A small story...

He was half-awake, still on the bed, when Mr. Reddy called. "Please can you be at Indian coffee house at 8:30 morning", he could hear Reddy say. "Ok," he said and cut the phone. But he was in no mood to get up, he generally liked to lie in bed early in the morning, listening to the birds and thinking about his girl friends, atleast those who he thought of as girlfriends. He didn't want to spoil his sleep for some Reddy, and he got some satisfaction in making Reddy wait for spoiling his dreams.

He was wondering how people could be so selfish, seven in morning was not the time to bug people, especially when you did not know them and further still when you had to get some work out of them. But he did not say anything on phone, because Mr. Reddy was after all niranjan's father. He had worked with Niranjan on one project during college time and they had had a good time.

He delayed as much as he could getting up from bed, but then finally woke up and got ready to meet Reddy. Early morning MG road is deserted, and he quite liked to drive on empty roads, even parking is so easily available, and standing outside the coffee house was this middle age man, a typical shop-keeper-uncle type, with a big tummy, and sure enough he was Mr. Reddy.

"Mahesh"
he nodded,
"I waiting, 7:30 AM"? Mr. Reddy added,

"But I said 8:30 uncle", he blurted in a louder voice, He was in no mood to be guilt-tripped by some Reddy who was standing for one hour on a relatively cold Bangalore morning.

"Language problem, you fast English, less understand" he said

They went inside.

"15 minutes only, then you go office", Mr Reddy said

He was relieved, he had a important review meeting in office at 10 and he did not wanna get late for that. Not much that it mattered, but he still wanted to use this as an excuse to escape from him, and return to comfortable work desk with google talk and orkut.

"Lawyer from Guntur, you witness, give same, what you give in court, copy is there" Mr. Reddy said and handed him the copy.

He looked at the copy, and memories flooded of that afternoon in court, all those cross examination questions, "Did you see the truck coming", "Was it a cold night", "Was it a foggy night", all those things which he hardly remembered. He was actually sleeping when it happened, and he did not even realize it until much later, when he had woken up to lots of commotion, people shouting, in languages he did not understand, and he was sandwiched between two seats. He did not remember exactly when the realization had hit him that it was an accident. He only remembered wriggling out through the window, someone helping him out, and for some strange reason he was the only one out there wearing shoes, every one else in their bus was barefoot. His next memory was taking one of his colleagues to the closest hospital, in a police jeep. He was in a kind of semi conscious state in disbelief, probably in shock, but somehow the hospital, and then police station and everywhere else, seemed to be a dream. Only when he was at police station someone said Niranjan had died on spot.

Niranjan was his classmate and after that they had landed up in a job in the same company. Niranjan had planned the whole trip. He did not even remember the last thing Niranjan had said or his last expression. probably at the tea shop on the highway, after which Niranjan had choose to sit on the first seat and he for some reason was sitting on the third.

He did not even see Niranjan's body, he did not have the courage to see it. Days later he was still looking at the empty cube and half expecting Niranjan to appear suddenly. They said he had died on impact.

Then he remembered the court case, he had already given witness once. That was for Shivkumar. Shivkumar was sitting next to Niranjan and had met the same fate. He had not given entirely correct witness then either, he had said that he was awake when it happened. He had said that it was not a foggy night, though he did not remember anything of that sort, he had also said that the other vehicle was speeding. In reality he had no idea how and what happened, he was sleeping blissfully. But he had done that because he felt sorry for Shivkumar's father. The insurance lawyers were very smart, and probably had he said the truth Shivkumar's father would probably not have got a single rupee, which did not seem right. Poor father, he was old, fighting a lone battle against those tricky viley lawyers. And he had not entirely distorted everything, had he been awake, probably he would have witnessed same thing. Surely Shivkumar's father could not be punished for his sleepiness. He had felt happy then that he could help the distressed father who had grown really old travelling in crowded BMTC buses for three months, trying to get some insurance claim.

But right now sitting in front of Mr. Reddy, he was wondering and questioning to himself if he had to repeat the same things again. Why did these fathers want so much money from insurance? And Mr. Reddy did not look that old - he could surely take care of himself. Why making him do the same things and repeat the same things. But he was afraid that if he altered the statement this time around, it would be difficult reconciling to the court what he had said earlier and what he would say now. He was getting himself in to trouble trying to help people and the questions inside him were becoming more probing.

He had decided within himself that he would try to get things done in the right way especially in government offices. He had done that for his driving license, he had got it without paying a single rupee as bribe because he was adamant that that has to be done this way. Then why not fight insurance lawyers in right way, but then how many things he could possibly take up inlife. And after all Niranjan was his good friend. Further still the the idea scared him that had it not been for two seats, probably his father would have been here with Niranjan. That was scary and disturbing thought.

So he slowly and carefully read his previous witness and kind of memorized it. And then off he went to court to give witness. And it did not take long, but it required patience, same old questions, same cross examinations, same senseless things, like "did you see the other vehicle coming", "how far was it when you spotted it", "what is your religion". He wondered why would religion matter, he had half the mind to say that he was an Indian and he did not believe in religion, but then he did not want to create a scene, and unnecessary complicate matters. It is not a great feeling to see things getting repeated all over again, and then it made me wonder, how difficult it might be for rape victims, every hearing to go over it again and again, and then all of sudden he was feeling happy that he was better off. Comparatively this was nothing.


All was done, and he was free again. Mr Reddy thanked him and said, "I get 80 Lakhs",

80 lakhs!!! his mouth dropped, all of sudden he felt that all his lying was only to satisfy Mr. Reddy's greediness. What was he going to do with so much money, especially after Niranjan was no more. It was little disgusting that all this fight and all this business was just for money. Everyone wanted money, insurance lawyers wanted to save money of insurance, probably because they get commision on what they save, this Mr. Reddy, wanted more money for this son. All of sudden he felt things very oppressive, as he was going down the lift of court building. He was wondering what was he doing here, probably and the realization that he also had the hand in all this shameful business. It was very bad feeling.

And amidst these thoughs when he was stopping an auto to run way from that shameful place, he heard some final good bye from Reddy, and he did not care to return the good bye. He was glad that he was out of all this shit.
But as auto started, he caught this words," Will call, when settlement done, Niranjan, said you work NGOs, with money, want start Niranjan trust which scholarships poor children for them studying "

Changing the mindset..

By,

Guest Writer - G Krishnan
gk(at)fireprosystems.com,

"

There is a small tea shop near my office and when we go for a chai, I always noticed that the used tea cups (plastics) are thrown into the gutter nearby. I have told the owner of the shop to keep a small carton box (trash box) and tell the people to drop the used cups into the box. But he was reluctant and it is understandable. But I did not leave it. I showed him the drain near by and there were >1000 used cups.
I told him that it is his responsibility too to educate people saying, when it rains all these plastic cups will clog the drain and we complain about municipality that they are not cleaning the drain. Drain is only for water to flow thru and not for any hard materials.
Tomorrow if it rains heavily and your shop gets submerged/damaged due to clogging of drain, it is because of you and not because of the Govt. Ever since he started keeping a trash box near his tea stall and I can say atleast the no. of cups thrown into the drain is reduced.
Also I take this opportunity to tell all that it is all of us who can make or break. If we decide to spread this simple message across, we can save the deaths of people esp children (since the poor children play in these areas), cattle etc. during floods/heavy rains.
Also since these plastics are not bio-degradable, it must be trashed in a proper way for recycling.
When ever I visit a road side stalls, I ensure that I spread this message.
To conclude I must say that I changed the "mindset" of the tea stall owner to "set mind". Let all of us set mind in changing this bad practice/menace.

Thanks for giving me an opportunity to voice out my story. Hope it benefits the entire society.

"

Have we become hollow?

There is a small church next to my house, a very small church. Most of the evenings when I reach home there are always car parked right in front of my gate because of which I cant park my bike inside. Worst still are days when i have to go out urgently and there are always car right in front of gate. I have to go in the church and ask whose car is it and get them to move it.

I have had frequent conversations with this people and I try explaining them, how much difficulty they are causing for me and other people. They dont even listen, sometimes even accusing look because I end up spoiling their prayer time. To me it goes out of mind, why would someone want to pray when you dont care a bit about fellow people. Worst still it is not that the church does not have parking, but it is in the side lane, and it means little more time and little more time in taking out. But yups no one wants to do that.

Even when I went to Tirupati, I got the same feeling, people were pushing, fighting, shouting. No one cares if there is a old person or sick person and lets give him/her right of way first. Everyone just wants to get that one certificate of "darshan" which apparently supposedly would do whatever to your life. Makes me feel that we are just blinded by outward things, and dont even stop to think or introspect.


Recently I met this girl, she was from srilanka. Had come down to do a project for three months. She just leaving this week for once and all, with the determination that she is not going to come back to India again. She says because people are rude, people dont follow lane discipline, people dont care. Maybe she got a raw deal here, but in many ways she is right, and I did not have any answers to give her.

From Beggars to Entrepreneur

Maddy pointed me out to this Video of Mohammad Yousuf which was posted on ngopost. This is really inspiring and here is the little excerpt from it.

"
I always insist that all human beings are entrepreneurs, without exception. it is part of human being, you cannot take it out, it is built in to him/her. Simply we could not build the society where we could unleash that potential, it remains dormant, because society never gave that idea, we do not talk about that in class room, in education system. Educations system encourages you to get good grades, and we say that if you get good grades you get good job. And it does not encourage entrepreneurship.

So this time we wanted to demonstrate that all of us are entrepreneurs, so the idea we came up with was that, lets have special program for beggars, our idea was you cannot be poorer than beggars,because that is last stage of survival, so if you can make entrepreneur out of beggar then there is nothing like it.

So we went to beggars and started talking to them, and we wanted to know at what point in time in life they started begging, what pushed them to beg and why they continues. Always the story was that I never thought that I will continue, when I started I could not find any other alternative, I thought next month I will stop but I did not have any solution and so I continued to be beggar.

So we suggested them as you go from house to house for begging, would you like to carry some merchandiser with you such as biscuits, cookies, candies, toys. etc, So that you can give a choice to the family, if they want to give you charity or they want to buy something from you, or they want to do both. So you are giving them choices. And you are going from house to house anyway, this is something you can add to your activity. And they liked it, and our thought was that we will have couple of thousand beggars in that the program and see how it goes and learn lot from them. It became such a popular program, today there are more than 100 thousand beggars in the program and more than 10 thousand of them have stopped begging completely, they are sales person, door to door sales person"

This and lots more, I have become a fan of this guy.

Santa's day out at Annanya

Had a small adventure at Annanya, just before Christmas. Dressed up Chander as Santa Claus, and with the help of iVolunteer and borrowed Toys from Toy bank to give it to kids at Annanya.
Pictures will tell rest of the story.

Impatience

The other day I was sitting at Hong Kong airport with one of my friends and as soon as the boarding announcement was made, he was practially running to get in to the plane, as if they are going to close of the gates or if he was not going to get the place to sit. I asked him, "Hey, chill what is the hurry?" He said, "No I wont get place to keep my baggage in the overhead compartment"

All my life I have done so many of flight trips, and I have not encountered a situation where the people asked you to throw out the baggage, because there was no space, there is always been space. Worst case might be that there is no space above your seat and then air hostess would come running to your aid and I would say that it is a plesant situation rather than an unpleasant one.

Sometimes I wonder why are we so engrossed with fear of losing something and hence rushing, rushing. Tensing ourselves to reach office early because else might lose the favourite parking spot, getting up as soon as the plane comes to halt and rushing to exit first just to save couple of minutes, getting up before the end titles of movies so that you are first to get out of cinema parking, getting impatient at the auto in front because of which missed the green signal by couple of feet and many more.

Why are we always running to secure the future, study hard to get in to good college then take a job, after two years of job, start looking to buy the house, find and buy one, which would would take half of salary practially till retirement, buy a car, scooter, or whatever, and then when you are left with 10% of your salary that save for education for the kids.

Please dont use that grashopper kind of story on me, and tell me what happened to grashopper who did not think of winter, but I do think that we are all to obsessed with securing and double securing future.

Earlier whenever i used to drive down to office I used to keep thinking about the mails that I will have to reply, the things that I will do in office and so on.. and day never used to turn out like that. Now I have conciously stopped doing that, I want to notice and see things, and I realized that the world is not going to come to end if I dont reach couple of minutes ealier to office.

Happy new year.
--
Goli

Stories from Hong Kong...Origin of word Good...

First day in Hong Kong, and I was sitting in the bus reading the newspaper, and I found a section there called, some origin of words and learn chinese kind of thing,

So found the following entry which was talking about the origin of hte word good.

Good is written as,
好 and pronounced as (Hau)

and here is how it is formed,

The first character in the above word

女
means woman, girl etc. (Pronounced Nu).

And the second character
子
means a boy (zu)


And you combine this together to get
好

which means good (Hau)
So a girl and boy together means good.

Isn't this interesting.

Stories from HK..... Food

Hi,

Now about five days in Hong Kong, and I have realized two things..

1. I used to boast in Bangalore that I can eat everything, but after coming here i have changed my mind, there are some things which need lot of courage to eat. Went out for dinner with all my collegues, (most of them are chinese or taiwanese), and we went to some thai restaurant, I tried almost each and everything until she got a full plate of crabs, and then my courage failed me, and I simply could not get myself to eating that.. But trust me apart from the scary look that most of the food had it tasted great. It is so different from anything else that I have eaten in my life
2. I also realized that all the chinese restaurants in India are completely non chinese. That has got no relations to the food that you get here. Fried rice that I keep seeing in all Indian chinese restaurants, I could not find it here in any of the menus, it is another story that most of the menus were in chinese and I could not read them.

But over all my dining experience has been great. Here you can get any kind of sea food. Food that I have never seen before. It is exotic and colourful and whatever I have tried I have easily managed to gobble up everything.

A sample picture of lunch. It is one of the most colourful lunch that I have seen. This is called Japenese Sushi.


You can read more about sushi on the web, Have not seen any restaurant in India which gives sushi.

More later, these last few days have been terribly terribly busy. lots of more stories to say but may be little later.

Fraudy Rai University ??

Yesterday I was just listening to CNN IBN citizen journalist, and this piece of story caught my eye. A story about how fraud Rai University is. This story has been done by couple of students, of the Rai University campus which was closed down after one year of education, because supreme court canceling its affiliation.

I was shocked because, I always thought that Rai University was one of the better private colleges in India, and at one point of time was even looking at it for my cousin. But this video has a separate story to tell.

I also googled and found that, a old story (2005) also about similar stuff happening in Rai University Ahmedabad.

Maybe some of the campuses of Rai University are good, or maybe this is one off case, but do be careful when next time you try to choose a university.

Look at the video below, click on the extreme right side.

Did you see RDB?

The below is one of the mails that I had written to a friend, and then had ended up forwarding to loads of friends, but posting it on blog.
"

On one of the jobless sundays, I had gone to cancel a railway ticket of one of my friends. It was a tatkal ticket, and he had not travelled, because it was waitlist...(dont bother about the technicalities that much, it was actually quite complicated).


First I went and stood in the railways reservation queue.... it was quite a long queue, and I was there with a book in my hand..remembering the good old hostel days, when we used to stand in queues to get those concessions. I reached the counter after quite sometime, but Oopss... he said for some reason this cannot be cancelled at the counter, the software did not have any such option, I would have to go to the station master. I could not blame the operator.


Well I went all the way back to platform, went to station master, and he casually asked me to go and meet some railway inspector, again in the reservation building. I nimbled back to the reservation building, this fellow was not there, I had to sit there in his office, my book giving me company. He came after some good half an hour, I was little irritated now, asked him. He asked me to go to Accounts section in main railway administrative building.


I dont know what made me go all the way to the main adminsitrative building, (if you familiar with Bangy, you would know it is about 500 meters from the reservation buidling), I guess the good mood of the morning, or may be wonderful weather prompted me to go there. Reached and there was not a person to be seen. Ofcourse it was closed, it was Sunday.


I was laughing at my folly, all my good mood was turing in to equivalent irritation against that railway inspector, against the station master and against everyone working in railways. Everyone just wanted to sit in the chair and take a nap and skip work.


But as I was leaving, somewhere down those empty desks I found this lone guy working. I was so happy to find him, this was the target to vent out all my frustration of last three hours or running around here and there. And I melted down everything on that poor guy. But that fellow to my surprise turned out to be quite nice. He explained me the relevant rules, he even showed me the website of railways, which explained the rules of various corner cases of reservation and cancellation, and said the final authority was that railway inspector, and I had to go to him.


Yups another direction... I was in no mood to go there again...I wanted to go home and finish rest of the book, I could let go 200 rupees...after all it just means one pizza or two DBCs, I already had wasted so much time. But I guess he read what was on my mind.


He asked "Did you see RDB?", (RDB is Rang De Basanti ofcourse)

I was surprised at this question, I said "Yes!"

He said.. "Either you complain about this, or go home grumbling"


It struck like a sting. I could almost read him, almost hear him say "this IT poeple of AC offices, cribbing all the time, making comments on how a railway inspector should behave, commenting on his lack of manners, on his ethics and so on". He had that look in his eyes.

He was a relatively young guy, someone who had perhaps recently got married, and I could feel that in a way he was telling me, "help me change the system" kind of stuff.


But he had hit me, I could not go back now, I was determined to complain. But I did not have any proof, so what do I do.... So I again decided to go back to the reservation office and back to the reservation inspector, this time around he was there.


This time, I said "Please write it and give me". As it turned out, he finally looked carefully at my case, and got my work done, he mumbled something that rules have changed recently and he did not quite understand last time what I wanted to say and so on. I got my 200 rupees.


It is little hard to describe, but that day, that fellows words "did you see RDB?", did hit me, I did not even take his name, and I dont even remember in which of those infinite corridors of that administrative building that I found him. But I think will remember him for a long time to come. And from that day onwards I have been using this technique of "please write and give me" shamelessly.

I would strongly suggest that you too use it..
"

Cheers and have a great weekend.

Cant find time...

I was trying to talk to this friend of mine recently, and for a long time I had been trying to meet him. And he was always like, I cant leave office before seven or eight there is loads of work. This has been going on for a month now.

Not that I blame him, probably he is one of the most reliable employee of his company, and also I am not dying to meet him so I care less. But it keep wondering how we get so engrossed in our job that we start neglecting everything. We all want to go out and meet friends, we all appreciate people who have got time to do all kinds of other activities, and we wish that there was less work. But when some call comes,"Lets do this stuff", we always have, "nahin yaar bahut kaam hai",

I still remember once when I was talking to one friend, (not the same friend of first paragraph) and there was something every important, but I had so much work. And she only told me "Goli, tum nahin rahoge office mein to tumhara office bandh to nahin hoga na", and I still remember that, because this is so true. Working in MNCs and all, I know practically I hardly any value to the company, if I am sick, they will find hundred other alternatives to work, if I cease to exists, I am sure company will exist. But I guess for my family I mean much more, friends mean much more, bdays and marriage anniversaries (recently this has been added,since more and more friends getting married) mean more.

These days I just have a easy attitude to work, I know it is going to happen, I know that next day i am going to put little more effort and finish the work, and over time I have realized that it has nothing to do with your work and how your boss is or which kind of job you are, I think it is just the mindset.

I hope my boss is not reading this.. :)

have a great Deepawali.. :)

Minister Jam

There have been so many times, where I have been caught stranded in the middle of the road in the traffic jam, waiting for some ministers to cross. I kind of call them "minister Jams".

But I was wondering if there is any rule which says that ministers should be given the first preferences on the road or it is just power that they use for their comfort. I do understand that ministers time is more important than my time so in a way giving some preference to him might be justified, but I always wonder the fate of those ambulances which get caught in this so called Minister Jam.

I distinctly remember that sometime back when I had done the interview of traffic policeman, he had pointed out the pain and the tension they have to undergo when ministers come. Not only they have to hear all the grumblings of people, but a single mistake is like great sin.

So thinking if there are any such rules, of clearing roads for politicians, or whatever? Tried to Google, but I dont know right terms to search for this, it gives all kinds of hits. Does anyone have any idea?

Cant think of any title

When I was about to leave for US, my boss told me that if you want to meet anyone in the US office you will have to set up a meeting with them, else they are not going to meet you. I find it very odd, and I also find it very time wasting effort of syncing up time zones and playing around with outlook calender and trying to set up meetings and then rescheduling and more rescheduling.

I keep wondering that are people in US so impolite that they would not want to chat up with someone who has come from so far off for brief fifteen minutes, what kind of work makes you so busy that you cannot even spare time for fifteen minutes, What kind of planning is that, which does not allow you to share a joke with someone. yups you can be in one of those days, but that does not happen everyday. Contrast this with the case when these people come to India, most of us are like take out time to make sure that he/she is comfortable, and I was wondering why would US folks not do the same. Did they not care?

I wonder why should we when we come from India should start behaving differently when we are in US office, why should we try to dress up, and talk like the way other people do here. I think it is ok if I dont know that freeways means roads where there are no signal, it is ok not to be able to distinguish between different coins. Not to know that coffee generally here means no milk inside, and that most people here call milk the cream, and brinjal the egg plant, and the closest thing to rotis is burritos, and that I have to press the button when I want to cross the road.

But since the time I have come here, things have been very different from what people in India told me. People are as eager to chat without calenders, people are keen to accompany you for lunch, and even sponser it for you most of the times, eager to spot you that difference between octopus, and chicken, (that day the guy told me that the stuff I eat was octopus, I did not believe him though), order the taxi for you or to drop you to the place you want to go.

The other day, I went to this mexican dance festival, it was over air amphitheater, and it was dance based on themes, and the guy was speaking everything in Spanish, but thankfully the lady next to me was Mexican (And I guess most mexicans speak Spanish) and I kept bugging her, and she kept translating each and everything from Spanish to English. I even sang her "La Bamba" for her, with which she was very impressed :).

I actually dont remember why I started writing this post, but I get irritated when people try to be what they are not and expect me to do the same, because I am what and how I am, and I cant be otherwise, else I will cease to be me.

About this Blog

If you land up on this blog for first time, then you are going to get confused for sure. This blog has no specific pattern, and I do not write about anything specific area as such. Hence you will find that this blog has everything from "small stories", to "travel Logs", to "Startups" to "Profiling of some NGOs".

Well my intention of maintaining this blogs is just to share things/events/places/thoughts that I find interesting and I guess others might like to know. And since my interests are so varied there are loads of mix masala on this blog.


Many times I thought that I should split this blog in to multiple blogs, but then I am having so much trouble maintaining this blog. Will do that sometime in future, when I have more time. But soon I will implement "tags", that would make it little easier to browse.

If you have not and if you have not, you can spend some time on "Recommended reads" and on NGOpost.

One advice for potential bloggers,
For potential bloggers, do not start a blog on blogger, changing anything is so very difficult.

Cheers.
--
Goli (Edited last in Aug 08)

Things dont change much..

"Do you want to come to the bar/disc?" asked my friend

It was 9:30PM, and I had just reached US couple of hours back, and I was supposed to be to be jet Lagged... and my eyes were already closing.

"Abey chal yaar, will show you US" he added.

And you know, I have never learnt to say No to anything..

Ten minutes later we were driving, to go to some place called Santana Square. And we entered the place called Rosie, after the big guy at the door made sure by looking at my driving license if I was above 21.

This place reminded me very much of Spin in Bangalore, crowded with all kinds of people, Music was pulling me in to plunge inside and just dance, but I was little skeptical, to venture in to that sea of people, I thought it was a bad idea to come there, wanted to go and sleep. I was standing in corner, absently looking at people, clothes, shoes, and then nothing in particular.

And out of nowhere appeared this two girls, I would not say girls, or ok maybe girls, some 30'ish types, (one of them had a great smile), and they came and were like "hi how are you?", and thats it. And next thirty minutes turned out to be my best time in US till now. I started dancing, then dancing and kept on going. And had probably Don Williams seen me he would have been happy, because as he says in one of his songs..."Dance like nobody is watching" It was Hip hop... so trying all those, ya, yo kind of dance, with all kinds of stupid gestures, and smiling and laughing all the way to glory.

It is not a great thing, and you might think what this stupid gibberish is all about. But when I was just driving back home in the car, I somehow felt very good about the whole thing, I felt very happy. Images of dim lit dance floor, couple of girls, whom probably am never going to meet again in my life, I shouting them in the ears about India, and they shouting back in my ears about their stuff about US, talking and smiling about various things, doing a big cheers with glasses in hand. These images I am going to carry back home.

More than that I started realizing that poeple are more or less same everywhere, a little smile and little bit of Ye Ye... gets things started. I thought that I had become very pessimistic about US, and started hating this place out of pre conceived notions. But I guess it has got more to do with your attitude then with the place. I can make it bleak, or I can make it happening. There are always people waiting to be touched and waiting to be talked to.

And I honestly that enthu and smiles of those two girls I have been carrying since, to my sales conference and to the first two days. Probably I could not have had a better first day at US :).

Lots more to write, about this trip, about divorces, tequilas, starbucks coffee, Karoke night, and hotel receptionist... but will do. Now to sleep.

The US dream...

As soon as I enter IIT, my dream was to head out of this country and go to US. All the fourth year students were doing the same, desperately trying to get to write SOPs, talking all the time about US. The mess tables were filled with stories about adventures and mis(s)-adventures of all desi babus in the US. Everything you heard looked great, US was great, India looked backward.

But I dont know somewhere down the line, as I finally reached my final year that urge completely died down, I did not want to go to US, and I think it was mostly because I did not want to stay away from my family, and I wanted to try myself at job first. But then bangy life since day one has been so happening that never really thought of going off to US.

But anyways, this new marketing job and I was all set to go to US for couple of weeks. So all this thoughts crossed my mind again, and yups I was set and excited to see this new country.

Nothing to write about flight and all, it was as normal and mundane as it is always, with the fake smiles of air hostesses (I really think that thier job is difficult), and small small packets of jam, sugar, and pepper really amuse me. They are much like used to have when we used to play Ghar Ghar as kids, just that they were not as elaborately packed as this ones.

Reach San Jose and there was this friend of mine who picked me up from Airport. And I was so impressed with the roads and all. And trust me he has such a lovely house, ample parking space, and a park and a golf course. I went inside and it had all the facilities, kitchen, hot water and everything. And it was so peaceful, I could sit there and read a book, could just go and heat something in micro wave and eat. All the technolgy for everything, life is as comfortable as it can ever get. I was wondering why dont I think of spending some part of my life in US. this place was fantastic...

But half and hour there, and I started missing something, I did not feel good about it, I was missing noise, and I was missing people on streets, and I was looking for some face to talk to, and it was not there. There was this whole feeling of loniliness that was creeping inside me. Nothing was looking interesting anymore. I did not want to call because I was on international roaming and further was sure most of the India was sleeping. So then I did what I could do best, open the lappy, connected to net, and was on Google Talk, and as always there were always couple of people to talk to :)

More later...
Laptop discharging and no power adapter and eyes full of sleep..

Once more Muziboo time...

The more I surf this website the more I love this, maybe basically because I love music, especially guitar, today since morning I have been sitting here, on my chair and just listening to the music posted, So I thought that I am going to put some of my favourites and you will surely like some of them..

Starting with the best song that I have seen on Muziboo... this is composed/sung by this girl called mimi... I dont know her but really loved it...




Then with this vocal from Prasanna....


Aadat... almost looks like real song..


Amazing vocals.. of a Rafi song



and Finally this "Dooba Dooba" on guitar... this song has always sounded great on Guitar..



Have a great weekend ahead..
:)

Delhi police website...

Recently I have found this story about Delhi Police lifting the complete website from Singapore, floating in Blogosphere.

So the story is that the Delhi Police website... which is called...
http://www.delhipolice.nic.in/

NDTV claims that the full website has been lifted up from the Singapore police website.

And early in morning I get a mail like this....

Subject: Dark side of Delhi police (Part of the mail below)
"
In 21st century, when Nations are using Internet as boom, Delhi Police cant
even get a simple website

Some of the “HOT” quotes from Delhi Police website. (followed by some mistakes on the website, which I find no necessity of putting them down here)


Read the complete striptease of website (and link pointing to NDTV article)

"

First I really dont understand what is the big deal if they copied website from Singapore police website. How does it matter? I guess everyone would agree that making websites is not the core competency of Delhi Police, they just want a place holder and fastest way to make things work. So they did the easiest thing to do. I think it is smart thing to do.

I am sure that there will be mistakes and they are going to sort them out. But I really appreciate Delhi Police initiative.


But more importantly than all this, I really don't understand why people take so much fun in criticizing and tearing apart things. I mean some of the comments on the NDTV article and the tone of the above mail for example are so bad.

It is like finding mistakes and letting someone down. I am not saying that you should not criticize, but I guess there is something like constructive criticism, "I think you it is really good, but I guess if you improve on this you will really make it brilliant ". And I really believe that even in most shabbiest of the efforts you will always find, something good to cheer, if you try to look with that attitude.

There are things that can make you feel good and there are things which can completely demoralize you. And I guess we all should make this choice carefully.

The mail early morning really put me off, and I really hate getting those kind of mockery filled, letting down emails.


PS: Actually I did look at the website and I think it is cool.... and should serve its purpose. And am also sure they are going to set all the small things all right.

Music Time..... Muziboo time...

Not very long ago, I was having this after dinner fatta session with Prateek and Nithya, and they were telling me about having a website where amateur music lovers could upload their music. And here goes six weeks, which I spent blissfully hanging about here and there, but these guys got the site up. And they call it Muziboo (I dont know why Muziboo, perhaps prateek will be able to comment on this).

Lemme explain what this site is in this way...

As Flickr is for Photography
As Blogger is for writing lovers

So is
Muziboo is for budding guitarists, drummers and any kind of music players...

So on Muziboo, you can upload your music, and it is visible to whole lot of people and many times you get quite useful comments, good/bad/praise/junk/crap and so on... similar to blogger and flickr. But for me the biggest thing about these kind of websites is that, (that is true for blogger as well), I really get to meet and talk with like minded people. Meet people with whom i can discuss music and probably even meet up for jamming.

I am not going to write what the website has and what not it does not have, this is not the review of website, you can take a look, it is easy to use, and has everything that any such website should have.

Hold hold before you go off... and if you have headphones... I uploaded some of my stupid music as well...



So if you are music lover, i guess you are gonna like this website... so take a peek. If you have any feedbacks on the website you can mail it to contact@muziboo.com

PS: This is not a paid marketing... :( . But as a last note, i wanted to write about this, because I guess lot of us keep talking, about doing this and doing that... but this guy talked about it, put fight and has almost bought this to completion... and he is a motivation for him... and he is Nike kind of guy for me... "Just do it" types...So way to go guys keep it up.

In the mess...

It happened again.... that sunday afternoon, I was again sitting in between the mess... yups the mess of my room... I had decided to clean it. And as everytime the same thing happened, I was sitting in middle of the room, with things scattered all around me, pencils, guitar notes, music sheets, hand written notes, shells, colours, cards, letters, marbles, pearls, coffee mugs .....



Everytime I invariably open up everything... and then it is like another journey down memory lane...



There is this badge that I have, which states, Class Representative, that was way back in 8th class and that badge was made by my heart throb then, and I had preserved it, because that is the only material thing that I have of her, and that was the time I had recently read treasure Island and it was my fantasy that I should go with her to some unknown place and stay there for rest of the life.



Then I have these guitar notes, scribbled sitting at 7:30 am class with our guitar teacher. This guitar sir, had a notebook, where he had written all the songs, and he used to ask us to copy, and his hand writing was no better than doctor's prescription, that was the ritual for first ten minutes of the class, and this one fine day we were doing "Hero" song by Enrique( at that time I had no knowledge enrique, and I used to think it was Henry K), and I could not believe that the song lyrics has the following line..

"Would you mind if I touched your hips??"

It was only later that I realized that it was suppossed to be "lips"...



I have this collection of shells, that I have gathered it from various beaches... I had this photo of miss xyz and me, really cute one on one of my first trips to goa...



This crayon picture that I drew of vani Vilas dam, which I visited while driving from Pune to Bangy, and the place was so beautiful, with dam, sorrounded by mountains, which had wind mills, and I did not have camera, and I had reached home and immediately drawn it, but later to realized that I suck at drawing and it was a great mistake that I used to ask my mom to finish my drawing books..



Letters of just when i entered college, (did not have any mail id then) stating that I was so impressed with the food in hostel, sambhar and idlis... :)



There was this piece of bandage, which someone had tied on my leg, when once in the middle of the wroking day, when I was stupidly running around in the parking, and I fell full flat face down, and dragged myself along the ground for couple of feet, like the way they fall in movies, and I badly hurt my knee, and tore my jeans as well...



Dairies, colours, lots of bits and pieces written on paper, love letters, hate letters, time pass letters, letters which never found that way to post office... and so on...



And by the time I am looking at all this, it is already late, and it is raining outside, and I feel like sleeping. So as always I just put all this in the box, or rather boxes, and doze off.

The boxes have only been increasing in number as I am have going all collecting and attaching the immense sentimental value to all this..
:D

Goli

PS: Have been off blogger for a while, but am going to be back with quite a few of posts soon..