Why they have clearer skies

Last month, I was in California for a couple of meetings. California just happens to be my favorite place to go to in the US. There's so much natural beauty and so many things to see, so many things to do that I invariably run out of time. I can spend entire evenings sitting at a cafe on University Avenue in Palo Alto, or take a drive on the I680 through the mountains, or walk around near Pier 39 in San Francisco, or better still...make the short drive to Napa Valley and enjoy the vino.

Throughout the trip last time, I regretted not having a good camera with me. I'm still waiting for the Nikon D90 prices to come down (I'm pretty sure that is the camera I want to buy). And I noticed that the skies were so much bluer and the scenery so much more crisper. I wondered if that was because California was higher up from the Equator and so the light fell differently.

Not so!

I was in Delhi almost the whole of the last week and part of this week and I saw that there was poor visibility even when the day was nearing noon. Mostly because of the smog. It looked a lot worse towards the evening when the Sun looked like a red orb hanging in the sky, filtered through a grey atmosphere. Taking off from Delhi exactly demonstrated that. The flight went through a grey layer before it broke through and clear blue skies revealed themselves.

Even when I stand in the balcony of my office on Kasturba Road in Bangalore, I can see that thin layer of grey (not as much as Delhi, but still there) colouring the otherwise clear blue skies. And I now know why the skies in the US and most "foreign" countries look so good.

They have NO POLLUTION!

Here we have trucks, busses and lorries spewing their horrible exhausts, auto rickshaws contributing their bluish grey fumes, motorbikes adding their partially burnt fuel remains and finally the dust from all the surrounding that makes our skies look murky. In most developed countries, there are lawns of really crappy grass instead of open spaces, not only because it makes the place look prettier, but also because the grass holds the earth together and does not let the wind kick up the dust. In India, we have piles of sand and dust lying around unused from held up construction sites or from pot holes that are yet to be repaired. There is just too much dust on the roads which gets kicked up from the relentless plying of vehicles on the roads. So what remains is a highly potent combination of dust, fumes, odour and smoke which makes breathing on our streets a practical challenge.

I know we have pollution laws in India, but we need stricter application of these laws. Just like we need stricter traffic laws. Everyone is in such a hurry to get somewhere that they usually end up taking longer to get there because they caused a traffic jam. And there they stand with their engines running, burning more fuel and contributing more to the already high pollution levels we have. I talked a little bit about this in one of my previous blogs, but this is different. Earlier, I was talking about how a little bit of traffic law enforcement, a little consideration from people driving on the streets and some common sense can make the driving experience in India a lot better. Now I am talking about the implications of these conditions on the pollution levels we experience.

In a country of our size, I know it is difficult to achieve consensus. But that is what makes it our individual responsibility to demonstrate good behaviour one person at a time. We cannot change the whole world unless we change ourselves.

Think about it, India. If we have to demonstrate ourselves as one of the leaders in the future world, we need the equivalent of the Clean Air Act. We need more courtesy on the roads and we need a little bit of patience on the roads. No amount of infrastructure the Government can provide will be enough and unless we change our mindset, we will still be honking our car horns and driving on the wrong side of the road to get to another place in a hurry despite having nice expressways.

It beings with one. It begins with us. It starts here with me.

I just had to blog about this

Yesterday, Barack Obama was elected President of the United States of America.

Let me say that again!

Yesterday, Barack Obama was elected President of the United States of America!

Do you know what this means? Do you understand the implications? 

A black man from Hawaii with a white mother from Kansas, a black father from Kenya and Indonesian cousins who was a community organizer after he left as Editor of the Harvard Law Review has won the most coveted contest of all. He will be the 44th President of the United States. 

And you know what, the whole world was watching. Not just news channels and people in power, but ordinary citizens of Germany, Australia, Indonesia, Kenya, not to forget India and so many more countries watched with bated breath as this inspirational person that a lot of us have been following for the last 4 years won a landslide victory over a white POW long time senator. During the last 2 years since he announced his candidature for the Presidency, Barack Obama has endeared himself to the world. People have flocked to his rallies (you should have seen the more-than-200,000 people who turned up at the Teirgarten in Germany) to listen to him and to feel inspired.

Not one thing that the Republicans threw at him could stick. They called him a Muslim (nothing wrong with that), a Socialist (something that the US government is doing right now with the 700 Billion $ Wall Street bailout), a Terrorist Pal (huh?), an Elitist (and I would have thought that is exactly what a President should be...a lot better than the average person), Weak (because he said he will talk to regimes like Iran, North Korea and Venezuela...sounds like a good strategy to me) and finally...not being Black enough! But none of them stuck as Barack completely changed the electoral map of the US by winning key Republican states while retaining the traditionally strong Democratic states and a lot of the swing states. He won by a landslide margin of more than 200 Electoral College votes!

As he said in the keynote address during the Kerry campaign convention and in his speech yesterday, it is all about the United States of America. And the impact that his presidency will have on the rest of the world is enormous. 

Last night, I made my daughter stay up past her bed time so that I could get back from the airport and tell her a story. I spoke about how the Pilgrims landed on Plymouth rock and settled America, how the United States was formed on an idea, how slavery began, how the Civil War in America affected it and how Abraham Lincoln ended slavery to keep to what the US constitution says at the very beginning. "We hold these truths to be self evident. All men are created equal!"

And I told her about how women did not get the right to vote for a long time. And how Black people had to wait even longer. And how Rosa Parks refused to get off a bus to start what became the Civil Rights Movement. And how Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. inspired everyone around him with his "I have a dream" speech.

And that is what I wanted her to do. Exactly that. Have a dream. Cherish it. Follow it. Work towards it. And fulfill it. As Barack Obama did by winning this election. And simultaneously fulfilling the dreams of millions of Black Americans by shattering that last barrier. You could see Rev. Al Sharpton and Oprah Winfrey with tears streaming down their eyes as they watched their man accept the outcome of the election and who will go on to become the 44th President of the United States.

As Jon Stewart once said, "I don't understand when politicians go around saying 'I'm one of you. I'm just like you'. Don't be like me. Be WAY better than me. Be so much better than me that you make me feel safe. And get me healthcare". And that to me is what Barack Obama stands for. 

Someone with no backing. A self made man. Intelligent enough to be the first black Editor of the Harvard Law Review. Exceptionally inspiring. Phenomenal at his articulation. And more importantly, his ability to bring people together and present a hope of better things.

I'm sure he has HUGE problems when he gets sworn in. Two costly wars. An economy down the tube. A broken healthcare system. A burgeoning fiscal deficit. And all of this will take time to solve. But this is what I think...

George W. Bush once said "History will be the judge of whether I was right or wrong". And I think that history has spoken. For that same history, to leave a world far better than what it is now, for the sake of his two daughters who will only be 16 and 14 when he leaves office, he has NO OTHER CHOICE but to be the greatest President in the history of the United States. 

Not because he's the first black President. Not because of the state in which he receives the Oval Office. Not for any other reason but to leave a legacy for his two young daughters to say that Daddy did a good job and made the world a better place for them.

I have followed this man ever since he made the keynote speech at John Kerry's nomination and have been fascinated by him and his ability to inspire people. There is not a speech of him that I have not see, not a single interview I have missed and I saw all the debates. And I think the best candidate won.

I even have a "Obama'08" bumper sticker which I got shipped across from the US. 

In the hope of a better world, all the best to you Barack! You need it and I'm sure you will do a great job. Here's to peace, prosperity and a world with more smiles.

Life without four remote controls

We had gone to watch Kung Fu Panda over the weekend at Fun Cinemas on Cunningham Road. After the movie (which was nice), we stepped to the Reliance Timeout just a little further down the road to pick up some stationary. What I had not noticed in my previous visits to that store was that Reliance Digital - Reliance's appliance megastore - was on the first floor of the building. Curious as to what they had to offer, I sauntered over to check it out.

My first impression of the store was that they had a lot of stuff. A large floor space with refrigerators at one end and flat panel TVs at the other and everything else in between. Then I realized that these were the brands that you could get pretty much everywhere, just the prices were a tad below MRP (which is to say that you are buying at a little bit of a discount). I walked around to see if anything catches my eye and there it was, waiting for me to see it.

A whole bunch of Universal Remote Controllers (URC) to choose from!

Why do I need it? Why does anyone in the typical household today need one? So you have the remote controller for the TV, then there's one for the DVD player, one for the cable set top box and then, if you have a Home Theatre System, a remote for the amplifier. That's four remotes that I have to juggle with whenever there's something to be watched on TV. 

After a bunch of research on the Net about URCs, the general consensus was that the Logitech Harmony series (preferably the Harmony 1000 which has a cool touch screen display and looks like a PDA, but in the absence of that, the Harmony 890 which looks like a traditional remote, but is extremely versatile) was the best URC to buy. It was extendable, could be configured and taught using a PC and there were downloadable templates to configure it. All of this, without a lot of fuss. The downside? You guessed it. Cost! Both the models cost a BOMB! The 890, which was available at Reliance, was going at Rs. 16500, the equivalent of $400!

That's too much for a remote controller, I thought.

So there were the usual suspects. Some Chinese companies at a ridiculously low price (which makes me massively suspicious) and then there was Philips. There were three models available with increasing feature functionality and consequently, increasing cost. The range started from Rs 2999 (about $60) and went all the way up to Rs 10999 (about $250). Being the cost conscious Indian buyer, I narrowed down on the lower end of the spectrum. From what I saw, the more expensive ones were relatively easier to configure as compared to the lower end one and had more sources that they could control. The most I wanted was a replacement for the four remotes I have at home and this one could manage them all and a few more (seven to be precise). As for the ease of configuration, being the geek I am, I have no problem investing some time and a few brain cells to figure out how to do it. In fact, I would rather do it the hard way so that I know exactly what to do if shit hits the ceiling :-)

So I finally bought the Philips SRU 5170 URC, a product that comes with a bunch of preset codes for a bunch of sources and can replace up to 7 device remote controls. That was like music to my ears. What I did not expect is how quickly I would be able to get it up and running.

I started out with my LG plasma TV. On the remote, I initiated the process to add a source and it gave me an option of TV, AMP, DVD, CD, Cable, another TV and DVR. After I chose TV, it gave me a huge list of TVs to choose from. Within LG, it sent out test signals to figure out which would work the best and then just configured itself! One down three to go. The Sony DVD player and the Tata Sky cable set top box (Thomson rebranded...I checked at the back) went in similar lines. Then came the AMP setup and that is where the remote was lost. It did not have preset codes for my Cambridge Audio Azur 540. Granted that the Cambridge Audio brand is not the most popular in the world, but it is one of the best out there in terms of performance. But without wasting too much time on this, to cut a longish story shortish, there were no codes to auto set the remote. 

No worries! The remote can learn. I just set the remote to some arbitrary amp and then "taught" it all the keys I use on the AMP remote. By taught, I mean that I had to manually set all the keys by making the remote accept the codes that the main AMP remote was sending out. And the way to set it is so easy, it only takes a short while to do it. So that was done.

Then there was the picky part of me. I wanted all the popular buttons on all the remotes to be mapped appropriately to some button on the URC. That took a bit of time, not because of the time it takes for the remote to learn, but because I took a little time analyzing which keys get used the most and where to most appropriately place them. In case I did not want to allocate a button for it, the URC gave me the option of adding what it called "Xtras", something that you could activate from a list of extra functions. Like the Eject button for the DVD player. Or the Picture-In-Picture related buttons for the TV. Once that was done, the remote was all set. 

And that is when I realized the joy of using this thing. From a single place, I could do pretty much everything I wanted with my AV setup. Short of turning on my Wii and flying over the Wiimote to where I was sitting, the URC can do everything I ask it to. And in case I accidentally find a couple of buttons that I have forgotten to configure, it takes just a few seconds and it's done!

Purrrrrfectamente!

For anyone who has had enough of the multiple remote controllers at home, I would very VERY strongly recommend the Philips SRU  5170 URC. It will make your life a lot easier and make sure that you only have - and need - one remote controller by your side.

A different kind of cap

I remember when I was little, growing up in the bustling city of Mumbai (Bombay as it was called then). And when I was old enough to start noticing things, one of the things that I distinctly remember noticing is that most cars had either a little hat on top of their headlights or they had a thick black band running on the top inch of their headlights.

Being the curious kind (yeah, I gave my parents hell because of that!), I asked my Dad why that was so. And he told me that there was a law in the city of Bombay at that time to have this mark. The reason? To ensure that people don't use the high beam all the time and even if they did, the beam would not hurt drivers coming in from the opposite sides of the road.

Now that sounded like a novel solution to me. Instead of changing people's behaviors and accepting the fact that some people will not change no matter what, the governing body of Bombay had decided on ensuring this idiot proof solution to make driving at night better. As infrastructure in Mumbai got better, most people would just put the panel lights on and use the very good lighting on the road to avoid switching on the headlights of their cars.

Cut to local time, Bangalore!

If you have driven on the roads of Bangalore, you will know what I am talking about. Not only is there no good lighting on the roads, there is no discipline whatsoever when it comes to drivers plying on them. Compounding the problem is this habit of a lot of people to use the high beam as the default option while driving their cars. This makes driving in Bangalore, more so at night, a nightmare (no pun intended).

I think the law of 30 years ago in Bombay would make a lot of sense in today's Bangalore. It will make life a lot easier for commuters like me who prefer to drive their cars to work and back.

What do you think?

Oil prices, fuel efficiency and saber rattling

The last few months has been all about the record levels of fuel prices, what with the rising cost of crude oil and the $/barrel reaching new heights. Some analysts say that it will reach as high as $200 per barrel. This must sound like good news to all the OPEC nations and the BigOil corporations who are making record profits. 

While this definitely impacts the common man, it impacts in more ways than one. 

Last year, I made the decision to buy a fairly sophisticated car. Not only is this car a diesel car (making it a lot more cost effective in India, since diesel is still considered the farmer's fuel), it is also extremely fuel efficient. And it says so whenever I take it out for a drive. The display on the dashboard tells me all the information I need about the running of the car. The average speed, how far I have travelled since I last turned on the engine and - more importantly - how much fuel I'm consuming for that drive. I have a choice of keeping one of these indicators constantly on the display when I drive. Naturally, being Indian, I'm very concerned about how much fuel I burn getting from office to work and back.

What I have noticed is when I leave relatively early (courtesy having to drop my daughter to school every morning), I usually make it to office in around 25 minutes and the fuel efficiency readout shows 13.9 km/liter. The same journey at a slightly later time, or during traffic jam conditions, results in the readout showing 7.2 km/liter! And this is a good case!

When it rains in Bangalore, or because of the huge amounts of constructions(?) going on for the road leading to the new Bangalore International Airport, traffic piles up to such an extent that you can spend as much as an hour just clearing a small 1 km stretch on that road. I experienced it this morning when traffic refused to move for a long time and I watched as the counter moved steadily south to finally read 5.9 km/liter! With an average speed for the journey at 7 km/hour!

I just used up more than twice the amount of fuel for the same journey as I would have with relatively no traffic OR with infrastructure capable of handling the current traffic conditions. And this is for a very fuel efficient car. I shudder to think what it must be doing for mileage of older cars and ones that are not as tuned or as efficient. The problem is compounded even further when you consider that most of the cars running on the road are petrol, not diesel! 

It's one thing to talk about energy efficiency and pollution control, but all of that fine tuning and threshold setting comes to naught when you consider that most cars are running at speeds which are not the most optimum. That only causes the cars to burn more and pollute the environment more.

It's one thing about setting a high standard for cars being sold in India in terms of fuel efficiency and emission. It's a completely different thing when it comes to providing these efficient cars the necessary infrastructure to demonstrate that efficiency! And that is where we are lacking big time!

And to think that I would never have been able to quantify this had it not been for my car.

A long weekend, a horrible drive, family reunion, holi colours and thank you Reliance!

That pretty much summarizes the last few days.

Last week, around Tuesday, my cousin called me up to check what we were doing for the long weekend that was coming up. This was the "Holi" festival weekend. Since we hadn't planned anything specific, he suggested we head to Hyderabad for a long overdue reunion. That sounded like fun and so I agreed. Just like that. Our phone call must have been only a couple of minutes and this was the shortest time I have ever taken to plan a trip.

We had been told the road between Hyderabad and Bangalore (NH7...which incidentally happens to be the longest national highway in India) was in great shape with 4 laning completed and the drive being a breeze.

My foot!!!

It was a horrible drive with the road in bad conditions and needing to keep changing sides depending on which section of the highway had been completed. Adding to the misery was the complete lack of decent facilities to eat and to go to the loo. That made the journey even more uncomfortable. And, as if we did not have enough to deal with, my daughter had motion sickness because of the road conditions. Poor thing, she became so weak because of the constant throwing up.

Enter Reliance A1 Plaza! This is a God sent on the highway. Tucked away right next to most large Reliance petrol stations, this is a nice place for food and a clean toilet to boot. The food is decent, the service quick, the place clean and the toilets better than any other place I have seen on the road. This was the place we had used on our earlier trip to Poona for a bite and a quick relief. Funny enough, the Reliance fuel prices are higher than the rest of the bunks and so we did not top up at the Reliance stations, but at my preferred Indian Oil bunks. But coming back to the point, the A1 plazas were a sight for sore eyes and a welcome sight every time I felt the need to relieve myself. So for this simple, yet magnificent gesture, thank you Reliance!

The journey, if you forget the roads, was relatively nice. The weather was great...a bright day and a lot of cloud cover at the same time. You can see from the picture that the day looked nice. That made the journey a little more comfortable and the music feel a lot mellower. The music too was completely eclectic. Ranging from the "Jab We Met" and "Metro" Hindi movie soundtracks (when my daughter was awake) to Melissa Etheridge and Andrea Bocelli and even some old rock anthems, we heard it all. It made it easier to ignore the bad road and look ahead to reaching Hyderabad.

A warm welcome and a few drinks later, we prepared to put the kids to bed cause they had a relatively early morning, what with the Holi celebrations looming large. The hitch to that was the lovely weather that followed us all the way from Bangalore to Hyderabad and made this usually hot and dry city very pleasant. (We would like to think we brought the weather along!). It even rained in the evening making it very cool and breezy.

Then the next day we were all woken (a little later than we had planned, I should add) with the commotion with all the people in the complex on the central lawn in a riot of colours. There were so many colours and so many people together, all playing amongst each other when they did not even know each other before this day. Strangers putting colours and water on strangers, children playing as one, the entire lawn as colourful and as vibrant as the national flag of India. And on that day, I realized how so many people of so many different religions and so many different languages and so many different colours, cultures, traditions and origins coexist in harmony. We have found ways to celebrate what is common and now what makes us different. And here India is different!

As you can see from the pictures, the two kids had a ball. Drenched from head to toe and covered with every possible colour imaginable, they came home with a smile on their face and spring in their step. Even the scrub that I had to give my daughter (to take all the colour off her) did not deter her spirit. She was running around after a few minutes playing with my cousin's daughter (you can also see her in the picture).

And then the dreaded trip back. I tried to get the family to fly back to Bangalore so that they would not have to endure the road trip, but because this was the long weekend, all the flights were sold out and we had no other choice but to bite the bullet, make my daughter pop a pill for the motion sickness and start back. The way back was compounded with torrential - and I really mean torrential - rain slamming into the car. There was bad visibility because of the clouds as it is and it became worse with the rain coming down hard on us. That slowed us down considerably and made the trip feel longer than it was. But there were a couple of places where the sight was picture perfect. We even saw two rainbows side by side (I couldn't take a picture as there was no place to stop on the highway to do that) and then this beautiful sunset.

All in all, it was a mixed trip. But I want to thank my cousin Sachin, his lovely wife Sri and their adorable Ria for making our trip a memorable one. The conversations, the amount of ragging I went thro (I will get back, you guys!), the food and the general trip was amazing and we had a lot of fun. We are looking forward to another such vacation with the families.

Until then, take care!

This is like the Bangalore of old

Some of us who have been here long enough remember the time when Bangalore was this wonderful place with perfect weather. Whenever it threatened to get hot, a sudden rain shower would blow in to cool things down. The smell of dry earth suddenly drenched with water would be a regular intoxicating feature of Bangalore.

Then, as people started pouring into the Silicon Valley of India and as the number of people, cars, auto rickshaws, busses, vendors, diversions, one ways and in general traffic went rocketing, the weather started to change, ever so subtly in the early days and then dramatically to a point that now Bangalore is like any other bustling crowded city. 

Not today!

Today is like the Bangalore of old. As the temperature threatened to make things uncomfortable, all of a sudden there was a deluge for a short while which brought much needed respite from the heat. And suddenly Bangalore started to look a lot greener. The reason I can say that is because the view from the office overlooking Cubbon Park just got a few shades better!

Welcome back, Bangalore weather! It's great to see you again :-)

A tick mark I have waited for a long time

The day has finally come!

I am now the proud owner of a Blue Dial Speedmaster chronograph. I finally made up my mind, thought I had waited long enough, drooled over it long enough and been to enough stores to check on the looks of it (and the price!). It just so happens that I thought that at this point in my life, I deserved to wear it!

So this afternoon, post lunch, I went down to Rodeo Drive, the local heroes for these kind of watches, told him about this deal I was getting on the Internet (not joking, check out the prices on Amazon) and asked him if he could do better. Which he did!

So I walked out of the place with a huge grin on my face, my wallet a lot lighter and my wrist gleaming with this beautiful heavy object that I gladly chose to wear and have been waiting to wear for a really long time.

It's a very special birthday gift for me and, admittedly, it came a little early, but then we should always have these things whenever we can and not bound to dates, right?

My daughter's first poem

Can you believe it? My seven year old has written her first poem all by herself!



Isn't that amazing?

I'm so proud of my baby!

I know what my last post said

I know its been 2 months and 8 days since my last post. And that one was apologizing for not posting for a while. Looks like a trend, huh?

So a bunch of reasons for not posting. Traveling a lot, pretending to work a lot, playing some golf, spending more time on Facebook, reading books, playing with my daughter and then some more...

More than anything, it was boredom that kept me away from blogging. For some reason, I could just not bring myself to put anything up here. Not for lack of fodder. There's a bunch of things that have happened and I could have blogged about all of them, just couldn't get myself to do it.

Call it laziness. Call it extreme laziness. Call it whatever you like.

But hopefully, now that I have started again, I will be more regular.

Thank you for bearing with me and hopefully you will keep coming back.

Mea Culpa

Mea Maxima Culpa. 

But before I start justifying my actions, let me wish all of you a Happy New Year!!!

Back to the sob story. I can't believe that I have not posted a single blog for more than a month now. For someone who used to compulsively blog every single day, it's a strange feeling to get a message from a friend reminding me that I have not blogged for a while now. All I can say in my defense is that I was busy as hell. 

For the first couple of weeks of December, I was perpetually in Mumbai working on a couple of very critical bids. Both these extremely strategic deals came in at the same time and me and my colleague got complete sucked into them. That was only the half of it. Almost every day was an early morning and a late night. Felt so sleep deprived for those two weeks that I was sleeping for half of the weekend. 

What happened in those weeks is that my daughter won two more elocution contests. This lovely lady shows so much poise and confidence on stage in front of a mixture of more than a hundred students, parents and teachers that I am amazed. Her diction, her delivery, her confidence, her articulation, her tone has been so perfect that I pity the people who compete with her. She is, as I have always said, growing up just the way I would have wanted her to.

And to top it all, she has been chomping through the Famous Five book set that I bought her when she came first for the first time. In less than two months, she has finished sixteen (that's right, SIXTEEN) books out of the twenty one book set. If she gets a chance to read for the whole day, she will most probably finish a whole book in a day. That's how fast she's reading these days.

Coming back to the reason I have not posted for a while is that for the last week of the year, I was in Goa celebrating the New Year with a few friends. One of my buddies has a lovely villa there and we just had a blast. To avoid the crowds and the irritating possibility of spending new years in a the car, we decided to have a pool party by ourselves. The three couples, we bought two trolleys full of alcohol - enough to last a couple of days if not that night - and a bunch of stuff. Then we all got into the pool and had a blast. Then a few drinks down and the Cuban cigars came out. This pal of mine is a cigar fan and he brought out the Cohibas that he was carrying just for the occasion. All in all, Goa was wonderful and it was a shame we had to leave.

Other than that, it's mostly been all work and pretty much no play. I do have a bet going on with a colleague of mine which involves me beating the best golfer in my company two rounds in a row within the month. I would have probably won the bet had an old man not died on the golf course and we had to abandon the round. I was two up with three to play and this poor old man was just sitting there must have had a massive coronary and just collapsed near the 13th tee of the BGC. I completely lost my appetite for the game after that. The next round, I beat him quite comfortably. That should have been enough to get my winner's cheque. But no. The round after that, I spectacularly screwed up and lost. And then made up by coming back stronger in the last game to win again. So I have beaten this guy in three out of the four rounds we have played so far, but for that incident, I have not been able to beat him in two consecutive rounds. My next round with him will be the one to decide whether I win the bet or not.

The problem is that the best golfer in my company also happens to be one of my closest buddies. And he has gone out and injured his wrist. So he has been out of action for more than a week. And I would not want him to play for another week or so for fear that he will injure his wrist coming back to play so early and be out of commission for another few weeks. I would rather lose the bet than have him injure his hand. After all, he's way more important. He's my most competitive golf buddy and the only one who inspires me to play better than I am playing now. It is the incentive to beat him - and he is currently better than I am by far - is one that is what makes us a great pairing. He never gives up and neither do I. So it's fun playing against him.

What else? Nothing much. Will try and post more regularly from now on. Time permitting, that is! Until then...Cheers