sister and my other daughter (she's technically my sister's, but she's practically my own) had come to pick her up and there was a lot of celebration happening. A few words reassuiring me that she was fine and that the flight was a pleasant one, and then she was gone.

And I ralized how my baby had grown up. And I was proud and scared at the same time. Proud of the fact that my seven year old was game enough to take care of herself, by herself, for almost a month. That she was mature enough to handle herself without her parents being around. That she was having fun.

Scared because I always worry about her. That I'll always worry about her. And I realized that I will feel exactly this way when she goes to study or gets married. I will be proud of her achievements, and scared out of my wits for her safety, worried for her happiness.

My wife routinely calls me "Father of the Bride", mainly to remind me that, no matter how open I am and how encouraging I am, I will always feel how a father feels about his daugher. Possessive!

For now, she's having bucket loads of fun. But I can tell that she misses us a lot. She does not say it (she's a lot like me in a lot of respects...what do you expect?), but I know from the questions and te responses. She'e having fun, so she does not want the vacation to end. But she wants to come back and so the vacation has to end. It's in those lines of conversation when I notice her emotions the most.

It's been 9 days since she's been on vacation. And it's not even half time yet.

I really miss her. A lot!

I think we're getting there

I have this habit of looking around the Net to see what's happening. One of the places I check from time to time is Google Labs since they have some cool stuff happening there all the time.

I had seen the music trend a while back, but just wanted to know what people (who are using the Music option in Google Talk) were listening to. Imagine my surprise when I saw a Hindi song at the bottom of the list. And here's the great part: It had moved down 9 places to land in at the 20th spot!

Here's proof of it.

It's just great to know that not only are my fellow Indians on the Net a lot, they are online, on Google Talk (which is just one of the chat services available) and on top of that are using something like iTunes to listen to music which is getting into the stats.

Way to go, India. And way to go, my fellow Indians.

Making History

Three sportsmen were on the verge of making history yesterday. Two of them managed it, one stopped short.

Roger Federer was looking to become the first man since the great Rod Laver to hold all four Tennis majors at the same time by winning the French Open title, completing a grand slam, something that has been done very rarely in tennis history (see the Wikipedia entry for more info).

Against him was the reigning French Open champion Rafael Nadal, the man who has become the undisputed king of clay. Federer last month ended Nadal's record breaking run of 81 consecutive wins on clay. Nadal was trying to become the first man since the great Bjorn Borg, and only the second man in history, to win three consecutive French Open titles.

Unrelated to tennis, but having a lot of hype and expectations on his side in the Formula 1 world, Lewis Hamilton was looking to win his first grand prix at the Canadian GP after he took pole position ahead of his team mate, Fernando Alonso. If he won, he would be the first Black driver in history to win a F1 GP (not to mention that there has been no Black F1 driver before him). Hamilton has already had a sizzling start to his F1 career as he has finished on the podium in all of the races so far. For a rookie, he has done exceptionally well.

So who would step into the annuls of history?

Nadal trumped Federer to stop the latter from making his Grand Slam and became only the second man in history to win three French Open titles in a row. To a large extent, I think Federer lost rather than Nadal won, something that you can see from the number of unforced errors Roger made during the match. At one point, he had converted only one break point out of a possible 17 while Nadal had converted 3 out of a possible 8. A dejected Roger stood by as Nadal made history on clay.

And Hamilton, taking full advantage of mistakes made by his team mate, convincingly won his first GP in Canada going from his first pole to his first win in a fabulous controlled drive. The great thing about this rookie is that he looks completely in control when he is driving on the edge, a Schumi-esque characteristic. Of course he has a long way to go to even be compared with the great Schumaker, but he is definately doing all the right things to get him into the comparisons.

For one, he definately made Alonso look like the rookie. Alonso made more mistakes and drove a lot more stupidly than Hamilton did. And this from a guy who is a two time World Champion. I think Alonso must be feeling like Fisichella last year. Fisi was in a championship winning car, but could not manage to make anything out of it. Alonso is in the same car as his rookie team mate, but is making too many mistakes for a world champion.

So for the first time, a rookie is leading the F1 world championship on his own. He goes into the next race with an 8 point cushion, mainly thanks to a lot of stupidity by all the people who are chasing him for the title. Both Ferraris disappointed with Massa the better of the two, but disqualified and The Retard (my nickname for Kimi Raikonnen) managing no better than 5th place (even though he had qualified higher.

So the history books have two new members. Personally, I wish Roger had gotten in as opposed to Nadal (I am a huge Federer fan), but then, maybe next year.

Being the bad man at home

We had gone into Borders to do some book shopping. My daughter especially was hunting for books to buy as part of her birthday gift stash, which she had carefully kept in the new Barbie Princess wallet that she had added to her collection of gifts. While we were all hunting for books (I can't step into Borders without buying one), my daughter was wandering all around in the kids section trying to lay her hands on the books that she wanted. She did not realize that she had left her purse lying around.

So after we finished picking up our books and were ready to pay and step out, she realized that her purse was missing. A frantic search ensued to no avail. The purse was missing and along with it, the birthday stash that she had accumulated. My baby was heart-broken. She went on saying that "How can people do this? It's not good to steal. It's not fair!" amidst huge sobs. The only thing I could do was to hold her close and try to calm her down, something which she steadfastly refused to do.

While she had lost the money to buy the books, she still wanted us to buy them for us. And that is where I put my foot down. I tried to explain to her, as patiently as I could, that while it was wrong on the part of the person who stole her purse, it was as much her mistake for keeping it lying around. Had she kept it with her, she would still have her wallet with its contents safe. Instead she had neither. And I kept on reminding her that if I bought the books for her, then it would be as if I lost the money. Cause she would get what she wants without understanding the loss or the mistake and therefore the reason to correct her behaviour.

Her mom, being like every other mom, chipped in saying that from now on, she would carry my daughter's purse. That to me is the opposite of the solution. Instead of making my daughter more responsible, that would mean that we shoulder her responsibilities and in the long term, make her a complete wimp who is dependant on her parents for every thing. I want my daughter to be strong and independant and be able to hold her head high while standing side by side with me, not cowering behind me. Thankfully, my wife understood this.

After a few sobs and a few more "It's not fair" statements, she eventually managed to calm down. We even had great fun at dinner.

Last evening, when I got back home, my daughter kept saying to my wife "Let's go". Without needing to ask where she was going, I asked her if she was taking her mom to buy herself a new wallet. One thing I appreciate about my daughter is the fact that while she did not want me to know, she would never lie to me. So I sat her down again and explained to her why she will not have a new wallet. I even gave her a scenario. I asked her to imagine that we leaving the car keys, a bunch of money and some shopping in our car and then the car getting stolen. Would we be able to go to the car dealer the next day and buy another car? Just cause we lost one?

"No," came the prompt answer. "A car is so expensive."

"So whose mistake was it that the car got stolen?"

"Our mistake."

"And whose mistake was it to leave the purse lying around?"

"Mine."

"So who should take responsibility for it?"

"I should."

"Who lost all the money?"

"I did."

"Did Pappi lose the money?"

"No."

"So should Pappi have to pay for something that he did not lose?"

"No."

I think, at that time, she really disliked me. I was putting a damper on everything she was saying. But I don't want her to grow with the notion that it's ok to lose something cause her parents are going to buy it for her anyways. While I want to give her everything I can in this world, I want her to grow up appreciating all of it and the value of it all, not in terms of money, but the effort that goes into earning it.

I don't like to be this person who is the "bad guy" at home, who puts a spoiler on things. But I think it is far more important for her to be a better person and not a pampered brat who gets what she wants just because she threw a tantrum or shed a few tears.

I hope she will appreciate it some day. I hope I'm doing the right thing.

Being a parent is like uncharted territory. Every single decision leads to a new path.