...shoOOonya...

I have got a lot of thoughts and things to be penned down as blog posts ...   all i need is some time for doing it !   And some peace of mind to get that time ...

I am feeling Lucky !! Naah … Not the google way ! It's the twitter way !! My friend Afreen introduced me to twitter a few months ... something I wasn't really interested in Well, over the past few months, I have become what can be called an "early-stage twitter addict":D The last one week has been particularly "rewarding" since twitter helped me get on TV as well as win a merchandised Mug :D and hence the title 'I am feeling Lucky' … I was on TV .. well not really … but I was !! Barkha Dutt from NDTV 24X7 hosts the show 'We the People' which is a sort of an open discussion on latest hot issues which directly impact the common man, the 'aam junta'. She takes inputs from the readers/viewers through various channels, one of which is twitter. On one of the recent episodes where the discussion topic was the Paranoia and over-reaction by Maharashtra Govt / India on Swine Flu, I sent her my comments / tweets and forgot all about it. In t...

The online world is my refuge ... My escape from the real world ...     The real world where i feel lonely ... the loneliness .. which i hate .. which i fear ...   the online world helps me escape all that ...   the blog, the random web surfing ... the emails (including so many forwards and subscriptions) ... twitter ... all of it ..   they are my sanctuary of peace ... of escape ... an attempt to forget ther reality !   but every now and then .. i am pulled back into reality ... !!

After the Slue Screen of Death event with my laptop last month ... it recovered and was running fine.   Till today morning that is.   Today morning it gave me an "operating System could not start" eror or soemthing like that ..   And I have no clue what to do ....  

Saw in the news yesterday that NRI'S (mostly from from US / Canada) are wary of visiting India due to the Swine Flue scare ... And I am wondering what the heck ... its a nice little case of the Pot calling the Kettle black. India got the swine flue from people travelling from US/canada to India ... it came to India from the west with the NRI & foren return crowd that aside, the stats have got more to tell ... Global figures - 89,921 cases with 382 deaths as of 3rd July (more than a month ago) US Stats - 33,902 cases with 170 deaths as of 3rd July (more than a month ago) India Stats - We had no deaths and about 100 cases a month ago ... around 3rd July Even current status is that we have about 8-10 deaths and less than 1000 cases Source : http://www.disabled-world.com/health/influenza/swine-flu/cases-statistics.php     Who should be afraid of travelling to whihc country ... You decide !!

After the near failure to follow the diet plan in July, my hopes were pinned onto Aug-Sept period. The first 8 days of my diet plan have been even more disastrous than the entire month of July. I consumed (and of course enjoyed) almost all conceivable things that I was supposed to keep away from. J Pizza, Biscuits, Chocolate, Potato vegetables, ice cream, sweets like Rasmalai and Gulab Jamun, Pastry (black forest .. yummmiiiieeee), Aloo Vada, Samosa, Aloo Parathas .....  !!! So that was a disastrous first week of my 6 weeks of hope. 5 more to go before I go home. (My weight just touched 82 :( something is wrong with the weighing scale ... hopefully )

Bloozle : The Startup that never was … This is the story of a startup that never was. It's a story of the entrepreneurs tryst with destiny, passion, product development, product success/failure, sleepless nights and unfulfilled dreams … This is the story about my Journey with Nikhil (although we are just supporting actors in the star cast dominated by 'bloozle' and market realities) … the Journey which began way back in 2004 and gradually got the name and shape of 'bloozle' … the journey which is now in a paused frozen phase waiting for the stimuli of funding from some VC who can share the vision which we have … the journey of 5 years of thinking, brainstorming, evaluating, refining, dreaming, arguing, designing, changing, letting go … This story is to remind us of the thought, effort, money and passion invested in bloozle in the past 5 years ... to remind us of this bright ray of hope it generated which would give us enough 'escape-velocity' to project us o...

A fwd'ed story below. I am posting it on the blog just so that i can read it every now and then ... as a reminder ..   -------------------------------   Vivek Pradhan was not a happy man. Even the plush comfort of the air-conditioned compartment of the Shatabdi express could not cool his frayed nerves. He was the Project Manager and still not entitled to air travel. It was not the prestige he sought, he had tried to reason with the admin person, it was the savings in time. As PM, he had so many things to do. He opened his case and took out the laptop, determined to put the time to some good use.   Are you from the software industry sir," the man beside him was staring appreciatively at the laptop.   Vivek glanced briefly and mumbled in affirmation, handling the laptop now with exaggerated care and importance as if it were an expensive car.   "You people have brought so much advancement to the country sir. Today everything is getting computerized. "   ...

Well well...   Finished reading "Tell Me Your Dreams" by Sidney Sheldon ... it was a receomendation by my best friend and i enjoyed it ...   Godfather by Puzo is still in progress ... the print is small and i am reading it for loke 10 minutes a day so the progress is slow ...   Nice to be reading 'regularly' again ... i missed it much in past few years when my reading had gone down significantly ...   Purchased 2 more books from a bookstore recently ... they are up next ...

Character 1 – You know I … Character 2 – Yeah … I know … You never want to hurt anybody … (And after a short pause ... adds … ) But you do !   Nothing more said. C2 walks past C1. Eyes wet, almost about to overflow. An intensely emotional scene going on in one Hollywood movie "Alphie"   And I feel the heart wrenching pain inside … as I realize ... I am just like 'Character 1' of the scene !   I don't want to … but I end up doing exactly that ...  

  In his widely accaliamed article, `Behind the Curtain of TV Voyeurism, journalist and author Neal Gabler suggests that at the core of this 'entertainment' is conflict -- whether internal or external -- in the protagonist. If this is not intrinsic to the script or the format, it is provoked because otherwise the show cannot hold viewer interest. This is not so much a function of effective programming as of human nature. The above lines picked up from an article by Ayaz Memon in DNA. You can read the whole article, titled "Is reality TV all that bad?" here Whether it is Rakhi ka Swayamvar or Iss Jungle se Mujhe Bachao or the ones like Big Boss or all those Singing talent shows ... bring in conflict and you have a money spinner !

I recently discovered www.VolunterInDubai.com a site where people can volunteer themselves for different activities. You can have a look at the kind of activities here . I nominated myself for 2 activities. One happened this Saturday and it was blissful. I volunteered to spend time with 'children with special needs' at the Beach. I got some help from another volunteer Shrimal to reach the venue in time. More than 20 volunteers turned up to play and oversee the 14 children who came with their caretakers from the institute. The site VolunteerInDubai.com is indeed a very good initiative (by Lola Lopez), providing people a chance to take time out from their lives and contribute to doing some good. It also encourages other people to organize such events which would not have been possible without the volunteers. Kudos to Lola for starting the initiative / website (the site itself is just a few months old). Personally, it was a very blissful experience for me. It ...