Ten months back, one evening, my best friend, the dr. called me and gave me a surprise message - said that his wife was carrying. ( Whether it was an accident or a purposeful incident, is yet to be known though !! :) )
Ten months later, millions of pick-up-bhabhi-in-the-car-errands later, he called last night around 2:37 AM to tell me the wonderful news. I am an uncle of a sweet nice young boy!!!! The boy was born on 1:03 AM at Hyderabad.
I looked at the phone today morning after i woke up just to ensure that it was not a dream. God knows we've been waiting for this news for so long and i wanted to ensure that this was not a illusory culmination of hope and optimism! But there the call listing was and i called the happy dad, hungry for more details... The boy does not have so much of hair, has long fingers, and with a nose like his dad's ( Needless to say, thats the most noticeable characteristic in the dad too ha ha )
I wish i could have been in Hyderabad to be with him this wonderful moments as much as i am sure i would want all of us to be with me when this moment comes for me. Anyways, am happy to know that god has blessed them with a boy without any ceasarian operations. The initial date mentioned by dr.s were the 22nd of May. and for a week, every day passing by without labour pains, we were moving one inch closer to ceasarian. But there is, apparently, one middle step before th ceasarian. The medical inducing of the labor pains and the lady succumbed after 3 rounds of inducing, i understand. In the dr's view point, the lady is definitely not as frail as she looks :):):):)
Anyways, am an uncle now. Guess it is time for me to settle down too :) ( hope my mother does not read this !! :) )
Sunday, May 29, 2005
Saturday, May 28, 2005
The Great Wall of Chennai! :)
Centuries ago, the Chinese built the Great Wall of China. Centuries later, "Great Wall of Chennai" was built. Pretty similar to the original wall, this new wall runs thorugh the length and breadth of the city. The Chinese built the wall around their world, and we built our wall all through the city. Although not visible from the moon, the wall is quite visible from any road in Chennai. Snaking right through the centre of the roads of Chennai is a about 3 feet tall "wall" that divides the traffic into "going there" and "coming here" streams.
I miss those ledo styled concrete stones that were kept in long lines right in the middle of the roads. They were so much more active and so much more nearer to our life! Over any given length of the Chennai roads, they would appear out of nowhere and then disappear as abruptly as they had appeared. I think, the traffic wardens use complex algorithms based on solar and lunar positions to identify the exact location where they should start the concrete block based medians, where they should end it and also the the line that they should be laid on. That the line has no apparent relation with the roads width makes my beliefs more confident! And didnt we love its flexibility? If the stones were placed in the location where we wanted to tak a right turn, we could just stop our vehicle , move the stones out of the way and create an intersection right there! Whic other place in the whole world provides such easily customisable, such end user friendsly and such flexible traffic management system? And instead of appreciating the same, we destroyed the system!
I also miss those rollable steel structures that were used as slightly higher movable traffic medians. Apart from providing the same advantages as the ledo concrete blocks based traffic divurgance, they also provided amazing advantages in creating the speed blocks with maximum ease. They are like the shirts which can be worn both ways.. Come the hustle bustle of the day, and you could place this huge structures in the middle of the road parallel to the road and they would be your friendly traffic divulger. Come the peace of night, and you could rotate these structures at right angels to form the wide, speed barriers that cover almost the whle breadth of the road and make u mandatorily reduce speed.
I have heard that the London museum has an Autorickshaw in display. I think that we should have these flexible modular traffic management systems also displayed there. After all this invasion by this 3 feet wall has made these systems extinct from our lives! And i wonder what we have accomplished with this non movable system. But the great mind behind this construction had not stopped working. It hadnow found a way to use the wall top! There were water lines places all through out this median, soil was placed on them and attempts were done to grow shrubs and flowers on these walls. The first time i drove to office seeing this, there was a small smile on my lips, no not of satire, but of a small dream that i thought was finally coming through. Imagine being able to drive through chennai with a green shrub right next to you all through the roads! incredible, doesn't it sound? The sight of couple of guys actually fixing the hoses on the water taps and actually spending time irrigating these vegetation sprouts showered my dreams with more hope and more optimism. Another thing that dawned on me was that we wouldn't have to worry about people running helter skelter across roads now and we could drive in much more ease!
Time and the endless spirit of the Chennai people was soon to prove me wrong. The will power of Indians are not something that could be curbed by this small wall. Soon people resumed their normal life. They still cross the roads where they want to, just that instead of stepping over the concrete stones or slipping through the steel beams, they started to climb over the great wall of Chennai. And, so life is back to normal in hennai. Driving was as difficult as ever, the vegetatation on the great wall, an excuse for greenery and people still cross the roads where they want to!
Today morning, when i was coming out of the stainz away laundry, i saw two kids standing at this side of the road, with a confused look on their face, looking atraight across the roads. When i followed their gaze, i was slightly taken aback. There was this guy on a motor bike who was standing on the other side of the road, close and aligned to the great wall, ( parked int he middle of a busy road) gesturing these kids to run across the road, scramble on the great wall and then curt across the road to meet him. Lets look at the audacity of this guy - He himself was stationarily parked on his bike in the middle of the road, and was teaching the young minds to cross the roads where they want, instead of asking them to come round.
I think we should grow cactus on these embankments all around the city. It would serve two purposes, one- would save the water that is being sprinkled on the excuse of shrubs every day and two, it would atleast visually discourage the indians who look at the wall not as a hurdle but as a challenge!
One thing is for sure. We find newer ways to encourage our creativity. I am sure there are a lot of us who have creatively found out new ways of crossing over the great wall and i guess, at the botto of it all, it is this undying spirit that makes India what it is. The most potential and yet undisciplined country that the world has :(
I miss those ledo styled concrete stones that were kept in long lines right in the middle of the roads. They were so much more active and so much more nearer to our life! Over any given length of the Chennai roads, they would appear out of nowhere and then disappear as abruptly as they had appeared. I think, the traffic wardens use complex algorithms based on solar and lunar positions to identify the exact location where they should start the concrete block based medians, where they should end it and also the the line that they should be laid on. That the line has no apparent relation with the roads width makes my beliefs more confident! And didnt we love its flexibility? If the stones were placed in the location where we wanted to tak a right turn, we could just stop our vehicle , move the stones out of the way and create an intersection right there! Whic other place in the whole world provides such easily customisable, such end user friendsly and such flexible traffic management system? And instead of appreciating the same, we destroyed the system!
I also miss those rollable steel structures that were used as slightly higher movable traffic medians. Apart from providing the same advantages as the ledo concrete blocks based traffic divurgance, they also provided amazing advantages in creating the speed blocks with maximum ease. They are like the shirts which can be worn both ways.. Come the hustle bustle of the day, and you could place this huge structures in the middle of the road parallel to the road and they would be your friendly traffic divulger. Come the peace of night, and you could rotate these structures at right angels to form the wide, speed barriers that cover almost the whle breadth of the road and make u mandatorily reduce speed.
I have heard that the London museum has an Autorickshaw in display. I think that we should have these flexible modular traffic management systems also displayed there. After all this invasion by this 3 feet wall has made these systems extinct from our lives! And i wonder what we have accomplished with this non movable system. But the great mind behind this construction had not stopped working. It hadnow found a way to use the wall top! There were water lines places all through out this median, soil was placed on them and attempts were done to grow shrubs and flowers on these walls. The first time i drove to office seeing this, there was a small smile on my lips, no not of satire, but of a small dream that i thought was finally coming through. Imagine being able to drive through chennai with a green shrub right next to you all through the roads! incredible, doesn't it sound? The sight of couple of guys actually fixing the hoses on the water taps and actually spending time irrigating these vegetation sprouts showered my dreams with more hope and more optimism. Another thing that dawned on me was that we wouldn't have to worry about people running helter skelter across roads now and we could drive in much more ease!
Time and the endless spirit of the Chennai people was soon to prove me wrong. The will power of Indians are not something that could be curbed by this small wall. Soon people resumed their normal life. They still cross the roads where they want to, just that instead of stepping over the concrete stones or slipping through the steel beams, they started to climb over the great wall of Chennai. And, so life is back to normal in hennai. Driving was as difficult as ever, the vegetatation on the great wall, an excuse for greenery and people still cross the roads where they want to!
Today morning, when i was coming out of the stainz away laundry, i saw two kids standing at this side of the road, with a confused look on their face, looking atraight across the roads. When i followed their gaze, i was slightly taken aback. There was this guy on a motor bike who was standing on the other side of the road, close and aligned to the great wall, ( parked int he middle of a busy road) gesturing these kids to run across the road, scramble on the great wall and then curt across the road to meet him. Lets look at the audacity of this guy - He himself was stationarily parked on his bike in the middle of the road, and was teaching the young minds to cross the roads where they want, instead of asking them to come round.
I think we should grow cactus on these embankments all around the city. It would serve two purposes, one- would save the water that is being sprinkled on the excuse of shrubs every day and two, it would atleast visually discourage the indians who look at the wall not as a hurdle but as a challenge!
One thing is for sure. We find newer ways to encourage our creativity. I am sure there are a lot of us who have creatively found out new ways of crossing over the great wall and i guess, at the botto of it all, it is this undying spirit that makes India what it is. The most potential and yet undisciplined country that the world has :(
Saturday, May 21, 2005
The rule of four !!!
Am trying to download the Windows XP SP2 - With nothing much to do while the bits stream through to my computer, thought i could tap some energy onto my keyboards!
Been reading the apparent international best seller 'The Rule of Four'. And what an endurance test this has been! The rule, apparently streaks the story of a set of four guys who are, voluntarily or involuntarily, caught in the middle of unravelling of a mystery shrouded in a secret old book. Sounds familiar ? yes sah - we are in another mystery which is hidden in our plain views in a book.
The book name - an unpronouncable name a la a biological specimen name - something to do with hysteria or Hypnotism - i still cant get the name here! The book has a myraid set of codes that need to be broken for you to be led to a secret treasure. sounds interesting ??? Dont even think about it! The novel somehow is able to mingle the veryyyyyyyyyyyyy (yawn) dull story of four college students and their life in a college ( yawn ) with one of them miraculously ( the word that much befits the situation than the word that the author has used - intelligently ) arriving at those multiple codes that can break the cryptic message in the book.
I have never forgotten the first rule of consulting and contact mgmt - "identify a personal link with the person whom u want to make contacts with" It is always good to have a anchor point. I guess the same relates to a book too. That is what i am able to attribute to the Da vinci code too. The success of the book not only lies in those wonderful cryptic brain teasers, but also in the fact that they existed in commonplace artifacts - something that we are all aware of. Now try moving the same set of clues to a book that u have never even heard of - does the charm remain ? at least for me, nope, it does not. For we am not able to identify ourselves with the book. Hence th book moves from "how-come-i-never-noticed-it" wonder to "oh-okay" acceptance.
This is what happens to the Rule of four too. So what if a book called hypnter..... ( i still cant remember the name) which talks about the love of poliphilio and polia has some cryptics in it? Oh-okay so it does exist. Even with this lac of identification, the book stil could have got into a tight thriller, had the authors kindly let us out of the humdrum existence of the four college students. Can u imagine writing whole chapters about how a characters parents lived and dies when that has not much to do with the main story line.
I have not yet compelted the book. And since i have started it, i do have to finish it too and i will grovel thorugh the whole endurance, definitely! For me, reading the book is like watching a mega serial - you can skip entire chapters an still not lose anything from the story !! :):):)
Been reading the apparent international best seller 'The Rule of Four'. And what an endurance test this has been! The rule, apparently streaks the story of a set of four guys who are, voluntarily or involuntarily, caught in the middle of unravelling of a mystery shrouded in a secret old book. Sounds familiar ? yes sah - we are in another mystery which is hidden in our plain views in a book.
The book name - an unpronouncable name a la a biological specimen name - something to do with hysteria or Hypnotism - i still cant get the name here! The book has a myraid set of codes that need to be broken for you to be led to a secret treasure. sounds interesting ??? Dont even think about it! The novel somehow is able to mingle the veryyyyyyyyyyyyy (yawn) dull story of four college students and their life in a college ( yawn ) with one of them miraculously ( the word that much befits the situation than the word that the author has used - intelligently ) arriving at those multiple codes that can break the cryptic message in the book.
I have never forgotten the first rule of consulting and contact mgmt - "identify a personal link with the person whom u want to make contacts with" It is always good to have a anchor point. I guess the same relates to a book too. That is what i am able to attribute to the Da vinci code too. The success of the book not only lies in those wonderful cryptic brain teasers, but also in the fact that they existed in commonplace artifacts - something that we are all aware of. Now try moving the same set of clues to a book that u have never even heard of - does the charm remain ? at least for me, nope, it does not. For we am not able to identify ourselves with the book. Hence th book moves from "how-come-i-never-noticed-it" wonder to "oh-okay" acceptance.
This is what happens to the Rule of four too. So what if a book called hypnter..... ( i still cant remember the name) which talks about the love of poliphilio and polia has some cryptics in it? Oh-okay so it does exist. Even with this lac of identification, the book stil could have got into a tight thriller, had the authors kindly let us out of the humdrum existence of the four college students. Can u imagine writing whole chapters about how a characters parents lived and dies when that has not much to do with the main story line.
I have not yet compelted the book. And since i have started it, i do have to finish it too and i will grovel thorugh the whole endurance, definitely! For me, reading the book is like watching a mega serial - you can skip entire chapters an still not lose anything from the story !! :):):)
Thursday, May 19, 2005
Been to Bangalore
Been to Bangalore, these three days. Was a part of a training programme for PM. The training methodology used was pretty interesting. A book was given to us, with a lot of blanks and a lot of portions where we had to fill in with our writngs.
Of course, we being what we are, we had our own reservations in being forced to write to fill in the blanks. The fill ins were not a test, but were actual test material which we had to pfill in as the trainer lectured. Pretty interesting it turned out, as finally, i realized that the retenstion factor was extremely high in that mode of teaching. Was able to answer the questions of the quiz without refering the book at all. Pretty amazing!
Lots more to write.. guess i wud leave that for tomorrow.
PS: Btw, am reading The rule of four. More of an endurance test for me !! :(
Of course, we being what we are, we had our own reservations in being forced to write to fill in the blanks. The fill ins were not a test, but were actual test material which we had to pfill in as the trainer lectured. Pretty interesting it turned out, as finally, i realized that the retenstion factor was extremely high in that mode of teaching. Was able to answer the questions of the quiz without refering the book at all. Pretty amazing!
Lots more to write.. guess i wud leave that for tomorrow.
PS: Btw, am reading The rule of four. More of an endurance test for me !! :(
Monday, May 16, 2005
The first one!
Okay - After seeing countless heads getting drowned in the tap tap of the keyboard for penning in the blogs - am here too - to the hyper virtual space, where anything can come in - but nothing can go out.. Black hole, move over, you are about to be burst!!
"Lasciate Ogne Speranza, Voi Ch'intrate"For all of us lesser mortals, that was Dante, and what he wanted to say was :)
"Abandon all hope, ye that enter here!"
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