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.