People amuse me.. no they surprise me!

People always surprise and amuse me. I was reading the 7 habits of higly effective people. Stephen Covey gives a very humane incident that occurred while he was on train . A co passenger seemed unaware of his children’s boisterous and unruly behavior. The other passengers were shooting dirty looks at him and were exclaiming at his nonchalant attitude. This went on till the author drew his attention to his kids. The man apologized and went on to explain that his wife had just passed away and he was just not sure what to do with the kids. At once, the same people who were getting annoyed by the behavior of the kids now sympathized with the man.

The other day, I was traveling back home on the train. Being a peak hour, it was late and the train was crowded. We barely found places to sit. A couple of minutes after we started off , the train conductor came by to make sure everyone had place to sit and no one was standing unless absolutely necessary.

She found a woman prostrate, occupying two seats. She said “Ma’m, we need you to sit up”. The woman who was bundled in an old parka coat mumbled, “I’m not feeling too good. I am cold”. We were all watching the proceedings and were very surprised with the tone taken by the conductor. All our sympathies went to this poor lady who just didn’t seem too well. The train conductor refused to let go. In a polite but distant voice she said, “Ok ma’m I shall call the ambulance. They will meet us at the next station”. When we arrived at the next station, the ambulance was not there. We didn’t mind waiting as it was only humane to understand and sympathize with the sick woman. The ambulance got there a good 5 minutes after the train. The paramedics came in to check on the woman. That was the last the woman was going to get any sympathy. As she moved out, she left behind her a terrible stink that was most definitely due to at least 6 or more hours of constant alcohol consumption. She could barely stand straight let alone walk out. As soon as she left, the compartment was in an uproar. Everyone suddenly found the 5 min they lost waiting at the station too valuable. The shows they were going to miss, the start of the game that was going on that night etc.

No wonder people amuse me and surprise me. I’m not sure in which order though

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My Fav-- among the Calvin n Hobbes...

My stories can get pointless too...

When my mom starts with how things were in the good ol' days, I would wonder, did the years just slip past her...But today i realized that, poor thing must have felt a little overwhelmed at how fast life moves.Do we all get stuck in the same rut and refuse to move on with life.

Today I am very comfortable using a laptop... an ordinary one.. but put an Ipod in front of me...yeah I had an Ipod for approximately 30 days.

On the day it arrived, I was at work and all my colleagues called me the techie freak, and the gadget queen...I had just managed to figure out my digital camera. They all came over and ooohed and aahhhed over my video Ipod.. It was a proud me standing in front of my desk on which i had gingerely placed the black Ipod, so as to avoid getting it scratched. come 5:00 p.m , i was ready to go home ipod and all...so we reach home where I started my experimenting on it..
the first step was to install itunes..ahhh see that was not difficult because it was as simple as 1 2 3 : inserting the CD in my laptop--which i knew to work and install the software.

Once I got that done.. I felt very geeky... I was one step closer to listening to my songs on the go . Step 2 : port the songs to the ipod. I figured it should be as easy as plug and play...so that's what I did.. plugged in the Ipod and dragged and dropped the songs from my folder to the hard drive..(I was good to go...and I kept the ipod to charge) and got to bed with dreams of rocking like the cool punk kid who sat on the train next to me, with earphones stuck in his head and rock blasting at a volume that would have woken the dead. My dreams were all about how I got to show off my latest and funkiest ,maximum memory sized BLACK IPOD.

Next day morning, I got into the train and reached for my Ipod as I sat next to this kid... I could feel the kid's awwwww at the side of my neck as he craned to check my Ipod out. With a nonchalant attitude, I plugged my earphones in and the catastrophe striked... my menu didntshow any songs.. I turned the wheel right and I turned the wheel left.. then i turned it up and down again...and I pushed it...no use. The kid's awww turned to a smirk...

I resolved to go and figure out how to work my ipod. So I googled the google on the subject "Ipod for dummies" . Finally i got a document that lists out what I must do. So started working on that.. and tried creating albums. as soon as one album was created, the one i had created previously would mysteriously dissappear. the songs from one album would get into the new album. Finally i got the albums right.. now came creating playlist...i was ready to tear my hair out.. but was resisting the impulse, considering that the damage was going to be inflicted naturally anyway.

Finally I called Pratman and asked him how he did it... I guess even he had not figured it out (he got his ages before i got mine), since he gave me some vague answer... basically told me to do something that I allready knew. Realizing that he could hardly be of any help, I decided to hit the" Ipod for dummies "again.
I finally got my ipod configured 4 days after I got it. and then a month later of competing with the punk kid, as to the loudness of our respective pods, much to the disdain of the other passengers on the train, I gave my ipod up to my brother.
I was ready to smirk at how he was going to configure it ...he was at the computer faster than lightning and he had his own personal Itunes , playlist, albums and had also ported songs from mine in no time on the Ipod.....

So I guess we all have pointless stories at one point of life... it's when we find the right audience to tell these stories too, that we stop realizing how pointless they actually are...(to us not to our audience) and to some of us, who havent been blessed with that audience yet... we choose to force our readers to go through the pointless story..

Adios...

Today morning I was having dysania

My vocab has been on a deteriorating run ever since I reached the USA. I figured that abbreviations and chat lingo pretty much conveyed what I wanted to say. My conversations and writings would be amply scattered with words like 'urw', 'btw', 'gtg' ,'ttyl' ,'nm' or replaced sometimes by 'nvm' , 'np' ,'tc' .
For those who think I am rambling on... please start chatting immediately and you will be using these within no time.

This serious impairment to my vocabulary( rest assured people... I am referring to a dictionary while writing this) took its toll on me, when I found it difficult to write a simple office mail, without resorting to these abbreviations. My conversations were sprinkled with "seriously..." or "are you kidding me ?" These were used quite frequently over the day , to express all the nine rasas/emotions.

I realized that something needs to be done about this disorder. I need to use words that are more than three letters and if they were more than three letters not to abbreviate them. Everyday on my ride up to the 22nd floor of my office building, I have a exercise. The building management, provides news bulletins in the elevator, somewhat like a flicker and if i am lucky they show me the word of the day, and a sentence to use that word in. My exercise is to use this word in my day.. sometimes it leads to funny consequences.. but I keep at it....

So my word of the day is " dysania ". It means "having a hard time waking up"'
If i was left to my devices I would use the word lazy... but the motive here is to use good vocabulary.

So here goes my first sentence . "Today morning I was having dysania".

almost sounds like a disease. I like lazy!!!

Death is near

Death is behind U, just here as U see ;)

Lol.. today's headlines

I love to read newspapers... anything that i can get my hands on ... and i was amused at the stories that get into these papers...

Today morning as I was sipping my coffee and munching on my cereal bar and surfing throough my usual Gmail , orkut, and then news in no particular order...I come across something funny on rediff

Now, Aamir caught in chinkara case ...

and since anything to do with bollywood will catch my eye trained to look for tiniest piece of gossip from so far away..I read on..

"The department sent a notice on August 7 to his production team for filming the chinkara without its permission, forest officials said today."

from rediff so from this I inferred that Amir should have taken permission from the Chinkara to film it.

This puts all the zoo lovers in a quandry coz everytime you pick that camera up and train it on one of those animals.. you better have permission from it..


If Bollywood does that to me, I am waiting to pick up every string of news from the other end Hollywood

So while breaking my head over sudoku, i flipped the pages of my local newspaper and found the BranjelinaBrat..

Apparently a ringtone company is selling a ringtone that is (little gift from heaven's) Siloh's first fart...

So while the world is busy reading and judging the little kiddo... she coos in pleasure after having passed the first step to ladyhood...being quiet indiscreet about it!!

Adios...
will post more

Wisdom at Last!!

Nature is plaing havoc with me... thats coz.. whatever I do... the signs of maturity and wisdom just failed to show on me till today.

everyone looses their baby teeth... get their primary teeth and then their permanent ones.....Not me .. My primary tooth refused to go till i was 20..and the secondary tooth refused to come.. and now i am a toothless crony .

At work the other day some one asked me if I was interning..lol... was i still in school? ... no I am not...dont i look like someone who can go to work.. Now most women would take this as a compliment, and I am sure would be wishing that they were in my boots. Trust me it can get quite annoying when everytime you swipe a card, they ask for age identification.

Finally today I saw something that I have been looking forward to for a long time. My first grey hair..My passport to supposed wisdom, my license to tell kids.. i have experienced life.. and its not all that great...

oooohhhhhh goddd why in the world did I get my grey hair... Im getting old!!!

RANG DE BASANTI...

Oh I sawthis movie a couple of days back.. and it is so different from the movies that we see regularly these days. It brings a new brand of patriotism to the screen. Lately we have seen movies that have been inspired by independence and freedon fighters and especially the post independence wars. But none have brought home the feeling as much as this movie did.


I really loved the movie because its main theme ( apart from chronicling the lives of 4 freedom fighters) really touched me. I know that if I had to reenact a role of a freedom fighter.. I would probably start empathizing with the character and want to do something with my life that would make difference to atleast 1 other human being. There were so many parts in the movie that were great. The warmth the energy the joy in just being together...was brougt across so beautifully...The pain the escape the documentary...was shown very well... and i really wished that such a documentary was made. The MIG air crash and the scenes that followed it are very integral to the indian defence government.

My only complaint is with the climax and I just thought at the end of it... their efforts were in vain.

And let me be very frank. I wasnt impressed by the so called patriotic feelings that were aroused in the 4 boys of a university in delhi that prompted them to go and kill of a minister in the cabinet. That just shows how impulsive they got because at the end of the killings the tables turned and they were no longer heroes.

This is the way I would have liked to see the movie. By re enacting the four freedom fighters roles in Sue Mc kinney's movie, the four of them start introspecting about their role in India today and how they can make a differenc to the country and how they can change it...instead they dont see the importance of the contributions of these leaders till the death of their buddy. Ajay Rathore's sacrifice and death serves as an inspiration to change things and confront the government .

I have a lot of issues with the way the climax was handled because I lost track of what the director wanted to convey. When The MIG 21 scene came on... I was really ashamed and I started telling myself that there is no way that things are going to change in India. I agree that to change things you need to take action by yourself and running from pillar to post is not going to help at all. But to change a country .. you cannot do so by killing one fellow.. A thousand will stand up in his place. Though I dont agree much with the Gandhian principles, I found his strategy the most effective because the British were forced to succumb and bend to accomodate his wishes for the country and we got our freedom because of his and amny other people's sacrifices. They knew the power he commanded over people and the mass disapproval they would be met with if he was harmed.

if I could but rewrite the climax of this movie....

It is not who is right, but what is right, that is of importance."

Our ego will not let us admit to this ... we are all self made people and therfore it is very difficult to admit to someone that we are wrong. We find reasons for other people to be wrong . Our mistakes are always because of what went wrong and not what we did wrong.

I wonder how long we can keep up with this pretentious attitude where we are always right no matter what .

Most top level CEO's recognized this to be their biggest blunder and have rectified it to follow "what is right" and not who is right....

I have heard from a lot of friends who come to me and tell me how they were criticized and not respected enough for what they did. How the fact that their abilities and work were being critiqued by people who were not so qualified. It takes a lot of will power to stop myself from correcting them. When the ego comes into play it becomes so difficult to point out the facts..

Recognizing what is right is a very difficult process. We have to put ourselves on the judgement seat and it's not easy to laugh or criticize anymore. We have to ask our conscience whether what we did was wrong... it is very easy to say that whatever we do is right but to truly recognize our mistakes we have to be ready to take a hard beating.


Adios...


just wrote this piece because I came across the quote in my web clip on google mail ... you people should pay more attention to those clips... they contain a lot of valuable information...

English Grammar

Some English idiosyncrasies

Missing Words …

The female equivalent for brethren and fraternal used to exist.. and now are no longer used.

Brethren is known as brotherhood..So what about the good ol' sisterhood,

Well fear not there is a word sistren and Don’t bother looking it up in Microsoft word, you wont find it ( psst.. that’s because it’s English;)

How about fraternal love…Heard about sororal love

Have you noticed ?

3 consecutive letters are repeated? Try to think of another one!! Bookkeeper

Flammable and inflammable

Both mean the same.

Facetious. All the vowels follow each other in the same order

Now forming a word with the letter Q. Well in pure English there is just one word that does not have a “u” following a “Q”. the word is qwerty- the standard layout of typewriters and keyboards

Know what a contranym is?

I’m sure our study of antonyms and synonyms would not have thrown this one at us.A contranym is a word that has opposing meanings.

E.g.: Cleave: separate or cut with a tool “cleave the bone"

Cleave also means come or be in close contact with; stick or hold together and resist separation; cleave to one's principles

how about some punctuation?

Grammar school taught us that a comma before and was not acceptable, and we lapped it up. However we did use it and made huge mistakes in our tests. Here is good news and maybe you want to go back to school to get some well deserved marks from your grammar teacher.

Oxford comma: This optional comma/punctuation was introduced by oxford, the comma can used before and to clarify the sentence.

e.g

These items are available in black and white, red and yellow, and blue and green.

Well thats some food for thought... Post me some comments if you find some more

adios!

DC movies!

Today's post is going to be abt Dumb charades...I love to play this game and share this passion with a lot of my friends.

so today i did some research on the movies that can be every player's nightmare... you are welcome to suggest some movies and I shall maintain this list :)


Nightmares :
On the Edge: A Joyride Through Sex, Love and Other Activities
Crimes and misdemeanors
Curse of the Jade Scorpion
House of Sand and Fog
Mighty Aphrodite
Everything You always wanted to ask about sex but were afraid to ask.
Young Frankenstein
Ten Little Indians Theme
Sink the Bismarck
Harold and Kumar go to White Castle,
Weekend at Bernies
Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo

from Pratik
Posideon Adventure
Sex,Lies and Videotape
Omar Mukhtar
Von Ryan's express
Good Morning Vietnam
Terms of Endearment
They call me Trinity
I'm for the Hippopotamus
Taking of Pelham 1,2,3
Honey i Shrunk the Kids Again

Ill keep posting more as and when i think of some!

Miracles...

lets see... last week was dull, everyone was just getting done with the holiday cheer and instead of being rejuvenated they all had looks that could kill. Today I am all ready for the week, completely recharged and recouped from last week and the week before last and last year..woooosh. This energy level is probably going to last for just 1 day.

yesterday I happened to watch a Nicholas Cage, Bridget Fonda movie "It could happen to you".
now from what I saw yesterday i realized that probably i had become a cynic. The movie ran on the theme "Miracles can happen" . The story was about a new york cop who wins 4 million dollars in lottery and because he promised to tip a waitress half of it, if he won shares the money with her. Now obviously this didnt go well with the wife.. not because she suspected something,..but becasue she wanted all the money to herself.. I am not going to write the entire story here you can read it or watch the movie, but you get the idea. Well I was watching the movie with some friends and their reactions surprised me. They empathized with the lead characters and were ready to be dissapointed if the movie didnt have a happy ending, wheras I particularly didnt care much about it.

i think this attitued has come after being in the US for nearly 4 years. i used to have a very optimist outlook. I was sunny and bright and looked at life from rose tinted glasses.. where everything was happy. Now the rose tinted glasses dont have much appeal for me. I wonder if it happens as you grow up that your cynicsm levels increase or do personal experiences do it ?

I am also waiting for a miracle to happen!!!


Adios

What affected me today!!

As I write this today, I find myself at loss for words... for I don’t know how to put into words the sadness I feel. The first thing that I read today was how the 12 miners wrote letters for their family and loved ones... before the carbon monoxide lulled them to sleep. When I read the contents of the letters I imagined writing a letter to my family when i know that death is approaching fast... And there is nothing I can do to avert it... The thoughts that would run through mine... The ones that ran through their minds... so much to say. .. I would want to relive every single moment of my life all over again because I haven’t had enough...I would like to say bye to everyone I met and haven’t had a chance to know properly... patch things up with my best friend...and I cant write all that on one piece of paper. But they did!

In the midst of all that, there were reports that said the 12 miners gave their oxygen to the youngest amongst them so that he could survive... And that he did. Let us hope that he lives to tell their story, because I want to hear it, i know everybody wants to know what went on through them during the last moments. Their chief who carried the fountain pen that they all used must have been an amazing guy, for he wanted them to write their letters to their families. He must have had a hard job , to keep his and the morale of the others high...

What about the families who celebrated joyously when the heard that 12 of them survived...and then to hear the devastating news that their joy was in vain...

The other news that I read today was about the Prime minister of Israel...Mr. Sharon and how he is in a very critical state after nearly 3 surgeries to stop his bleeding. Though I haven’t followed the politics in Israel to a very large extent, i know that Israel was depending on Mr. Sharon to bring peace in that region. Acting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, though once was an adversary for Sharon, is now his closest ally and that speaks volumes for a person... a friend can turn foe, but turning a foe to a friend who respects you is the trait of some of the greatest leaders of the world.

The third piece of news that struck a chord in me is the review of the movie 15 Park Avenue by Aparna Sen. the review and the cast speaks volumes about the movie itself which deals with sensitive issues of schizophrenia. When someone you know is affected by a neurological disorder, though they lose their sense of reality, the people who suffer are the ones closest to them. They are daily in touch with the deterioration of the person in front of them. To see someone you love go through this decay, not able to recognize you, not able to function without you , yet push you away as a stranger , you have to be really strong....but you cannot identify with these issues if you haven't seen someone so.. or maybe the movie will help you to bring that reality closer... I hope it does.
Adios!