Whatever...

After spending more than 24 hours at home, and having chawal-kadhi for 3 straight meals, I suggested to Bijou, we go out for our dinner today. Ruling out any junk food consumption, Bijou suggested we go to a Punjabi place he new from the last lunch he had with Anurag and his TeamBHp mates. If the approach road was any indicator of how the place would be, I wouldn't even have lokoed that way. But, the bumpy ride was misleading and so was the ambience. The place looked like a roadside dhaba. There was a Punjabi Auntiji standing next to the entrance. That kind of assured me that the cooking would be supervised and there were lesser chaces of a chole with sambar masala being served. We ordered a Punjabi Chicken and some plain parathas. The punjabi chicken was well cooked and just sufficiently spicy. But not much Punjabi from the ones served in other restaurant. How I wish we had tried the achari chicken. The parathas were freshly made and served hot but not rotis. I think rotis were ma...

The dinner tonight was at '4 Seasons' Madhapur . Right across the road was my old office (the erstwhile Satyam Computers), it was literally a trip down the memory lane. This restaurant, on the second floor is nothing much to talk about in the name of ambiance . Having said that, they have certainly put their attention in the right place - the food. Ours was a simple 3 course dinner - Tomato Soup, Chicken Malai Kabab & Chicken Biryani . Being one of those 'nice' places where everyone wants to go straight from their office, this place is always crowded (and definitely on a Friday evening). If you go there with a group of more than 2, be prepared to wait, wait really long, argue and even fight for a place. But once you are there, be ready to eat one of the finest chicken you may have ever laid your hands on (or dug your teeth into). They have all sorts of chicken preparations. After my reduced appetite over the last couple of years (surprisingly after my marriage ;...

Last evening me and Shveta visited the city. It was the first time we were in an explorer mood since we shifted base to Hyderabad. Unlike Pune, which was our last bastion, Hyderabad has fewer places worth visiting at an hour's drive. By 'places' I mean places like Mulshi, Lonavla, Sinhgad and places like that where you can find spot just to sit and relax in the company of nature. So we decided just to head straight to some place in the city and just have an evening exporing the place. We decided to take the train to Begumpet and explore that part of Hyderabad. Although Begumpet is mostly to do with shopping for pearls, huge apparel malls, Westside, Landmark and other big stores. After disembarking the MMTS train at Begumpet, we walked past the newly built flyover, the ITC kakatiya and reached Landmark. It is really difficult to walk past a bookstore if you really dig books or movies. So we entered Landmark and spent a good hour and half there, looking for books and DVDs. Ca...

It took me a bit of googling to figure out that it is the right half of brain that is to do with imagination and artistic ability. So far removed I am from this part of life that I don't even remember which part of brain we use for it. I recall a conversation I had at work couple of days ago. I was making a point there, that as we are trying to get better at communication, we are getting worse at expression. We may be able to write a concise email about all the things we need to get done for a project. But we hardly know to write a letter (or say an email) to our friends recalling our good old days in school. One of my colleague was of the opinion that the younger generation is smarter and faster than we are. But smarter and faster at what? Math? Computers? Science? How many of the children have a passion today? How many of them waste hours and days at painting? or may be swimming? The younger generation is getting increasingly left-brain-centric. Very logical and calculative in th...

Naseeruddin Shah and the hidden talent called Arshad Warsi...watch out for Ishqiya by Abhishek Choubey who assisted Vishal Bharadwaj in Onkara and other films. Here is the trailer...enjoy!!

I am just back from a day trip to Mulshi - a scenic place near Pune. After returning from the UK, I spent most of my last 2 months at home recovering from the knee injury. The mood is a little upbeat. But off late I have been observing a change in mood as the Sunday Sun moves westwards. An anxiety starts creeping in. Mostly to do with work. What is in store on Monday? Will tomorrow be painful? Is the Manager going to throw some new issue at me? Am I missing a deadline? Lot of such anxious thoughts that make my Sunday evening rather nervous. As I wake up on Monday morning, I am completely exhausted by these thoughts instead of being fresh from a weekend. I have been trying to analyse what this could be. It appears that most of these thoughts crop up from a kind of insecurity or may be lack of confidence. I am scared of being pointed out as a loser, someone who did not perform. Or I fear I may be betraying my boss's expectations. There is always a struggle to be right - never to be w...

Most products have the cost of failure built into the price of the product. For example, a film. When a film gets made, there are so many things at stake, that the all these risks are covered by the premium on the ticket. If a film ticket was prices simply by dividing the cost + profit by the number of people watching, it would be pretty cheap. Or consider for example, the price of a car. The insurance premium that the manufacturer pays is built into the cost of the car. Or say a doctor, who conducts very risky operations get paid highly...and now you ask what's the point?? The point is, this doesn't happen with a farmer.A farmer faces all the vagries of nature or monsoon. Alll his risks are unmeasurable and unpredictable. But does he get to decide his pricing? Why does market not behave perfectly when it comes to agriculture? Why doesn't the theory of high risk - high return apply to agriculture? How does a farmer hedge his risks then is the main question! The answer as I ...

"Film piracy funding terror: US thinktank" I have read about this many times before. Since the time I was convinced, I stopped buying pirated films and music from the street. Have a read.

If this is unbiased media, it is worth the read and raises many questions - here goes

I am thinking of a business idea. We have small shops all throughout India selling computer hardware. Along with this they sell or give pirated windows OS and MS Office for free. This is no doubt illegal an the only reason MS is mum about this is probably because of their business model. They would like the world to be dependent on them so that most applications are developed for Windows. They can anytime enforce the anti-piracy crusade making people buy their OS. Is it possible to create a niche for oneself in this market by promoting open source software? Most of the home users tend to use multi-media, web-browser and office tools like word editor and spreadsheet. With the wide gamut of Linux flavours available now and companies like Open Office spending a lot of time and talent on development, I think is it very much possible. This can even be coupled with user training in these areas. Spreading the usage of open source software among the lay users and small business users can cr...

I..sorry 'we' ...are going to watch a T20 match between Bharat and Bangladesh at Trent Bridge stadium here in Nottingham. When I told this to someone in office, he asked me if I play cricket? I just said No and skipped the discussion. Later on when I thought more on this, Cricket to me was more like watching a movie. One doesn't care what is happening behind the scene and all that matters in entertainment. What matters is the end result...winning or losing! There are actors...good and bad just like players, specialists of batting and bowling like heroes of action or comedy. Update: This post was initiated yesterday when we were about to leave for the match. The match was fantastic, but the second half towards the climax got boring :)

Many people want to know about Satyam. How the fiasco was crafted? Did employees have any idea about something this big happening say about 2 years ago? Everyone wants to know a bit more than what comes in newspapers and Dalal street portals. So here is a ready reckoner to that extra bit you should know to gain attention at dinner tables and tea time chats... Folks knew nothing. Everyone was pretty happy that they were employed by a company that was counted in the top 4 or top 5 IT giants of the country. It was like just another job. I quit Satyam not because I smelt something. I quit because I smelt money in my new job and it was a bigger machine, more disciplined and a bigger brand. The only sign that one may notice in restrospect is employees being without work for long period and still not being woken up from their slumber. But nobody noticed it then. It was all hunky dorry. Even the directors and members of the top management claim oblivion. But in my opinion it is similar to Mush...

Yes! Guilty! Not been in touch for last 2 months. Biggest sin a blogger can make. I am a criminal. Agreed. But don't you want to hear the story? So here goes... It has been a not-so-active work life since I joined by new company. I haven't been really getting the projects. I have been doing org. initiatives on and off. But that's it. Nothing much. But off late, in the last couple of months, things have become exciting. I have been trained on 2 new products in a span of a month. And currently I am working on a pretty niche product. A Marketing Automation Application that Gartner positions in the 'Leaders' quadrant. So the trainig has been a big leap. And to add to it, I am on a live project implementing the same product. Talk about constant learning! And if this was not enough, this project needs me to travel to United Kingdom for a 3-4 months period. So here I am taking advise from everyone who has even been to an international airport, weighing baggages, buying woo...

As I was commuting from office to home on the motorcycle today, the thought crossed my mind again; as it has several times, whenever I have driven on long stretches of highway. So I thought of sharing this with all the millions and zillions of neurons that follow this blog so closely :-). There is a close resemblance between life and traffic on the roads. One has an origin and a destination like birth and death of a lifetime. But some journeys end abruptly before the traveler reaches his destination. Some vehicles want to travel fast and sprint a short distance in shortest possible time. There are others that want to take their time to go the distance. How comfortable your journey will be depends on your vehicle - the medium that takes you from your birth to your death; viz. your body. You may pick up fights along the way. But more the time you spend fighting, lesser the distance you travel. :-) You may break the law and cause inconvenience to others but along your journey, there will...

An incident that reinforces my belief in the Hindu way of life - a group of 40 men from Mangalore inspired by the lord श्री राम beat up women in a Pub/lounge/restaurant. Here is the media byte. Even if we take this with a pinch of salt and blame the pseudo secular media for some saucy coverage, the beating is for real. I am sure if I raise this issue with every swayamsevak I know, it is going to be sidelined. This in my opinion is the real danger. It is time every Hindu wakes up and takes cognizance...mishandling women is a strict NO. NO SCRIPTURE IN OUR RELIGION REASONS THIS!

The long weekend X'mas vacation presented a beautiful opportunity for a family trip to Aurangabad . Being the historically endowed town it is, Aurangabad has ample tourists spot to fill up three days. Yours truly, accompanied by parents and wife drove down to Aurangabad in a Santro . We left Pune at 6.30 AM on 25 th December'08. The total distance of 250 Kms to Aurangabad was covered in 4 and 1/2 hours with a break for breakfast. Once at the destination, finding the right accommodation was the biggest pain. Aurangabad does not have clean economy hotels. The place looks more like business place and most of the hotel rooms are indecent to say the least. Good accommodation is available at MTDC , but it is always overbooked. Other good places are very very costly which include, The Taj , The Ambassador, Hotel Amarapreet etc. Minimum tariff at these places is close to INR 3000 for a couple per room per day. So we took the easiest way out. We paid an autowallah 20 rupees ...

Hahaha. Last weekend (X'mas vacation) trip to Aurangabad. Details later.