You ask why? Empty office, colleagues on holiday, no persisting requests, no dozen-meetings-a-day, not many deadlines whizzing past.

Everything has slowed down. Just for one week, but still. I love this week! People should take more holidays like this, I say.

“You’re the average of the five people you hang out the most with.”

One bit of internet wisdom that makes a lot of sense :)

Think about it; Who are the five people you spend most of your time with? And if you were an average of the five of them in intelligence, experience, maturity, coolness, enthusiasm, motivation and most of all, happiness, will it make you proud of yourself?

It has been particularly true at many stages of my life. Sometimes I have been ahead of the average, sometimes behind; but I guess the curve smooths out over time.

Choose your friends wisely. Choose your enemies with even more discretion. And save the best for those few people you love.

Hat-tip, Anshul.

Best Diwali and the best birthday I have had in a long, long time. Did not have the time nor the inclination to write about them. Some things are left unsaid because they are too special.

But this is a note, for posterity. To look back and smile at how these days were made unforgettable by two special people in my life :)

Dilbert creator Scott Adams on some reasons why the economic slowdown is good in certain ways; I especially liked the one below:

I remember driving home in 1989 and thinking I had a flat tire because the car went all wobbly. I pulled over and discovered that my tires were fine; the earth was moving. It was the Loma Prieta Earthquake, and I soon discovered my apartment in shambles. But a funny thing happened.

All of my neighbors were outside, stunned. We talked. We shared stories. We bonded. It was a strangely good time. And I felt connected to people at a deeper level than ever before. Shared disaster does that.

A shared disaster brings people out in the open, out of their comfort zones, gets them talking, and makes them know a bit more about each other that they did not discover before.

Happened with us on campus too. Mashed by force and by situation, we were business school students who had lots of time with each other; but still most of us were huddled in our own rooms with Gtalk / MSN / Yahoo / whatever chat program we used and we continued to hang on to whatever few friends we had for dear life.

It took the ‘Russian salad’ incident (food poisoning), the summer placements and INDEX preparations to get us out in the open, and these shared experiences are some of the best memories of L that I carry. br /br /Also one of the reasons why I love the selling line of Smirnoff: “Life is calling, where are you?”. Our generations needs some more face to face interaction. We sometimes forget how much fun that can be.

Random conversation:

HN [6:22 PM]:

am chatting with a friend

HN [6:22 PM]:

and just realised

HN [6:22 PM]:

in midst conversation

HN [6:23 PM]:

ppl keep saying bhais ke aage
been mat bajao

NN [6:23 PM]:

what what…

HN [6:23 PM]:

bt thts wht lord krishna used to
do

HN [6:23 PM]:

day in day out

NN [6:23 PM]:

hahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

NN [6:23 PM]:

 ROTFLMAO

HN [6:24 PM]:

interesting lifestyle i must say

NN [6:24
PM]:

hehe

NN [6:24
PM]:

ur cute

HN [6:24 PM]:

dude

HN [6:24 PM]:

lord krishna‘s cute

NN [6:24 PM]:

hehe…that tooo

HN [6:24 PM]:

defying convention and
proverbial wisdom right when he was a child

HN [6:25 PM]:

some old hag mustve told him, ‘never try to lift mountains with ur little finger‘

NN [6:25 PM]:

hehe….stupid
png‘er …dont make nice joke
technical

HN [6:25 PM]:

and he was like, screw u

NN [6:25 PM]:

hahaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa

NN [6:25 PM]:

oh fuck ! i just
actually laughed out so loud !!

NN [6:25 PM]:

ppl starin at me

HN [6:25 PM]:

 

NN [6:25 PM]:

plz plz put this
on your blog !

Niki, here it is :)

Don’t know what to gift a dear friend for his / her birthday? Thinking of buying an expensive shirt / perfume / watch which might never be used?

How about spending exactly the same amount of money, and gifting a donation? How about using the money you would’ve spent for a momentary pleasure to sponsor a year’s education of an underprivileged child, lets say?

I am not going to exalt the merits of charity or advantages of doing good to the society. Some like to do it, some don’t care. People should be fine either way. But for those who like to contribute, and especially for those who have friends who would appreciate such a gesture, there is www.Giveindia.org.

Very simple in design, takes a minute to create an account, and you can choose different causes to donate; old people, children, education, upliftment, food, water, rehabilitation etc. Choose your cause, enter your amount, and gift the donation to someone dear. My favorite choice is Children’s Education; you can choose your favorite from the many options available.

How is this different from the thousand other charity websites out there? First of all, Giveindia is just a portal, a funnel or a filter that makes sure money reaches the right hands. It is also an NGO (or so I think) but it validates and verifies all NGOs associated and registered with it. And the abundance of choice and ease of transaction add to the experience.

Give it a try. Giveindia.

Pass on the word. Mail or share with the icons below.

I realise, I am a sucker for change. I get bored too easily, and I am always looking for what’s next and what’s new. Not in everything I do, but definitely in things I’m passionate about.

Music, web design, books, quotes, even people. If I find it interesting, I consume voraciously, and before I know it, I want more. And I want something different.

Flippant? I don’t know. Maybe. As Horsie put it, ‘Tu manager nahi, artist aadmi hai be’. I get tired of doing something that isn’t stimulating enough. God knows where this will lead me to.

Anyhew. Point being, I changed my blog theme. Again. I like this one, I must say; at least for now. Has a clean feel to it, lot of customizable areas, I can be creative (changing headers, a third widget space above sidebars, easily codeable navigation bar). Hopefully will stick with this one for longer.

Gaa!

Too much work, too many things happening at the same time, lots of internal team changes, shifting responsibilities, and a limited quota of 24 hours a day. Recipe for utter chaos.

Hopefully things will be better by end of August. Until then, someone pass me some Chyawanprash, Glucon D and a can of orange juice.

Yawn.

It’s been a year in Singapore. One very eventful, enriching, happening year where I learnt a lot, made many friends and most importantly, opened my mind in ways more than one.

More of all that later. Just recalled the musical events that I was fortunate enough to catch in the past year:

Kailash Kher: Live in Concert. What a voice, and what an attitude. “People ask me why I do not have extras and dancers in my concerts. I’m here for my music, I just want my music to do the talking. And that will get me my fans and admirers.” Touche!

Dream Theatre: The doyens of Progressive Metal. With the best drummer in the world (No one handles double bass better than Portnoy) and one of the best guitarist (Petrucci) and bassist (Myung), this band that has its genesis in Berklee College of Music is an experience, live. (I hate the lead singer though. Sounds like the bastard child of a tom-cat and a banshee. Anyhew.)

Mandolin U Srinivas: Boy oh boy! The god of Carnatic Mandolin was here. And he was divine. Period. The ragams are a part of him now, they run in his veins. And his fingers do more than his bidding, to say the least. Never heard Carnatic ragams jump out and tease my ears as I did that evening.

Shubha Mudgal: Whatay voice! And this wasn’t even her belting out raags. Just plain old Surdas and Meera Bhajans. But splendidly delectable, every one of her songs.

Harini: A regular concert, nothing too impressive. But good, nevertheless.

Hyderabad Brothers: Enna tavam (Kapi) still gives me goosebumps.

We Will Rock You: Have already written about this mother of all concerts here. ‘Nuf said :)

(2 votes, average: 3 out of 5)

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I usually don’t blog about food or my foodie outings, but this Saturday was an exception. A fricking mindblowing stomach gratifying monster of an exception.

Let me put things in perspective. A week of ok-ish food, and a very early and miniscule dinner on Friday evening left me with a craving for a good meal, desi-style on Saturday morning. (North-Indian, South-Indian, whatever-Indian. Doesn’t matter). And when two of my friends made a plan to go restaurant-hopping in Little India in search for a good meal, I was already smacking my lips and heading right to nearest taxi stand.

After a mistaken try at a shabby restaurant named Gokul (not worth going into details, let me jump to the more important parts here), we sauntered into this quiet south Indian place named Madras Woodlands. Not too much of a groundbreaking name, I’d say, but the food was oh-my-gawd awesome! All of us hungry souls straightaway went for the unlimited meals, and we were in session.

A tangy start with a vettha-kozhambu (spicy and hot sambar variety), with veggies, appalams (popadams) and steaming rice to boot, followed by the mullangi (radish) sambar cooked to the right tenderness; then came the fragrant rasam and more mounds of rice. The grand finale was when after a nice bowl of payasam I was just digging into my curd rice, and the waiter came and dropped mor-moloagais (chilli peppers soaked in buttermilk, dried and then fried). By god, that was a stroke of genius! and I’m totally sold on the restaurant.

After the humongous lunch, we all had to go back and rest for the afternoon. The food had gotten the better of us, and we all woke up and decided to meet for, wait for it, here it comes, a dinner meal :D

This time it was Gult food at Sankranti. The restaurant had opened only two weeks before, and since the four of us were in mood for experimentation, we repeated the sauntering and ordering of four unlimited meals. And this time, it was full steam, hot and spicy Andhra fare, no holds barred. Each one of us topped about seven courses: Masala rice, followed by Gongura, Allam, Podi (Gunpowder plus ghee), Pappu (dal), Charu (Andhra rasam), Perugannam (curd rice). After stacking empty plates and cups, we polished the meal off with a mango and left the poor waiter and manager in wide eyed bewilderment. (I’m lovin it!)

Even though none of us had the energy nor the inclination to even move after that meal, the experience was worth every morsel of rice that we demolished. To those who planned to have pizza / noodles / chinese indian / naan sabji on that day, can please go sit on their respective thumbs and watch us dig into another mound of rice. Or join in.

Next weekend, destination Mumbai Makaan and its steaming vadapavs. Yum!

p.s: Also caught a gult movie after the double meal ordeal (just for the heck of it), which was called Vivaha Bhojanam (Marriage Food) and hence the title of this post. Quite a befitting end to the day, I say!

[image source: www.sailusfood.com]

(7 votes, average: 4.71 out of 5)

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