Glorious 2009

I made a big blunder on the 1st day of 2009. We had celebration at home and paid a visit to near by temple. On New Year one of friends had requested me to teach key board. I was little hesitant and was absolutely not willing to teach him. I felt very bad at the start of 2009. I had several reasons for saying "NO" to him but my mind still haunted for the fact that I was not helping or allowing my friend to learn something new. It was wrong on my part to thump the interest of my friend. I really didn’t mean to discourage him, but I didn't feel like teaching something in which I am just a novice player. It would be unfair on my part to say “Yes" to him when I have already denied many others request. This incident somehow troubled me a lot this year.

2009 New Year started with mixed feelings. As days passed by all my wishes came true. I was longing to be a part of USTA and FMSC, 2009 opened the doors to such opportunities. I got in touch with my old pals through Orkut, Facebook and Twitter. I am back to my friends circle now. I made lots of new friends this year through toastmaster, tennis, festival potlucks and annual party. I accomplished my goal of completing 10 speeches in TTM. Job wise I was bit satisfied for jumping from technical side to business side. This year I certainly added few good habits to my routine life in 2009.

on the flip side I still haven't focused much on my weak areas. I have only progressed 10% from the initial plan that I had for the year 2009. My health was very badly affected this year. Eye scratch during skiing, thumb smash while closing the car door, cold, fever, and finally pink eye.
Was I really happy the whole year? Is still a question mark? I have an unquenched thirst for something in life, not sure when I will accomplish the same. In spite of all obstacles, I should learn to be happy at least in 2010.

Every year I have the habit of writing down my New Year resolution and goals in the diary gifted by my parents or grandparents. From last year I have been storing my resolutions and goals online and mailing across to my close friends, who keep track of my progress. This year too I would follow the same trend. I have lot more commitments and responsibilities, hope things would favor me in the coming year.

Wish you all a splendid new year filled with new challenges and exuberance.

Highway highlights

I came to know lot about numbering system of highways from one of my friends. The highways running from east to west are in general numbered even and the ones extending from south to north are numbered odd. On what basis the numbers were classified as 494,694 etc and he explained lot more about highways. Facts about highway system were today’s highlight. I will delve on this topic sometimes later, for now I am just having it as a placeholder.

Halt at Home

I had to work from home today to avoid spreading of my infection to others.
Applied eye drops at regular intervals and my vision seemed to have improved.

Pink Eye

My day was little bad, I messed up things here and there. Only thing I got done today was my eye check up. I was in a dilemma whether to visit the doctor or not. Finally made up my mind to pay a visit to know what caused my eye to swell, redden and cry.

My appointment got delayed by 20 minutes and I skimmed through few magazines during my wait time in the hospital. My name was called at 5.45 P.M. I first had to go through a reading test. I couldn't read any of the medium sized letters from a short distance. Couple of week’s back I was able to read the same during my annual eye check up. I was shocked to know that something screwed up my vision completely. The doctor flashed lights from different directions and finally concluded that my eye was affected with Conjunctivitis viral infection, which is usually referred as Madras eye or Pink eye.
He said well you visited a doctor; otherwise you would have spread this infection to everyone in the office premises. He prescribed a eye drop and asked me to apply regularly for seven days.

What I thought was a small trouble in my eyes, would have affected a bigger group if unexamined. I didn't regret much for missing my tennis practice session yesterday, not sure to how many people I would have passed on this contagious infection.

Scary Flashback

We gathered for one of our friend’s birthday today evening at 6 P.M. We experienced usual face painting with birthday cake, chit-chat, ragging and group photo sessions. There was one of our little friends who spoke nothing and maintained silence for more than an hour. Our friend ignored to talk, smile or play. I was only curious to know why he was not mingling well with everyone in the party. His mother narrated a scary flash back that happened with him few years ago. It looks like our little friend in one of the birthday parties was tortured in absence of his parents. Our little friends hair was pulled, his eyes were touched with fingers and don't know what else happened with him. He was mentally affected from then on. It is little weird to even imagine such things in such a tender age. Now I totally understand for his taciturn reaction to people in such parties. He slowly opened up at the end of the party. Felt happy for his recovery. Few dreadful incidences leave irremovable stains in our minds.

I can recall lot of incidences that I had undergone when I was a kid. This incident lingers in my mind quite often. I was afraid of water and was still put in swimming classes. After 10 days of basic training one had to dive from the spring board. I was extremely afraid to do so and in between the class I ran towards my mother and hugged her. My sir pulled me back to the spring board and in a second he pushed me from the board. I closed my eyes, opened my mouth and didn’t realize that I was sinking in the 15 feet swimming pool. Usually people after they dive they come back in few seconds and there was no sign of me returning back to the surface of water. Suspiciously my sir dived in, to see what was happening with me, I was almost about to touch the ground of the pool. He pulled my hair and got me back to the surface of the pool. From then, I have a strong aversion for swimming though I love to play in water these days.

Disturbed Eye

Not sure what got into my right eye today evening. My eye started to redden and it is itching even after splashing plenty of cold water. I am unable to browse or strain my eyes as it is watering and disturbed.

Police and Robber

We watched Monsters vs. aliens’ movie while having our lunch. There was a small interruption with someone's phone call. The good part of this call was we got a chance to view few creative crayon pictures of my friend's niece. The crayon picture only reminded me of my first drawing lessons. I don't have a record of what I drew when I was a kid, but for sure this generation has the provision to save the pictures online and refer back.

During dinner my friends were planning to play some funny games and there were little opposition for couple of games. After filtration of several games we decided to play police and robber. Nowadays I have an aversion to food, not sure why. I was sure that I would take more than 30 minutes to complete my dinner. I asked my friends to play something meanwhile. My friends decided to play Uno card game. My friends completed four rounds and I joined them in the fifth round. I touched the Uno cards for the first time. People helped me in understanding the rules of the game. It took bit long to complete the game. Immediately after the termination of the game, we started playing Police and Robber game. We played more than seven rounds and I always landed up being a police or a robber. I am proud that I spotted the robber correctly at least once.

I am becoming young everyday recalling and playing such funny games.

SnowMan

Call it a perfect snow day. The trigger to play in the snow came from my friends visit to our house. The phrase "played in snow" kindled lot of things in me. I was eagerly waiting to break at 6.30 P.M. Immediately I pulled my roommate and called few friends. We gathered in the yard. It was so much of fun creating the snow man. We threw snow on each other. I had a feeling of being at school this day. I felt as if I was playing with my friends on the sea shore. We had few clicks of our snow man and our group. Day was ultra cool.

Never Ending

We had a gathering of seven people at home for dinner. I was the last one to join them for dinner after my long offshore call. One of my friend was proposing some plans for his kid's education during our dinner time. Many of us differed a little from his futuristic educational plan for his kid. Each of us tried to express our true opinion and thoughts to justify that, studying in high profile school alone was not sufficient to learn the lessons of life. We argued for more than one hour about the educational system and the pains each of us underwent during our school days. Later our conversation churned in different directions and we touched upon GDP, GDH and progress parameters of each country. Everyone was very involved in the debate that none of us seemed to bother about time. In between the conversation I am typing in today's blog.

Value of Family

My day started off with three calls to hospital schedule department. First time I called them; the attendant could barely hear me and asked me to speak little louder. I strained my throat and spoke little louder. After 2-3 minutes of conversation, she said I need to contact my clinic to fix an appointment with my primary doctor.
I immediately dialed in my clinic number, again people had difficulty in making out what I was trying to convey, as my voice was very feeble. This time the clinic people gave me a new number and had asked me to contact the provided number. I tried reaching the schedule department and I raised my voice too high that cleared my throat block. I thanked god and immediately packed my things to reach office.

The day was amazing with client potluck in the afternoon and birthday party in the evening. I had my last music class this year. I had signed the Christmas card for my sir. I intentionally or unintentionally had attached a word Family to his name. I handed over the card and was curious to see his reaction. I asked him to open the card. He smiled and said as you have given this card to me and my family, I would like to read this card along with my family and not now. Only then I understood the meaning of the word family.

Throat Pain

Not feeling well today. My eyes are burning, throat is paining and head is aching.
Hopefully I will recover soon.

Mr.Handsome

During our evening time, one of my friends had switched on Cinemala from Asianet Channel. As the conversation was in Malayalam, I couldn't understand most of the mockery scenes. After my friend translated the dialogues to my native language, I understood the theme of the episode. We watched one of the episodes where a political leader visits a mediocre toddy and barber shop. It was a mimicking of Rahul Gandhi's visit to Kerala. We had a small talk about the origin of Cinemala and its success. We later touched upon our handsome Rahul Gandhi. My friend made a statement; he is 39 and still a bachelor. Immediately my friend’s wife added, but Rahul has a girl friend. In sometime my friend included few more information on Rahul Gandhi's visit to top five women colleges in Kerala wearing his cool jeans and T-shirt. My friend had so much of excitement when he said that. Undoubtedly everyone is attracted by the beauty of nature, be it be a chic guy or a bonny gal.

Rahul Gandhi apparently has the exact instinct of his father Rajiv Gandhi. I admire few political personalities such as Mr&Mrs.Clinton, Priyanka Gandhi etc. who's look are pretty much apt for a dignified leader. I was only curious to delve why a wealthy and well educated guy was not married till 39 years. In India, at least the affluent guys/gals get married in early 20’s as they don't have many responsibilities. I just searched in Google and found that there was a fight going on between Sonia Gandhi and Rahul Gandhi to marry his Non-Indian girlfriend. Felt pity for him for facing a common man's problem of getting parents permission to marry a person whom he liked the most. In one of the articles that I was going through about Rahul's marriage, the writer had stated, "When you get married Rahul Gandhi, many Indian gals heart would be broken". It sounded little funny to me, as I am one of those gals who don't fall for guys who are just handsome.

Hush Up

I was humming a Carnatic song while dialing my friend’s number. The phone rang for long and I continued humming. All of sudden my friend picked up the phone and I never realized it, as I was totally enjoying the tone. He maintained his silence and never responded back with usual hello. He heard me humming and at the same time I too realized that my friend had picked up my call. He said continue humming, why you stopped. This is the second time I have experienced such a thing with the same friend.

Annual Party

Undoubtedly the best part in today's party was Fancy dress competition and dance floor. I mingled with many and made couple of new friends. The party was more pepped at the end with musical chair event. One thing I noticed in Women's musical chair, there were many physical mischief’s, most of the time some one or the other fell down while trying to occupy the seats, but in men's musical chair guys shared their seat and were willing to let down their position to others. Many say men are cool, easy going and broad minded and I was always against it. But today I whole heartedly accept that fact.

Only Indian Dish

Last year during this time we had our holiday potluck. There were many from the client side. The group was big; hall was huge and the table was lined up with plenty of food items. Everyone was on time for the whole day potluck. While having our lunch we had a round of self introduction.

I loved the potluck last year compared to this year. Today I went to the potluck gathering room close to 11 A.M. I was the first person to enter the room. I could only see lined up trays with western food on the medium sized rectangular shaped table. I kept checking the time as the potluck was scheduled between 11-1. I placed my bowl on the table and soon realized mine was the only Indian dish in the entire list of food items. I decided to leave as no one showed up on time. Meanwhile a lanky lady stopped by to grab some food and mentioned she was planning to eat at her desk. I too decided to do the same thing. When I filled my plate with variety of dishes, many people started to pitch in. I made two new friends through this potluck. I needn't know many so our conversations were pretty tight lipped.

In sometime one of my colleagues entered the room, sign of relief to see a person from the same origin. He too found that the potluck lacked zest. We tried to complete our lunch soon and left the spot as early as we could. This potluck wasn't too enjoyable. Not sure why the participation and the enthusiasm level decreased this year.

Martini

Yearly once we have client appreciation lunch or dinner in the month of December to thank and recognize the hard work that each one of us have put in to meet the business needs. Everyone loves to be a part of this team as our members have a strong understanding and have a extreme dedication. It is one of the business units that collects its revenue across the globe. Sometimes we have even worked late night to resolve issues through long distance phone calls. This years appreciation dinner was scheduled between 4.30 -7.30 P.M. We spent lot of time in locating the restaurant. We did one small mistake in our turns; instead of taking left we took right turn. At last we used GPS and reached the spot.

By the time we reached, our clients had completed appetizer round and were waiting to order main course. We glanced quickly at the menu card and ordered our main course. While waiting for the order, a steel jar on the table caught my attention. I immediately questioned about the jar to my client. She started explaining me about the drink "Martini". Everyone focused on her demonstration and in doing so she poured the whole drink on the table. Thinking that the lid was closed tightly, confidently my client just tilted it a bit and landed up spilling the whole drink. “Ashwini” see what you made me do by asking about Martini. I grinned and everyone in the group started to tease my client with her funny Martini demo. Martini was the highlight of the dinner.

Incessant Headache

I generally stock many eatables at my desk to escape from my usual hunger symptoms of hand shiver, headache and anger. During winter I feel hungry by 3P.M. Today something very strange happened, I was trying to chew my snack bar in a rush to get some instant energy and drank water immediately. Water got choked in between and I started to feel little uneasy. I spitted the whole glass of water on my laptop. I tried to recover soon, but my laptop didn't react to my speed. I tried restarting my machine several times and nothing seemed to help me much.

My hunger still aggravated. Back home with another day of severe headache. I tried all possible things to keep myself away from the pain. I tried watching some funny videos, calling up friends and closing my eyes for sometime. Still the pain hasn't subsided much.

hand-held

I love chatting to others on my friend’s behalf. I really like to splash few shocks, surprises and twists while conveying messages to my friend’s friend from my friend’s instant message window. Little confused right :). But I have never asked anyone to type things from my side to others. Voluntarily few people are now dallying with my chat messages. Today I had my second experience with such act.

My intruding brother locked my two hands with his one arm and never allowed me to type anything in the two opened instant messenger window. Last time when he did the same, he typed something that sounded pretty much like me to others, but this time he typed few sporadic words that made no sense. One of my friend wrongly interpreted that I was typing something in Tamil. I guffawed at his chat messages to others on my behalf. It is sometimes laughable, try doing it with your close friends when they absolutely don't have any private conversation going on.

Box Day

The day was quite normal. Only interesting news is our kitchen is now occupied with umpteen empty boxes.

Flashy color

After a long time we all gathered for lunch today at 3P.M. I can't express how happy I was. Last winter almost every weekend we used to cook and eat together. Usually we watch movies or comedy scenes while having our lunch and I never bothered much about the movie as I considered most of the movies don't make any sense. Today I got very involved in the movie though it wasn’t pragmatic. I enjoyed the movie as my friends say come out of the realistic/idealistic world and accept things as they exist. I had a great learning from this group as my pals always give me a heavenly ambience. Pretty much tailored to teasing, joking and feeling of oneness now. Few of my friends pulled my leg by passing some comments on my gaudy hybrid winter cap.

Eventful Evening

Birthday, farewell and send off party were all arranged back to back today evening.
The moment I was done with the birthday celebration I joined the farewell party for one of my friend who was leaving to India. Immediately after the farewell we packed our bags to Throwbacks for a send off party. After reaching home, we invited few of our friends for dinner. Overall I had a vivid evening.

Fussy Move

I usually walk very fast. My friends whoever walk along with me, always request me to slow down. Now it is a totally different story, I walk in snails pace. I am extra careful about every step I take. I look down to check if I am not stepping on the black ice. As my shoe is very slippery, there is a high chance that I can fall even by stepping a smooth snow. I don't want to taste another flip in this snowy weather. Last year I still remember, how I fell flat on the office parking lot. Thank god I escaped with no major hurt. Today morning I was the last one to reach the office entrance while walking with my friends.

Story Man B

We had almost spent more than 4 hours with this person in two meetings today, one in the morning and one in the evening. The meeting was interesting with our story Man's real time examples from other accounts. The presentation was spiced with few jokes and standard Hindi dialogues.

I usually fall asleep for most of the presentations but fortunately I was wide awake for both the meetings as my name was called out several times. It was a great opportunity for all of us to learn and know new management books and terminologies. Through our Story Man, I came to know that there is lots to Google and learn. I really love to write in detail about today's meeting. I am caught with mild headache will update this post later.

Few take away from today's meeting are the following:

To know more about Gartner Magic Quadrant visit
http://www.gartner.com/DisplayDocument?doc_cd=131166

Still to explore more on brain writing, but believe following
can be a starting point:
http://creatingminds.org/tools/brainwriting.htm

Listen to speeches from different leaders and to know about Tim Brown refer the following link:
http://www.ted.com/speakers/tim_brown.html

Books to read in future:

Blizzard

Season to enjoy snow storm has started from this day. This is my third winter. First year snow was a new experience, second year it was fun and now it has become a part of my life in MN. In the evening, I admired the scenic path while walking from the parking lot to my house.

While Eating

It might appear bit strange for Indians to eat in front of others. We are bought in a culture where from our childhood we are taught to share our food to others. In U.S it is common to see people feed themselves during team meetings, while driving in the car and while walking. Today someone caught my attention eating in front of everyone in the office corridor.

Worth Listening

Listen to the following speech when time permits:

http://www.ted.com/talks/shashi_tharoor.html

Jumps

How tough would be it for someone to rest peacefully with multiple distractions from top, side and bottom apartments? Today afternoon I was able to hear the whole conversation between a mother and her baby. She was trying to cajole the crying baby with her sweet talks. From other direction I could hear a dulcet feminine voice humming an unknown English song. Believe me, my neighbor had an amazing voice, she sounded like a professional singer. My attention was bit shaken by the juvenile footsteps from the top floor. I think the kids were running around in the living room, I could hear them move from one end to other end. I enjoyed the blend of music, athlete and coax from my surrounding apartments. After a while I started to get a insalubrious feeling.

Whenever we had our friends kids at our place, I always loved to see them jump, play and run around. We were little concern about people staying downstairs. We never applied strict rules to restrict them from jerking the whole floor. But today I realized how annoying those playful jumps were to my neighbors.

Trusted counselor

When life seems blindfolded, when you are in complete dilemma and when you are not sure what to do next. When you are in such a situation similar to the one that I faced couple of months back, it is highly recommended to have a friendly mentor to guide you properly. It is very important to identify a mentor who is very concerned about your growth and who can show empathy for your feelings. I was privileged to get one. I still remember the first time I and my mentor met to discuss about my future and seek a way to get out of my tough situation. The first time when I talked to him, I was feeling very depressed, I had a total mental block and wasn't even willing to open up much to him. I had no clue what I was doing and what I was willing to do. I bothered much about my big struggles to get small things in life. I hated myself at one point of time. Our first met had a greater impact on me. My mentor’s directions were closely associated with my interest. I loved to follow his instructions. I started to look life in different dimension. After his guidance I have ramped up and progressed a lot.

Sometimes I wished I had someone like him in my family. As my Dad was always very busy with lots of activities, I hardly got a chance to speak up any matter to him. Today when I met my mentor, I saw a big smile on his face. He was happy to see a trace of confidence and optimism in my face.

I am now navigating in the directions of my respectful mentor.

Stunned

One of my clients in today's afternoon meeting gave a demo on our new application. It was super cool. The pricing flow was well organized and the approval process was made simple and user friendly in the new application. There were few new terms used here and there during the presentation. I was astonished to know that the new application had no database for storing the records. People have been waiting for many years to see the implementation of this new application. I was enthralled to know the deadlines for rolling out the completed version of this application by next year.

Rating

One of my friend while returning back home, said he got his USTA league year end rating. He was little unhappy for his promotion to the next level as he felt he still hasn't burned out many players in the current level. I was only thinking to check my rating the moment I reach home while driving in the car. I came home running like a crazy dog and desperately opened my laptop. I needn't do any of my usual stuff of placing my bags, gloves, coat at the appropriate place. I threw everything to one corner and was waiting for my machine to boot up. I opened my Gmail account and checked top to bottom to ensure I haven't missed out any mail from USTA. I found no mail from USTA mentioning about my year end rating. I saw one of my tennis friend online, I immediately pinged him to know why they never sent me one. He too had no clue about the rating system and said let us wait for a while and see if you get your rating.

He forwarded his rating mail from USTA to my Gmail account and the following count was little shocking to me. I never imagined such a high number for USTA leagues.

"Of the 300,000+ league players nationally, more than 90,000 will be seeing movement in their NTRP rating that should coincide with their appropriate skills."

~2 loooooong

Today someone knocked my office room. It was one of my clients. When I met him I felt as if I was seeing him after eons. I was happy to see him after a long gap. We used to meet regularly during our weekly status meetings. Since most of our meetings were cancelled for the past couple of months, I missed those opportunities to say a hi-hello. We were striking conversation on some general topics for couple of minutes and then later waved a bye to each other as both of us had something with regard to our job. When we meet someone after a long time, we simply feel like asking "where have you been all these days?", but now I believe most of us have sound understanding of others commitment. We just take it for granted that our friends had dived deep into their work and family. I had a chirpy feeling after our meet today.

As Expected

Today I had my doubles match at U of M. The place looked familiar but people seemed unknown to me. I was pretty early for the match. In between I called home and completed my day's call with my family members. I was waiting to see at least one playmate from my team. I was delighted to see my captain's arrival. There were few last minute changes and finally I got hooked up with a new partner for our match.
I was cool as we were playing in team#3. The match was not competitive; I was rushing to complete the match as early as I could. We finished two sets in 25-30 minutes.

I and my partner were happy for completing the match very soon. We were the first ones to complete the match among other players. We spent some time with our captain and co-captain in the spectator arena watching other matches. It was a great chance for my captain to know me personally while watching other matches and while riding back home. I made more personal contacts with new people through today's match.

Boost

My mom does wonder when she speaks. Today she did it again; I am very blessed to have her in my life. I am very sensitive and emotional by nature and sometimes my feelings are little out of control. My mothers talk always pumps me back to normal and makes me feel better.

ATP Tour

Stunning results of ATP world tennis tournament check out the following link for more details:

http://www.atpworldtour.com/

HWC

It is always a great feeling when we still stick to our culture even after living many years in U.S. I had a different perception when I was in India; I thought Indians after going to U.S might not bother much about their culture and custom.
As most of the time we land up dressing and eating westernized things and more or less follow their culture such as Happy hour, frequent divorces, fast food, eating with spoon etc. I can still remember my very first week in office when I was offered a cake piece on a Thursday that too my favorite chocolate flavor during one of our client meetings. I wasn't too sure if I should say "No" or should I quietly pull out one piece and pretend as if I was totally involved in the meeting that I hardly found any time to eat the cake and finally take cake for to go for my friends. I was not sure if I should say "NO" , hurt my American friends by not involving myself in their happiness or say "YES" and adopt to their culture of having non-veg without any restrictions on a particular day for GOD. I was totally confused and absolutely didn't know how to react, luckily I had one of my Indian Manager who too had the same policy as that of mine of not having non-veg on Thursdays, he politely said "No" to my clients offer and I too followed the same reply. At times it becomes necessary that you adopt and adjust to American style and live as one among them, at the same time it is also necessary that we describe about our culture to them when we get a chance. That's exactly what my manager did, he explained to the clients why he hesitated to take non-veg on Thursdays and our clients were happy to know something new about Indian culture. In the past I felt happy whenever I saw American Ladies wearing Saree in India. I always admired their flexibility and their respect for Indian culture. And the same holds good for us when we are in America. Explain or refrain U.S culture as needed and never totally ignore their attitude.

In the evening I went to my friend's house for the warming ceremony. It was a big gathering and was fun schmoosing. We were served hot boiled milk and home made Gulab Jamun. As everyone had consideration for others, there was a little hesitation to take Gulab Jamun for the second time. We spent sometime in our friend's place and later dispersed for Thanksgiving shopping. I always considered HWC(HWC house warming ceremony) as a small thing usually carried out within close family members but today my friend proved me wrong. I am glad that he shared his start of new life in the new house with most of his friends and teaching me a new term for Paal Kachal.

Night Out

I am little blanked out today and everything went little passively. I was trying to recover myself from all my dreadful thoughts. Nowadays I don't feel like eating anything. I feel very drowsy even after my 80% recovery. Strong emotions are gushing when I think the emptiness of love and affection in my heart, as one of my lovable roommate will not be with us by this time tomorrow. We three were awake late night browsing and seeing her pack stuff late night for tomorrow's travel. Feeling little sad for her leaving back to India, hope she and my other roommates will return back very soon to U.S. I loved all my roommates, I found each one of them to be extremely good and caring. But after a while I get so much used to their absence that I hardly even get in touch with them through calls or mails. I hope to be in touch with everyone going forward.

Terminator

I can’t think of playing an unknown and unfamiliar game at midnight. We just started to play for fun and our interest started to grow gradually. We tried different partners and sides. We kept playing thinking we would lose interest at one point of time. None of us seemed to stop rather we continued playing after mini breaks. On one table we played TT and on the adjacent table people were actively trying out shots to pocket their snooker balls. In between we had so much of fun and frolic. Unworried about the time we continued to play. Everyone started to feel little sleepy and exhausted close to 2A.M. We finally stopped our jocosity. Made up our mind to travel back home. During our winding up time, one of my friend got his pet, water turtle named Terminator. We spent sometime with his pet and admired the turtle's walking speed. We reached home carrying those wonderful moments of playing TT late night and probing the turtle early morning.

Chilling out

Having fun with roommates. One of my roommate is leaving to India coming Friday, we tried to cook different dish for her. We three were planning to watch a movie tonight, but as our cooking took long time we had to compromise the movie and decided to watch Friends episode. Having a great time in our new place.

An Idea

Whenever I hear the word "Idea" the first thing that clicks in my mind is "What an idea sir ji" from Aditya Birla Group television ad. I was greatly moved by the last ad I saw about taking care of one's health in the hyper tech world, "Walk and Talk". Brilliant idea right, although it sounds very simple. I am pretty sure many of us would have thought about this concept walking while talking over phone. But how many of us generally have the guts to express our trivial or silly ideas to the group to solve an issue or a problem. Not that all of us never had any ideas about small things in life, but just that we never had the moxie.

Most organization has started to collect individual innovative ideas and has predefined processes to implement those ideas after getting appropriate approval from the senior management. Now it is not just the CEO, VP or anyone from the top management scratching their head to solve an issue but it can be you at one point of time to clear those. Watch for your turn very soon.

Taxing

We left to our old apartment at 1.30 P.M and started cleaning kitchen. It took us more than three hours to clean the kitchen completely. Our hands started to ache and our stomach started to grumble. We took a break from 4.30-5 P.M. We continued cleaning the shelf, cupboards and floor. We realised at 8 P.M that we spent close to 6 hours cleaning the house. Not sure how our time flew in just cleaning a 1BHK apartment. Came home listless. It was a onerous day.

Stepping Five

My heart was heavy while vacating my old apartment. I have some kind of bond towards this apartment. I have been staying as full time tenant for the past 7.5 months, before that I used to occasionally visit this apartment as a guest. I have stayed alone and have also been with couple of roommates in this wonderful place. Few memorable incidences in this apartment are as follows:


1.Brownie incident - My roommate tried brownie for the first time in the oven, we set the required temperature and closed the oven. We continued our cooking for lunch and we could see few fumes from the oven, at first we weren't too skeptical about anything going wrong. In some time we started sensing burning smell and immediately we opened the oven. We saw a small fire inside the oven. Both of us were panicking a bit and we had no clue how to put off the fire without a extinguisher. We poured water and to our dismay the fire instead of going down it started to aggravate. We reached out to our neighbors and in sometime everything was fine. It was new experience for me and my roommate.
2. Awards - I won many accolades after shifting to this place.
3. No worries - There was a time when I was under financial crunch, prayed God and the very next day I heard from one of my friend that she was flying to MN and was willing to stay with me. Every time I thought I had a problem, the very next day it got resolved, which made me live a easy and peaceful life.
4. I love being with big group of friends and this house always opened the opportunity to be with people almost every weekend. Memorable one was when new people pitched in our house for cutting vegetables.
5. Independent - As this place is surrounded with bus stop, shopping center and library. I no longer depended on my friends to buy the weekly grocers.

My stay was just amazing, I lived life in my way and enjoyed every second in this apartment.

Today I moved to a new apartment numbered 14 (1+4 =5) and building number 2030(2+0+3+0=5) joining my fifth roommate.

Sick Day 2

Still not well but did something against everyone's say. One thing I am proud of today's act is I fought back, I didn't let things lose, I didn't disappoint my partner and acted appropriately as a captain. I had severe dry cough and sneezing that made me feel weak in my second set. From morning I had no solid food, so one can imagine how weak I would have been while playing the match. Unmindful of everything I did my best in today's match. My slow pace and power became greatest advantage for my opponent, they kept targeting me to win the match. Things favored them a lot today and they won the match. I put aside all my morose feelings of the match and got dressed up for dinner at my friend's Place. Watched a comedy movie while having our sumptuous dinner. Overall the day had few tough challenges.

Sick Day 1

Sickness makes a person feel terrible. I couldn't pull myself out to office today.
Having cold and headache. Whatever I eat tastes bitter and I feel very warm inside.
I have to ask permission from my roomie to play with cold water to wash vessels and vegetables. She is very concern about my health and says your cold might increase, if you drench your hand in water. She is black mailing me that she would hide my tennis shoes and badly doesn't want me to play tomorrow's match.
I am feeling very miserable, going to bed early to relax and rest myself.

Crazy things

I am very crazy about back packs, shoulder bags, watches and greeting cards.
Today I did a mini shopping to buy few of my so called fond things. Everything else went as usual.

Lucky Day

Everybody in our building were awakened by an half hour fire alarm at 2.15A.M,we found it very difficult to sleep with an loud noise. I couldn't sleep properly for the next one hour, I crawled and was trying hard to sleep. By the time I was catching a wink, offshore called me up. I spoke to them in sleep and it was almost 8 A.M by then. I was not willing to go to office today. I was damn exhausted and badly wanted to sleep. Hesitantly reached office and attended couple of meetings in the morning. When I was in a serious discussion with my TL, I received a call from my thick friend, I ignored the call and continued our talk. Again heard my desk phone ring, this time my TL gave me the permission to answer the call. I didn't have our usual free-and-easy conversation, I quickly said hi-hello and had to cut the call in couple of minutes.

I was counting my minutes to pack home and in a rush forgot my mobile at my desk, my teammates started to pull my leg while travelling back home in the car and kept asking where I missed my mobile. I had no mood even to worry about my mobile, I only felt like going home and stretching out myself. We reached home our usual time and one of our neighbour cum friend popped home with her mushroom curry. We kept it aside for dinner and immediately got ready for a birthday party. On the way to my friends place I got a call from my close friend. First question she posed me was, are you busy? and without any hesitation I said yes. I was feeling little bad as we couldn't converse much even today. Coincidentally for the past two weeks I was unable to talk to most of my friends as I always received their calls at the wrong time. Sometime people think that I pretending to me very busy but honestly I am very busy these days.

I had my ELT friend call me in the night, again I couldn't answer her call as I was talking to offshore. In between one of my friend had stopped by at our place with a bowl of vegetable salad. I missed the chance to talk to him too.

Overall I missed all narrow chances to talk to my friends.But still feel lucky this day as I am happy to know that there are many benign people who really care for me even when I regret to get in touch with them.

Personal Planning

One has to appreciate American's for their advance planning and the time balance between family and work. They enjoy every small thing in the world. Before I came to U.S I totally had a different perception about their life style. I still remember my first meeting in Dec 07 when I heard my clients say Ashwini, we need to add you in next years weekly meeting invite, I was under shock to know that my client manager had sent out the meeting request for the entire 2008 year by Nov 07. Internally I thought "it was too much of advance planning" . Even our client lunch treat invites are sent a month ahead, giving us a chance to plan our activities well ahead of time. Only when things are hyper critical our clients send out a short notice meeting request.
Now that I have become little addict of Friends serial, I can only set Monica Galler as an perfect example of planning and organizing.

Today my client taught me to plan my personal things even better by sending across her personalized calendar for the next year. Day by day I am becoming a immaculate planner.

Whip Nozzle

Most of the American products are user friendly and reusable. Say for example the simple Morton salt container can be reused without even transferring the content to our regular kitchen utensils. The salt box has a opening in the side, that allows us to close and open whenever needed.

Lot of packed items clearly instructs you to cut at the specified spots, so that one can reuse the pack, internally designed with zip locks. The milk and curd containers can be opened by pulling the inner plastic cover identified with a small jut.
Only when one reads the instructions , one can reuse the product, otherwise it is unusable.

The techniques applied to use/reuse the products are quite simple if one follows the instruction, otherwise it is very chewy. Today we explored on Land Lakes Whip Cream Spray bottle. We opened the tab of the bottle and followed the instruction as stated in the bottle. We tried couple of minutes, lost hope, and called one of our friend to give us some on call instructions to operate the whip cream spray. Even she wasn't sure how to squeeze the spray. From some trial and error she and her friend found the way to drive the spray and we followed the same to get the whip cream out of the spray. We laughed at each other for spending so much time on such a small thing. We kept pressing the spray vertically instead of pressing it slantingly.


One rule always holds good for any American Product, there is always a minute tweak in the instructions that confuses you a bit. Follow the instructions if nothing seems to work, go about opening things the way you feel might work.

Save and Chng

Today I did something very meaningful and worthy. Finally I got a chance to visit FMSC center at Eagan. There were many visits paid by my colleagues and friends last year and this year, I somehow missed all those opportunities due to some other high priority appointments. Blessed was I to be a part of such activity at least today. We reached the center close to 7 P.M. People who stepped in FMSC for the first time were asked to fill in a short form providing their contact details. We were instructed to wear the plastic cap that covered our head completely. We got seated in the orientation room to hear the instruction on packing food. The organizer explained the importance of food and significance of hunger through a real time example. He displayed Omar's photo, a 8 year old malnutrition boy. He continued his explanation with the photo of the same boy after 16 days and 6 months. The audience were stunned to see the progress in the health of the boy after having the packed food sent through FMSC. Usually I believe they show a video for 30 minutes to the entire audience, as we were little shot of time, they skipped the short film. He mentioned few catchy phrases that caught every ones attention. One of which I liked the most was "You save and change some one's life through your personal effort".

We entered the packing area to hear directions on what discipline one need to follow while packing food. We were broadly divided into two groups, packing and warehousing group. The packing group was responsible for adding ingredients such as chicken powder, dehydrated vegetable mix, soy and rice into the bag, weighting, sealing and parceling the same. Warehousing team ran round to check if each group had enough food necessary for packing, they refilled the food containers and also helped to load the packed food bags/boxes back to the warehouse. Every now and then the FMSC organizers gave us an update on the number of boxes the entire group had packed. We packed continuously for about 90-100 minutes. Our packing process was expedited by the background pep songs. Everyone enjoyed the music and also the packing part.We completed our packing duration and were instructed to clean the packing table and the packing equipments. We did a quick clean up of the whole area scattered with food material.


Back to orientation room again, this time he gave us the exact quantity of food the whole team packed today. The group which completed packing most number of boxes were awarded with M&M candies. He specified about the importance of 17 cents and how our contribution would help such kids to lead a ruddy life. He talked about donation modes such as dropping cash in the donation box, buying products made by NGO's, refilling M&M candy boxes with 14 quarters and creating awareness about FMSC to large group. One core reason for this organization to be a successful one was also due to the involvement, commitment and the energy the FMSC organisers show to the volunteers. We lunged back home. I carried home an amazing experience of emphasizing others feeling and to do something for them.


For more details about this organization, please visit
http://www.fmsc.org/Page.aspx?pid=380 site

Twice Again

I attended two birth day parties today. The first one only reminded me of a college b'day celebration for one of my classmate. During college days we had a tradition of gathering in the playground after our college time to cut cake, sign cards and see some b'day bash. As everyone knows, college is also a time when you try to pair people even without their concern and tease them. One of friend X tried to tease Ms.Y with Mr.Z. As Y liked Z as a good friend, X took a greater advantage of this and drew a heart symbol against her name. But Ms.Y was very concern about not passing such wrong untended signals to Mr.Z and pleaded X to remove the heart sign against her name. There you go, all 15 gals in my class had to solve this issue in just three minutes as we had to give back the card from our side. Ms.Y was in all tears and badly wanted to do something for the heart symbol. Finally we did something little embarrassing but satisfying for this heart sign. Guess what ?

Back from flash back, in the first b'day party, the cake didn't have the b'day boy's name and we did something to ensure his name was in before he cut the cake.

The second b'day celebration was special too for the fact that my little friend's mother prepared a cake of his choice. We were eagerly waiting for the arrival of our cherubic VIP friend to kick start the dinner potluck. On her arrival we went round the table to full fill our empty stomach. We had heavy meal and had no space for the b'day cake cut at the end of our dinner. We all enjoyed the home made cake.
At the end of the party we handed over the lovely card and present to our genius friend.

I landed up eating b'day cake twice again after 25th Sept 09.

Same Color

I wore dark purple color shirt today for work. I came across many who wore the same color attire in the work arena.

This reminds me of my school days, when we used to pinch our friends who wore the same color dress and say "Same Pinch". The best way for anyone to take a revenge on the other was pinching one another as hard as one could.
But during college days if someone wore the same color dress it was a screaming in excitement "Same Sweet". Height of coincidence for dressing up in the same color costume was always acknowledged with a sweet, whoever said "Same Sweet" second had to give a treat to the other person. The treat was anything ranging from a 50 paisa toffee to 500 rupees mega party. During college days we used to literally fight who said first and who said second and so on. It was fun playing such silly stuff during school and college days.

Felt young at heart today with my old memories on seeing people who were dressed in same color clothing as that of mine.

Team Ride

Even today we got late; surprisingly the whole team was stuck in office.
And I was the last one to close my monitor, people played tricks on me and ensured to pull me first to the parking lot. One by one we gathered at the entrance and walked casually towards the car. We two gals were shivering but it appeared the guys enjoyed the idyllic weather. We got inside the car and had a small talk about today's weather.

Working together, eating united and today we were all travelling together in the same car back home.

Headache

I hardly slept last night, I tried to catch a wink and somehow was unable to sleep properly. Unwillingly I got ready to office today, as we had our production move. We were pretty occupied the whole day with release activity. I couldn't understand what was wrong with me, I started to speak softly and reacted passively to my coworkers. I badly wanted to go home as soon as possible. But we had to address few important issues before breaking for the day. I came home catching a severe headache. I watched five episodes of Friends serial to avert by unbearable pain. I am going early to bed today and hope things would recuperate by tomorrow morning.

Hard Day

My days are becoming harder and harder every second. Too many things but too little time to accomplish those tasks. I hardly even find time to chat or phone or mail across my thick friends. I get absolutely no time to do anything late night these days, as I am in long calls with offshore transitioning knowledge for a new module.

I used to cut at least five minutes of my lunch and break time to do some exercise or news reading in the office. Now all those have come to a complete halt.
Life is becoming busier and fussier my friends.

Early Dinner

Usually at 8.30 P.M we have our dinner, today we had it an hour before. I called my friend to come home at 8 P.M as we were done with cooking by 5 P.M.
Later there was sudden change in plan, we had another friend of ours stop by at 7 P.M. As even I was feeling hungry, I called my friend again asking their family to start immediately for dinner. Everyone gathered and had dinner at 7.30 P.M.

We were happy that everyone enjoyed the food. We were razzing one of our friend after dinner and were seeing some of our friends ravishing photos. The day was occupied with friends and phone calls.

Marriage Recap

I have been longing to attend a Brahmin, Christian, Muslim and North Indian marriage as I have never seen one except in some movies.

When I travelled to onsite I missed my close Brahmin and North Indian friend's marriage. I didn't have any close Christian friend till I met this friend of mine in office. As I was not planning to take any vacation for his wedding I missed to attend his marriage too.

Today we got a chance to view his marriage DVD during our dinner time, there were lots of comments, flash backs, fun and frolic while watching the marriage ceremony.

Workaholic Friday

It is little hard to work on project related issue on a Friday evening.
Today all my activities started little late and everything got pushed off to the evening. I was almost sick in the evening after knowing a particular job failed to give me the expected result. My mind was totally saturated and didn't feel like staring the laptop anymore after reaching home. I tried late night to fix few of the issues but still one small bug is annoying me a bit. I am out of focus today.

Spunky Match

The day was satisfactory I got my laptop reformatted, credit dispute resolved and medical result dispatched. Few of my long pending personal and official task were completed today.

I headed home from office close to 6.15P.M to play our third mixed doubles match at 7.30 P.M. I got ready in 5 minutes and we started our journey at 6.30 to the indoor court. To our surprise we didn't face any major traffic as anticipated and reached the spot well ahead of time. The fitness center accompanied with the tennis court and gym looked idyllic. While admiring the ambience our opponent captain pitched in and introduced herself. We had a friendly chit chat for 20 minutes.

I was under the impression that we were going to play with the opponent team captain but the story turned out to be different, we met two other new players who popped up in the last minute to play against us. We took the first game and mustered our confidence for the remaining games. In between our sets one of my opponent wanted a five minute break to refresh himself in the restroom. In that break I stroke a conversation with my lady opponent. She was wearing a compressive sleeve stretching from her arm to finger. I was curious to know why she was wearing it. She revealed that she was a cancer patient and had to wear the compressive sleeve to avoid swelling of her arms, she continued saying that the sleeve makes her feel warm on one hand and she sometimes loses her grip while holding the racquet. I didn't feel pity for her but praised her spunky attitude inside my heart.

The highlight of the match was the spirit and strategy of my opponents. Every time they lost a point they boosted their confidence level and came up with different plans to attack us. I felt happy to meet and play with such genuine tennis players today.

Pitch Dark

I left office in the evening at 5.40 P.M CST today, when I came out it appeared as if it was like 8 P.M IST. It was pitch dark and chill outside. I felt inside, have I worked very hard today? that I am leaving so late from office. All street lights were on, the office parking lot was deserted. We kept walking ahead in search of our car. As we were going in the direction of the wind, we didn't sense the cold much. After walking half distance, my friend realized he had parked the car somewhere in the front, we turned back and now was the challenge to walk in the opposite direction of the wind. This time we felt pretty cold and both of us were shivering a bit.

We rushed and boarded the car, while heating the car engine we saw one lady wearing mini skirts and walking casually in this cold weather. We commented how MN people have gained resistance over such intense low temperature weather. Reached home and after seeing the darkness outside I really felt like going to bed straight.

Fuming DishWasher

I always had an animosity for using dishwasher, as in my previous apartment, we had to manually rinse and then place the utensils in the dishwasher for washing.
I almost found no difference from our normal hand wash. Thereby I was not willing to do double work rinsing and then placing things in the dishwasher.
After lots of advice and directions from many of my friends, I started to use the dishwasher couple of weeks back.

I was satisfied with the dishwasher cleaning and preferred to use it almost everyday. Today don't know what we did wrong, fumes started coming out of our dishwasher. We quickly stopped it and tried to understand the root cause of this sudden smoke generation. We removed few plastic items and restarted the dishwasher, and after couple of minutes, again we saw the smoke coming out.

We again stopped the dishwasher, tried to remove few more utensils and gave it a shot again, and this time it worked properly. Somehow we got our daily job done even with the smoky dishwasher.

Back to Back

I was in whole day meeting. My first meeting started at 10.30 A.M, I was energtic to complete my UAT and requirements gathering in this one hour meeting. At 11.30 A.M I had to rush to another conference room, I absolutely had no energy to listen anything as I was damn hungry, I was checking the clock every minute to see if it ticked 12.30 P.M for a break. At 12.35 P.M I reached my desk to take my lunch box and saw my voicemail flash on my phone, I checked if it was anything urgent and heard a messgage from helpdesk people that my machine was corrupted and wanted me to get in touch with them as early as possible. I dialed the helpdesk number and they instructed me to run few scans before I took off for my lunch. I patiently ran those scans and left for lunch at 12.45 P.M. I munched few slices of bread and rushed for my next meeting at 1 P.M. Meetings after lunch time generally makes me sleep, but this time as my stomach was half empty I could grasp much during the first half of the meeting but in the later half I felt groggy. This meeting was very critical to me and my colleague as any small mistake in price load would mess up discounts and sales estimate. I tried my best to pull my energy to focuss as much as I could. Only thing I love the most about my clients in such meetings is even if I pose the same question in different format any number of times, they reply back with the same enthusiasm and never ever use words such as "You Don't Understand" , "You Don't follow", "You are Wrong" etc.

Such things are a big learning to me, as I am very impatient and I can never explain anything beyond two times to anyone nor can listen anything more than two times.
I am very accustomed to saying "Don't you understand what I am trying to convey".
Meetings with clients have taught me several good things. Last year we had a meeting with Japanese user to explain a new logic for calculating the discounts, he was not convinced with the new calculation and was strongly opposing it without even knowing its benefits. My client manager had a cogent way of explaining things to him, still he didn't agree. Believe me the argument went on for more than 45 minutes just between both of them, We were only seeing their faces and were waiting for them to come to a conclusion. I found it very difficult to understand the Japanese English slang, but my manager paid close attention to each of his word and tried his best to understand how business could affect in Japan with the new implementation. There was a situation were my manager was almost about to utter the line " you don't understand..." but he controlled himself and said we understand your situtation.

Patience and putting yourself in other's shoe is very important while explaining anything in the meeting. These learnings are still on with such back to back meetings.

Home Parlor

Sometimes I need to think twice to shed out $14 for a hair cut that too the very next month. Now that I have no plans of growing my hair, I decided to trim it a bit. I was determined not to visit Great Clips and was undoubtedly unwilling to spend $14 again.
I checked with one of friend if it was possible for her to trim my Hair. She immediately nodded her head to do so whenever I wanted. My friend is an expert hair stylist and cutter exclusively for her family members. In between her busy schedule she pulled out 15 minutes to level my hair today. I was 200% confident that she would level my hair as specified and she really did a great job in meeting my expectations.

It was fun chit-chatting with her during the 15 minutes hair cut session at her place.
We were recommending her to open a home parlor soon so that we can trim our hair and eyebrows at a nominal rate.

Candle Light Dinner

We celebrated Halloween in the evening at MOA.We drove back home with handful of candies at around 8 P.M. One of my little friend while driving in the car, kept saying we would have candle light dinner tonight and at first I thought probably he was insisted by his school teacher to have candle light dinner along with his family members on Halloween eve and I never bothered to ask him the reason for today's unplanned (at least for me) candle light dinner. We reached home and arranged our table with food. All lights were turned off and one small slim candle was lit. We were almost about to complete the dinner and then my cute friend relieved the secret behind this candle light dinner. The candle was self made by my little friend using beewax, he explained to me, how he prepared the candle with full josh. He wanted to use his handmade candle for all possible occasions and he found one today for our dinner.Today's dinner was special with my little friends handmade beewax candle.

Humming

Music always has a special effect on us, no matter whether it is singing, humming or just plain instrumental note. You just need a trigger to sing/hum. When my friend was humming En Jannali Therivadhu Tamil song from Mozhi during our dinner time, I was controlling myself not to buzz along. I was not sure how others in the group would take if I too hummed the same song the very next second. And another reason I avoided to hum was I had promised my rommie, I would not sing/hum this song at least for the next couple of days. I had troubled my roommate singing this song for the past three weeks. I am usually out of control when it comes to humming that too if that is one of my favorites. I have few memories in the past were I have faced weird situations. I heard one stranger humming one of my favorite song and I immediately hummed back and he mistook I was falling in love with him, of course one would because both of us were humming a romantic song. Though I had no such intentions but it is sometimes difficult for everyone to understand the how music mesmerizes ones soul.
Then on I am very careful to hum anything in front of anyone.

Slip of tongue

When I was two years old, my parents were worried as I didn't utter even a single word properly. It seems I used to point things and made noises but never pronounced anything. My parents even thought I might not speak when I grow old. They tried out lots of things to hear a word from me. As I matured my relatives were very fond of hearing me gibber. My cousin brother even now makes fun of me for the pain he took to teach me say “Glad to meet you" and it looks like I used to say "Glad to bottle".

Usually when I am tensed or over excited or over bothered or in rush even now I have the habit of doing Freudian slip. Today I uttered sentences such as "I was lying in the bread" instead of saying I was lying in the bed and lot more. My roomie started teasing me for such excessive number of tongue slips.

Height of Hatred

It is natural tendency for any of us to like and love people who empathizes our good and bad feelings. But when it comes to hatred we have no consideration for others notions. That's when we start to display our egoism, selfish nature, disgust behavior, debase signs, possessiveness, misunderstanding, gossiping and jealousness etc. Today I hate someone to such a level that I am completely disgusted with that person.

I generally don't hate anyone that easily, I always try to understand the person as much as I can taking into account their family/educational background, friends, interest and attitude. Even when people debase or annoy me, I ensure to understand their situation and try my best to love/like them. When people make me feel sad for any reason I hate them to the core. No matter whom they are to me. I show no feelings or soft corner for such people. I am adding someone to this list today.

Interesting TT

Today's toastmaster meeting only had interesting table topics session (extempore talk on a given question for two minutes). Unlike the usual meetings were we have a combo of speeches, table topics and business updates. Our toastmaster had chosen "News Media" as the theme for today's gathering.

Our table topic mistress was very sincere to dig in and present us with some amusing questions based on the latest news from FOX, CCN, All headlines, Whitehouse Blog and Times of India. It was amazing listening to every speaker. Everyone had their own niche in today's table topics. It was a great feeling to know something really really new and different.

Sandwitched

What I have understood after being an onsite coordinator for close to two years, is the significance of responsibility and meeting the deliverable dates. The trust, rapport and the service solely depends on how we fulfill the committed deadline.
I always insisted offshore resources not to work beyond 8 P.M IST, but today I behaved little different and pushed my counterpart to work even late night to complete one assigned task that has been pending for client deliverable since last week. I am surprised to see myself with this dramatic change of behavior. I am caught in between the client and offshore. I have no excuses for delaying the deliverable from offshore side due to my leniency and go easy policy.

Sampling

Today was my first visit to Costo in MN; Last year I had visited this wholesale shop in California.
The trip to Costo was interesting due to sampling of consumable food items. We started our journey to Costo at around 12.20 P.M, it was almost lunch time. I was feeling damn hungry as I had skipped my breakfast too. The moment we reached Costo, I and another friend of mine rushed to sample frozen fruit crisp. It was yummy to taste crisp apple and banana. As the quantity of frozen fruit crisp was less, it kind of made me feel better but my stomach still grumbled to have more food. We kept moving from one section to the other. Unlike SAMS club I noticed sampling tables almost in every aisle of Costo. We gave a break to our cart/hand, stationed at each sampling tables and grabbed a tube of flavored curd, vegetable fries, granola mix and few other things for which I have a difficulty in recalling their correct name on our way to shopping.

As my friend was eager to buy Pizza, We waited for two minutes to sample grilled vegetable Pizza and Asparagus Pizza. After sampling hot hot pizza we moved to the next aisle to sip Pomegranate juice and taste French Muffin. After sampling all items, we billed our things and drove back home.

We reached home and gathered to have lunch; everyone felt their stomach was full with sampled food at Costo. It was a memorable experience to fill my stomach with only sampled food items for my brunch. Friends if you have any plans of visiting Costo, ensure to visit it before 4 P.M, otherwise you will miss the chances of sampling many food items and in turn buying those too.

Her Day

This lady has played an integral part in my life. Below are few incidences that made me feel she is different, firm and dogmatic.

My grandma still says this lady never got you anything any doll or dress that you wanted for. I(Granny) have heard you cry many times when she ignores to buy things of your choice. Time has changed so much that now you don't ask her anything you like. You simply go with what she gets you. When I hear such things from my Grandma I feel this lady must have been terrible and bossy.


Till my 5th standard I was pushed in all competitions such as fancy dress, calligraphy, elocution, drawing, running, dance, singing and slow cycling. Whether I won a consolation prize or a winning medal it didn't matter much to this lady. All she wanted was to give her daughters a taste of everything in life. I felt inside this women was crazy and pushy.

In my 6th standard she thought me to cook food for the family and wash my clothes. We had taken care of our things such as placing books at the right rack, covering our notebooks and school socks in the right drawer etc. Absolutely no help from her side. I used to compare myself with many of my classmates and kept telling her she was burdening us with unwanted things during our study life. In this stage, I felt she was stone hearted and a stubborn women.

When we reached our 8th standard we were sent to post office to do money order and banks to do deposits and withdrawals. No prior instructions were given to us by her how to do money order or deposits, she blindly instructs us to inquire things from bank/P.O employees. I felt she was uncivil and uncaring.

From 10th to college we were not pulled in any activities, we were given full freedom to do what we wished or aspired for.

Now what I feel about this audacious woman in my life is totally different. Her each move taught us all essentials for our living.

Her no no's to small things that I wished for, has taught me to take disappointments easily in life. If someone/fate/luck denies me of something I like the most, I know how to overcome such challenges in life. Her push to involve us in all competitions till 5th standard has taught me to live life with brio. Her cooking and washing lessons in 6th standard has made me to live life independently and confidently. Her training to do money order and deposits/withdrawals had taught me to be civilized.

I have lots and lots to write about this woman whom I love the most. Today I feel blissful wishing this lady a happy birthday. This lady is none other than my beloved one and only mother.

Very Close

For the first time in 6+ years tennis life, I have forgotten to take my tennis racquet for today's match. I rushed to the parking lot with water bottle, tennis ball, money and print outs, only when I noticed my friend carrying the tennis bag, I realized I forgot to grab the tennis racquet. I marched back home to get it. I was little upset about this incident. I tried to keep myself cool by enjoying the inside music and outside rain while travelling in the car to the indoor tennis court.

My mind was blank and my body was listless when our mixed doubles match started at 7.15 P.M. I played the match with the support and confidence given by my doubles partner. We didn't show a sign of scoring any game point as our opponent crushed us with their powerful angled shots and serves, they lead the set with a score of 2-0. I was lucky today to score the first game point during my serve. The score read 1-2 and we kept fighting back and pushed our best to score the coming games. Our score moved from 1-2,2-3,3-4,4-5 and this time we didn't feel like giving up the first set, we tried hard and leveled our score at 5-5 . We won the first set after a seven point tie break.


As our match court was booked from 8.30 p.m , we had very limited time to complete our matches. The second set started shortly . We were leading the game by 3-0. Our opponents looked very dingy but displayed complete vigor . We kind of repeated our first set score but in the reverse order 2-1,3-2,4-3,5-4,..6-7. Our opponent won the second set after a 7-point tie break. We were very close to wining in the 10 point tie break. We had three match points, due to one of my small blunder we lost the match. I gave more importance to my tennis game improvement than victory which screwed up the team's performance and ranking. Great learning for the next match.

Cab Ride

In India I never moved alone in taxi. But after joining software industry I had traveled nook and corner of Chennai in the office cab at midnight and early morning.

I always preferred a ride in Auto than going by taxi. Auto was considered more safe, cost effective and common in Chennai. One major problem any one faces with Auto driver is the annoying bargain for the trip fare. Usually the fare meters in Auto rickshaw work for name sake. They are either manipulated to display wrong number or they absolutely don't work. If one is new to Chennai and by mistake if they step in an Auto without knowing the exact route to their location. One would go crazy paying high fare for such a short distance.

Today I traveled in a cab to pay a visit to a medical clinic. My cab driver was very old and experienced. When I showed him the clinic address, he was confident to drop me at right place without using GPS. Unluckily he couldn't figure out the building, he kept circumvolving the road, I was little concern about the fare. After coming to U.S, I have journeyed several times in the cab. Most of the drivers had the GPS and perfectly had no issues taking me to the right place. It was a new experience for me to travel with a driver who had a difficulty in tracing the place. I was computing how much I would land up in paying with his hit-or-miss drive. Later I came to know that he was very concern about the passenger's currency and at once stopped the fare meter.
We reached some near by building and inquired for the clinic location. The stranger directed us and said it was very close by. We reached the clinic in few minutes and he charged me nothing extra rather I paid less than the usual amount.

At least in MN I feel positive about cab rides and drivers.

Dash-3

It is quite common for Indians to walk and drive on the left side. "Keeping left" created and is creating surplus troubles to me. I can't forget the admiration I received from an African-American on my first all alone driving adventure in U.S. I didn't realize that I was driving on the left side of the road until I had a head on collision with this guy. As the car windows were all closed, I could only see his lip movement and partially guessed that he was screaming "get out of the road" and something else too for being on the wrong path. Without procrastinating I immediately pulled back from his way.

Another place where I always violate rules while walking is in office premises. We have a long path ending with two sharp cuts leading to right and left direction. As I normally walk on the left side, I quite often clash with people on the turns. Today when I walked back from a meeting, I gave a sudden shock to another lady striding from the opposite direction. For a second both of us felt something was happening too fast between both of us that gave an effect of sudden death in an accident. It was a terrible experience though. I tried to get rid of this incident and carried out my day's task. It was time for lunch by then and this time I ensured to walk tardily in the right direction at the turns while taking my route to the cafeteria. This time, for a change I had a guy walking in full speed thumping me. We said excuse me to each other and went ahead to our intended place.

While going for an evening break, I was carried away with the information on the notice board that I completely lost control and dashed another lady who was walking besides me.
I said sorry to her for being absorbed with the details on the bulletin board.
I dashed three people today because of my walking direction and preoccupied thoughts.

More than an Hour

I am usually the last one to be on bed in my family. My parents and siblings are early birds. They sleep and wake up early. To talk to someone at home beyond 11 P.M IST is next to impossible. New Year and birthday’s are the only exceptions, when the whole family is awake till 1 A.M IST.

At home we are not allowed to make/receive calls beyond 10 P.M IST. Even though I go late to bed, I normally think several times before making any urgent call after 10 P.M IST. One thing that hasn't changed in me even now is being late to bed. As my mother is not around and due to different time zones, currently I have the full privilege to call friends and family members without any time constraint. I am no longer following my mother's "NO CALL AFTER 10 P.M POLICY".

We have our regular offshore daily status call at 11 P.M CST, generally our call winds up in 20-30 minutes, today we had to discuss several issues that dragged our call for more than an hour.

Stomach Full

Eating yummy food has become a routine for the past three days. It started from Diwali eve and we are still tasting/having variety of food during lunch and dinner. No restriction to limit ourselves to fill in our tummy as much as possible which makes us feel sleepy during odd time.

Today again we were invited to our friends place for dinner. We were served with hot Adai along with pudina chutney, tomato chutney and brinjal kulambu.
As I was feeling terribly hungry I didn't even count the number of Adai I had, I kept feeding myself. Finally at one point I realized I had stuffed my stomach with lots of food which made me feel weighty. I was unable to walk back home.

Documentation

"IT" is all about documentation. Be it proposal/test case/requirement gathering/minor code change/support activity. Today I had to create few new documents for my project.

How painful it is work on a 35 page document on a Sunday afternoon?
Review and recommendations for this document was discussed over phone. Working on documentation even for half an hour bugs me a lot.

I may not be the only person who hates documentation, there are many others who would join me in supporting against the process oriented technical document templates.
I love referring existing documents but dislike preparing one. Hopefully Google will come up with some new tool that would simplify the IT documentation process.

Readying Diwali

Till yesterday night I was in a dilemma to attend today's Diwali celebration as we had to send across some critical project document tonight. Whenever I was unable to take apt decisions I consult my mom. She insisted me to attend the function. Her point of view was Diwali comes once in a year and I should not be putting it off for any reason. From last week few of my friends kept ordering/requesting me to attend the Diwali potluck while some counted me in for granted.

I thought, what is life without spending some time with friends and family? And finally made up my mind to attend the potluck in the morning. In between our friends family came to our place to distribute home made Diwali sweets. My friend’s family looked jazzy in the glittering Indian traditional dress. We immediately captured their family picture in our mobile.

We tasted the sumptuous sweets and started our cooking preparation for bhaji pretty late, as we wanted them to stay crisp and hot for the potluck. At the end we landed being late to get ready. We decided to send our mixed vegetable bhaji through one of our friend for the party which would make us to get ready unhurried. We were all set and were waiting for our friend's arrival to pick us up. At 12.25 P.M stepped in the car. We carried two trays of raitha along with us to the party hall. I and my roomie were totally focused and ensured nothing dripped from the delicate tray during our bumpy ride. We reached the hall just on time, when everyone were about to start the main course. We wished everyone and quickly took our seat.

The hall was jam packed with people. We kept eating for one and half hours and later gathered the crowd for some interesting games and dance performance. Finally we decided to play paper fold game. It was fun watching couples/bachelors holding each other and standing on the tiny piece of paper. During this game we had plenty of photo sessions from judges and friends.

We winded our evening with a halcyon Diwali celebration. After coming home I and my project mate spent close to three and half hours in completing the document. Overall the day was taxing.

Power Cut

For the first time in two years I have experienced a power cut for more than two hours in my locality. At around 11.30 A.M, the power went on and off more than five times in our office premises. After a while it was totally blanked out. I and couple other friends were sitting in a pitch dark room. We heard an announcement stating the power outage was due to natural gas interruption and were hoping for things to be back in 20-30 minutes. To our dismay there was no sign of power for the next 45 minutes. Meanwhile we all had our lunch and we were waiting for our machines to detect either the wireless or LAN connectivity. Few of my colleagues decided to leave home as it was more than an hour without electricity. Most of my clients who stayed away from office premises heard from their family about the net availability at home that made everyone prefer working at home rather than sitting idle in the office.

I went for a 1.14 mile walk within the office sky walk and found the whole building lit with emergency lamps and outside brightness.

At 12.30 P.M we heard our second announcement, this time they had figured out a different cause for the power failure, they said there was some issue with the transformer, the team was investigating on the issue and confirmed it will not be resolved before 2 p.m. They also conveyed there would be half an hour updates about the ongoing fixes for the power. In the time gap of 30 minutes for the next promulgation, my teammates gathered in our room to have a chit-chat about Diwali celebration. In between our boisterous conversation we heard a door knock, my client opened the closed door and was requesting us to pack home.
As power was out even in our residential area, we weren't willing to go home. In sometime we heard our third announcement that said workers are released for the reminder of the day, plant engineers are not excused. We didn't wait for a second, immediately we piled our things and started home.

Reached home at 1.15 P.M. Too early isn't it? Power supply was back by 2.15 P.M, but there was no details about the exact root cause.

Lunch Buffet

I had very less time today afternoon due to an unanticipated meeting between 12 to 1 P.M, me and my lunch mate decided to have our lunch in the nearby cafe. We met two of our other friends having their lunch on a lengthy table.
My lunch mate inquired, if it was fine with me to join them, initially I was little hesitant for the fact that I had to rush back to my desk as soon as possible and didn't feel like walking out in between everyone's meal. After giving a thought about my lunch mate, I said yes. It wouldn't be right on my part to press her hard to finish lunch with me in jiffy. In congenial manner both my friends circulated their lunch box; we tasted their food and in turn gave our boxes to them. Immediately two others joined us on the table and we continued the same process of circulating our boxes. We got back our box and were about to sample our food. One more friend joined us, we kept all our boxes in front of him, he patiently tried out everything and without a say he returned back our boxes. As I was in rush, I started breaking my chappathi and there you go, comes our next friend. Again without losing blitheness everyone offered her their food. At last everyone grabbed their boxes and had food. I broke out in between for my meeting.

It was like a buffet of home made food from different cuisine. Though not arranged on the table, it was well circulated and shared. Never got a chance for the second round though :)

Too many interruptions

Between 12 to 2.16 P.M, my mind was totally blank. I had to generate a report and send across the same to my client by 2.15 P.M. I was checking the data and wanted to ensure everything looked fine. As I had to compare the data in the report with the data in the backend for close to 200+ Stock numbers. I needed complete concentration; any small mistake in this task would screw up price details that would in turn affect our sales amount. I even thought of postponing by lunch and focus on this one. I had one of my colleague stop by to discuss about the development status, I absolutely had no patience to reply her back. I kept my responses brief. In between my DBA pinged to know the server details. I did a parallel conversation with my DBA and BA. After I was done conversing with both of them, I had series of questions from my lead on remedy ticket closure. I quickly answered him back and looked at the monitor. My mind was extremely saturated and couldn't even understand what I was doing. I thought it was high time for a break and decided to have lunch. After lunch I tried to put off everything that got my nerves. By then it was 1.15 P.M, I completed 50% data check and this time I was interrupted again by a phone call from my testing lead.

I clarified his doubt and continued, again one of my friend sametimed me simultaneously one of my colleague pestered me to share one of the script that I had previously written to auto approve few records through backend. This time I was determined not to worry about anyone and focused to complete the task. Though I completed my task on time, I had lots of unexpected disturbances that I couldn't manage.

Committed

I have heard of committing code in CVS and committing oneself to something.
When I think of this word, I can only recall a funny incident that I faced 2 years back. Way back in 2007, We 9 friends, 5 gals and 4 guys from different project and account gathered during lunch time in company cafeteria. Lunch was always fun with such a big gang; everyone pulled each others leg with something fishy. One of my friend during our lunch time said her colleague was committed and said he has also changed the status in Orkut. I spontaneously replied back, yes I know. She asked me how; I know that the guy is very dedicated and committed to his work. The whole crowd roared into laughter. I was perplexed and wasn't sure why they were chuckling. She actually meant to say he got engaged to a gal and I mistook as his commitment to work. I know one can change the status as "Busy", “Available" and "Away from Desk" and thought it was probably a new status introduced by Orkut to say one is committed to work. Everyone from then on started treating me like a kid and kept saying you will not understand adult's talk. I only learnt committing oneself to “something” could also be a gal and just not work.

Following quote sent by one of my friend was the essence of my day:

There's a difference between interest and commitment.
When you're interested in doing something,
you do it only when circumstance permit.

When you're committed to something,
you accept no excuses, only results.

Cool Bye

I should probably say my day was crazy and hectic. I didn't even have the time to breath. We reached home at 4.50 P.M and immediately myself and my roommate started to cook. We winded our cooking by 5.20 P.M and ran to our friend's place to celebrate a surprise B'day party. Enjoyed the strawberry cake and merriment of the group.

Myself and other tennis members were in serious discussion about tonights match in the birthday party. Got ready for our next adventure to indoor court at 7.30 P.M. We met new people and the whole atmosphere was filled with excitement and exuberance.

My stomach was aching severely before the start of the match, people fed me with pasta and gave lot of solutions to get rid of my pain. I was confident, the moment I step in the court my concentration would be on the play and not on anything else. I tried to relax and watched other matches on the court. I geared up myself to do my best. We occupied the middle court and were eagerly waiting for the arrival of our opponent. Meanwhile matches had started in other four courts. We were anticipating a hefty opponent as most of them in the group were either tall or fat. Our dreams were shattered on seeing the first opponent, she was skinny and tiny. She was a ray of hope, as we found her shots to be fragile and unfocused.

Unworried about the next opponent we concluded our victory for this match. But as the waiting time of 15 minutes was exceeded we got a walk over for today's match.
We played a friendly match for about 1hr 30 mins, reached home , munched our dinner quickly and got set for the offshore call.

I felt like skipping my blog today, as I was so wore out.

FP Cooking

I hated cooking right from my childhood. When we were in 6th standard our parents taught us how to prepare basic things such as Rice, Rasam and Dosa. I somehow never liked entering the kitchen for cooking. My sister on the contrary was fond of cooking and loved to try out new things. I neither had the patience to stir things nor the desire to chop vegetables. I always considered cooking as a time consuming and boring activity. During my study days, as all my activities were timed, I never got a chance to help out my mother in cookery. Even after coming to onsite, if I recall correctly my roommates went crazy hearing me grumble everyday while cooking. Now after cooking for close to two years I have started to love cooking to some extent. Might not be a great cook but definitely a speedy cook.

We did full pledge (FP) cooking today. Everything came out very scrumptious and I wondered how much I have changed over course of time.

Scary Ride

It has been quite sometime I moved out of this state for a tourist visit. I have heard a lot about Colorado trip from most of my friends. Today I got to know about the scariest and highest sky coaster ride in Royal George Bridge. My friend was sharing her experience in this ride. She explained to me in detail how the ride works and what one feels swinging in the air from such a great height. She said how nervous she was at the beginning and how relaxed she was after a while. I am counting my days to get a feel of such things in life.

Check out the following link to get a glimpse of the ride:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y4yUNsVxLxA&feature=related

First Match

We reached the indoor court well in advance to play our mixed doubles league.
For the first time I was playing in a California red Plexipave surface court rather than the common green or pacific blue court. Initially I felt the court dimension was bigger and found it bit harder to move back and forth. I experienced very warm temperature inside the court that made me feel hot with the outer jacket. I took time to adjust myself to the slow ball bounce. We had a mini practice session before the arrival of our opponents. Close to 6.30 P.M our rivalries arrived one by one.

The captain of the opposite team handed me a sheet listing the players and the order of play. I quickly filled in the details of my team and chose to play in the third court. The matches started in two courts at around 6.45 P.M. Both my opponents were aged, composed but had adequate experience of such leagues. Our match started at 6.47 P.M. My opponent won the toss and preferred to serve. I and my partner appreciated our adversaries’ brilliant placement and brawny top spin serve. Our opponent team had a blend of cross court shots and magnificent placement. We tried our best to break their serve point, but our efforts were in vain. Our score progressed between the two sets by one game point. I had no strategies for this match due to my focus shift from winning a match to improving my tennis skill. I didn't feel like worrying too much about the game/set point. I played my best possible shots, of which some were through. Though we lost our match; it was a great meeting new people with higher tennis potential.

Inline

Today we did shopping again and at last landed up in Sports authority for our final round of purchase. The attractive inline skaters grabbed my attention. As I learned four rollers skating from my elder sister, I always had a longing to try out inline skates. My parents had a perception that inline skating required lots of balance and control. They never ever attempted to get me one as they thought I would get hurt.

I was very determined today to try out the display roller skates.
I quickly pulled out the box that was marked with my foot size. Two other little friends of mine tried out the inline skates along with me. I was initially holding my roommate's hand to support me while taking the small step in the trial inline roller skates. My reactions were different after seeing my 8 year friend stepping out confidently in his skates. Immediately I left my roommate’s hand and started walking alone.

I was thinking what sowed the seed of confidence in my mind to walk alone, that too instantly after seeing the 8 year friend. I recalled a statement made by one of my favorite maths school teacher "You can do it too, when someone else is able to do the same thing". This saying has indirectly sunk into my subconscious mind that I followed it today without my self knowledge. I have the habit of absorbing at least one good thing from my teachers and friends. It is efficacious when we try to recall the quotes and good things taught by them.

Geese Crossing

While travelling back home in our usual route, we found three cars lined up one behind the other. All the cars were still and there was no sign of movement. As my visibility was poor without glasses, I couldn't understand why the cars were standstill until we queued up in the same line. I saw a bunch of geese walking in a linear fashion on the road. They were walking in untroubled and swagger manner. I was patiently watching them cross the road. I found them to be well-ordered, none of the geese fought for the first position and everyone walked restfully. Not sure of the reason behind they not walking together as a group. Probably the motto of the geese road crossing was, you show the path and we follow. My friend quickly took out his mobile to capture the natural cat walk of geese. Most of them in the car started to lose their forbearance. The driver in the first car kept moving inch by inch to break the contiguous flow of geese traversing.

As soon as the agility of geese crossing abated, we immediately crossed the road. On seeing the importance given to Goose (Minnesota State Bird), my friend cracked a sensible joke to include Goose sign in the traffic lights in addition to the pedestrian symbol.

What a blunder ?

This person is everything in my life. He has been behind my studies right from school days. He trusts me more than my mom and dad. He was the first person to encourage me to play tennis. He is also the first one to gift me the most expensive tennis racquet. He is my role model, motivator and problem resolver. He is the only family member next to my mom with whom I feel comfortable expressing myself.

He is one step above my dad in all my things. He dreams and plans out my future. If I am something today it is just because of him. At times when I give up and say that's it, I can't try anymore, he still keeps up hope and keeps pushing me harder and ensures I achieve what I wanted for in my life. I always consider him next to God. I have no appeal to his sayings. So far, I haven't done anything in return to show my gratitude to him.

Today when we conversed, I came to know that he was invited to his friends place to celebrate his birthday. Generally my memory is too good to remember my friends and family member’s birthday. I am still not able to digest the fact that I forgot to wish him today. I have no excuse for missing out this day in my life. Albeit my mind was preoccupied with project and personal issues I shouldn't have committed this big blunder.

yrwod

Not sure if this word bothered me before, but from yesterday night it has been annoying me a bit. Few years back I had even stated I would not marry a guy who demanded this. I remember debating against this throughout my college life. I had argued guys were the culprits in accepting this and not their parents. When the guys have the guts to say "No" to marry a less pretty gal, I sometimes fail to understand why they never bothered to say "No" to this word. Now I can only associate my situation with Revathy's state in Magalir Mattum tamil movie released in 1994.

People sometimes consider this word as a means of their status and prestige change.
Guy’s parents claim that they have spent a lot on their son's education and upbringing, and I wondered what tricks my parents played to get my education and nurturing done without spending a penny. This word has caused lots of deaths in the past, lots of fight between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law and has shattered the peace in the family. In arranged marriage one can hold a better chance of getting a decent life partner only if one could afford to spend a greater lump of money. Sometimes people say, people who love and marry don’t face such issues, but I know few of my friends whose parents were even ready to break their relation if this word wasn't offered.

This five letter word has been carrying its marriage tradition for eons. And I don't want to be a prey of this for any reason. I have strictly conveyed this to my parents too. Hopefully I will not be brain washed by my parent's love and relatives coax. It is better to be alone, than tangling myself in buying someone with huge sum.