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