Soccer, Vivek and Diwali

Tuesday, October 24, 2006



On the eve of Diwali, Vivek got home flaunting a few shopping bags in hand and a huge SMILE on his face. As he unpacked them, I remained speechless with only the expression changing on my face. As he removed the wrapper on each of the boxes, he said ---


  1. Soccer shoes - Rs. 1xxx

  2. Soccer ball - Rs.1xxx

  3. Socks - Rs.xxx

  4. The shocked expression on my wife's face - priceless



'There are some things money can't buy. For everything else, there's Master Card. Sure Dude! Believe it or not, he went to bed that day with his soccer shoes on :)

The week that was and the week that will be...



After the emergency incident, all I have been upto the past few weeks has been sleeping and eating. By sleeping I mean, for a good 15 hours everyday at any corner of the house that has a couch or a bed and is cozy/comfortable and this place has a lot of them. I look FAT now and heavily pregnant with just 7 more weeks to go when Lil General will make an appearance. I hope he/she is patient enough to stay in until then. A lot of people who are not familiar with the Indian laws have asked me if I know what the gender of the baby is. I don't and it is illegal here to try and find out. Infact, either I or Vivek have to sign a form everytime I go for a sonography declaring we will not attempt to find the gender. From experience all the oldies I have met till now believe it is a boy..lets see.

I have a whole bunch of posts sitting in the draft stage and a couple of sites waiting to be launched. Amidst all the craziness that ensued over the past few weeks, the only work I got done was cancelling a whole lot of flight and train tickets and rebooking them and planning everyone's itinerary. What a fun thing to do. And then there was Diwali on the 21st. I stayed away from the fun part this year - watching Vivek and his friends bursting crackers for the better part of that evening. It was fun nevertheless. Pune this year though did not have its usual enthusiasm and festive spirit as rains played spoilsport. There will be another spell of blogging hiatus as I travel to Trichy this weekend.

Why Yahoo! Mail Beta is awesome?

Monday, October 23, 2006



I switched over to the new Yahoo! Mail Beta interface about 2 weeks back and I'm delighted! Here's why it is SO much better than Gmail:


  1. Interface: The interface is sleek and stylish. The overall look is styled on Outlook with a three pane window - list of folders on the left, messages on the top of the right pane and message preview pane at the bottom. It has nice fonts unlike the big glaring one in the standard interface.

  2. Speed:The speed is awesome. The speed with which messages are retrieved is commendable.

  3. Tabbed Interface:One can view multiple messages in different tabs. Double clicking a message opens it in multiple tabs. The Compose window now opens in its own tab. So you have access to the Inbox while composing messages. However what I don't like is the multiple tabs it opens up whenever a new message is sent. There should be a way of turning this off.

  4. Shortcut keys: "r" for replying to a message, "c" for composing a new message are some of the newly introduced shortcut keys. There are a whole bunch of them. In addition to this, the right-click context menus for Open, Print, Reply, Forward, Mark read/unread, Flag, Clear flag, Delete, is a welcoming new feature. Right clicking on the folder pane allows you to create a new folder. F2 works for editing the name of a folder..what more can one ask for?

  5. Organizing Messages:There are no menus available to "Move" messages from Inbox to a folder now. It took me a while to undo that habit and just get used to dragging and dropping the messages to the appropriate folder. One can also choose multiple messages and drag them into a folder.

  6. RSS Feeds: It is integrated into the Folder pane. The feeds themselves show up in the message window.



Yahoo! with its Mail Beta launch has pushed Web Mailing to a new level. It is upto Google now to see how better they can respond to this challenge. Google has always been the master in simple interfaces and easy user navigation but the current Gmail interface is far from a easy usable interface when compared to Yahoo! mail.

"The Machine" (Ferrari) lets down "The Man" (Schumacher) ?

Tuesday, October 10, 2006



In what was the most disappointing Formula 1 race ever, dreams of clinching the Eighth Championship title crashed for Schumacher after the second pit stop at the Suzuka Grand Prix. Can't help thinking if I jinxed it :( ? There is very little magic that Ferrari-Schumacher can pull off against the Renault-Michelin team at the last race of the season - the Brazilian Grand Prix. We HATE Alonso's smiling face and anything BLUE now.

Pregnancy emergency attended to just in time: A "Thank you" note

Thursday, October 05, 2006



The last 2 days have been pretty crazy. I was staying by myself with Vivek gone for a week to San Francisco. Parents as such were very worried as to how I will manage. Used to being by myself, I put up a brave front and was holding up well until things changed for worse on Tuesday evening. I discovered something strange (I would rather not go into the details of what it was..it is grouse for guys who will read it) and called up mom. Frantic as she always is, she urged me to visit the doctor. Surprisingly, my good neighbor thought there was reason to worry too and accompanied me to the doctor.

My doctor who is as cool as a cucumber always, asked me to report in immediately to the hospital despite it being not one of her regular visit days. She examined me and remarked "You got to get admitted right away!" Knowing her, this took me by surprise. I pleaded with her to go back home and return the next day as there was no family with me. She quipped that is reason enough that you stay here right now. A sonography followed by the admission process saw me in the hospital ward in the next 2 hours. Thankfully sonography turned out to be normal with Lil General all happy and kicking as always. So it must have definitely been something that I must have done - overexerting myself.

Numerous calls across the globe, plans changing in a few hours with mom deciding to fly in as early as she could which is this afternoon and Vivek coming in by tomorrow early morning ensued in the 2 hours that followed - this briefly describes the turn of events. Ironically, V sent more hours travelling (close to 80 hours) than the no. of hours he stayed at SFO and mom's willpower to make through this travel has sent me in a tizzy.

However, the reason I'm writing this post is because I was OVERWHLEMED by the support and hospitality of so many people - starting from my neighbor Radha/Sanjay who stayed overnight with me at the hospital, got me admitted, got food every 2 hours until Wednesday afternoon when I finally got discharged, despite their kids having exams. And then there were Vivek's friends Nasir/Yasmeen who were present for a good part of the day taking care of all the bureaucratic part that a hospital admission demands. And then there was Surya who just took me by surprise and dropped me home. Sid, Subu, Kshitij and all others who stood by..thank you all!

I know that a lot of people are going to be mad reading this post as the doctor allowed me to go home early if I took complete REST. But I owed this to everyone. This is one of the things I have been completely advised against doing --- getting stressed by spending hours on my projects which is totally not worth it!

This incident taught me one big lesson - I take family for granted but I shouldn't. And friends never ever for granted. None of the people whose names are written here know about this blog but maybe someday if they do, I just want them to know I was grateful. And on a lighter note, never leave a pregnant woman alone especially one who is upto antics like me!

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Why Schumacher is a class apart from Alonso?

Monday, October 02, 2006



Sid called up excitedly and said "Ma'am, are you watching the race? This is the best race ever. I mean ever." I wasn't. Thanks to an unscheduled power cut, I missed the entire race.

The Chinese Grand Prix proved who still rules the Formula 1 circuit - Ferrari and Schumacher! Only a man with nerves of steel, full of passion for racing, articulate driving skills and that connection with the machine can do what Schumi does. Racing never got better. With 2 more races to go, its going to be a nail biting finish. On second thoughts, I'm a little superstitious now and am contemplating if I should watch the ones at Suzuka and Brazil or not - so as not to jinx. When this is all done, we'll have a Ferrari party :)

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My new role - wafadar jamadar



Friday was my last day at work. Sometimes small gestures make you feel good and there were a few of them that day with the caterer at lunch offering me an extra bowl of that day's special dessert. Gosh! I wonder how much I was staring at the dessert..I have such a huge craving for sweets these days and I don't eat non-homemade food, but there is an exception to every rule. What can be a better way to please a pregnant woman. In all the day was eventless ..more on the corporate policies later.

I fit comfortably into my new role - wondering what that is? If there was one thing that V liked the movie Kabhi Alvida Na Kahna for, then it was because it gave him the term "wafadar jamadar" - an addition to his dictionary. He is at ease teasing me with this one...

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