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"Dop yopui iunderstand what thius liune ius saying top yopui?" Confused about what language this is? Well … this is English … but with a slight technological twist. My office laptop keyboard has developed a technical snag/glitch and a couple of its keys. They produce 2 characters instead of 1.   When I press 'I' key, I get 'iu' When I press 'u' key, I get 'iu' When I press 'o' key, I get 'op' When I press 'p' key, I get 'op' When I press '-' key, I get ';-' When I press ';' key, I get ';-' and a few more cases like this ... Typing has become a nightmare ever since this problem cropped up. I spend more time correcting the double-trouble than i spend in typing them in the first place. This is much worse than the simple 'y' and 'z' key interchange I had in Switzerland office PC keyboard. Since the troubled keys have 3 vowels in there, the problem is much...

I was kidnapped. Well … not literally. I was mistaken for another person and taken on a tour of a factory only for the folly to be realized before we entered the factory :) Well … this is how it actually happened. The project has just started and introductions had happened but people were still getting used to the new names and faces around them. One of our client team members Mr. M gestured to me at the end of the meeting and when I went to speak to him, he told me that he wanted to show me the factory and the manufacturing process. I wasn't surprised since being a Org. Change Mgmt consultant, I need to interact with all team members and they try to tell me their people's perspective in different ways. I kept asking him what he was going to show me and why had he picked me specifically for the guided tour of the factory. He kept avoiding the question and we talked about a variety of things while driving to the factory. We also had another colleague with us. As w...

Date: November 19, 2010 Time: 2130 Hours   Here I am, writing this post on my laptop in a word document, sitting in the Chatrapati Shivaji International Airport for boarding to begin on my flight to Dubai. AND wondering about the wicked sense of humor our dear Lord has. And I think that because I am about 2.5 Hours away from my birthday and when the clock strikes 00:00 and my birth-day day begins; I would be in an airplane flying over the Arabian Sea, midway between Mumbai and Dubai (almost exactly midway).   So, once again I will spend my birthday away from home, away from my near and dear ones. I will be spending my birthday this time with a group of complete strangers (well almost) with whom I am supposed to work for next 2 years. I know a couple of them but I don't really 'know' them. Even my wife is not travelling with me this time so I would be truly alone on my birthday. When I was told to travel on 19 th , I had requested them for a ticket on 20 th since ...

I joined Fujitsu Consulting in Pune and hence I was shuttling between Mumbai and Pune evey week. With all my weekdays in Pune and the travelling that went along with it, I would get only Sat-Sun at home and time to rest without rushing around. So, although going to watch a movie was definitely something I wanted to do, it was not really a priority. We had our Jain festival Paryushan in this month which began on Saturday and ended on Saturday.   I usually watch movies on Saturdays with some exceptions of course, so lost 2 Saturdays of movie watching like this. Sunday was spent in visiting some key relatives to wish them on the festive occasion and take their blessings.   That left me with about 2 weekends to make up for lost time and I managed to catch the following movie this month. Yes, only one movie was what I could manage. I did try to catch another movie (Anjaana Anjaani) but they postponed the release date and we had to return from the theatres, disappointed. There was no ...

Well ... I had to pick up a Cecelia book this month. Since Jan, I have read at least 1 book by Matthew Reilly, Cecelia Ahern or PC Cast every month. I did not have another Matthew with me and it looks like I am going to run out of them soon. (Writer's can't really write as fast as we read stuff) … I think there are only 2/3 Matthew that I haven't read. The Partholon series by PC Cast is consumed and I don't read of it anymore. Of Course, I have read little of Cecelia but she will also not last long enough so then I have Sophie Kinsella . These 4 have been the most read authors for me this year(till now). And I have kinda liked and loved all of them. By the end of the year, another author or two might enter this list of most read this year list.   This month; besides Cecelia, I read 3 new authors. Picked up a Ruskin Bond, a Dean Koontz novel and finally picked up Inkheart by Cornelia Funke (this one had long been a pending item on my list waiting in my cabinet to b...

Once Upon a Time in Mumbai   A decent movie. Not really an entertainer but a well made movie. Ajay is time and again proving his mettle in both serious as well as comic roles (Golmaal, All the Best etc) … Serial Kisser also came as a surprise. He has his fate written in some golden hour. He manages to get the most romantic of all songs choreographed on himself. Another interesting thing was that I saw this movie with my wife on Friendship Day. I know, I know, that is a really weird combination. The Movie, the Day and the Company J   Inception   A pretty complicated plot which can simply be stated in one line but needs quite an effort to understand. Not really too high on special effects as I had expected but a nice movie nevertheless. A complex concept to grasp which further gets complicated while you watch the movie and the turn of events leaves you confused. I wont say I have understood the movie. I might as well read up a bit about the movie and watch it again sometime in f...

  1. Divine by Blood (Partholon 3) by P C Cast    The third in the series of Partholon. The earlier two were much better. The 3rd one has not motivated me enough to actually begin the 4th one. The first 2 books are a conflict between 2 characters as well as the characters themselves discovering themselves. This one is more about a single one. Confusing at times and the story stagnates. Does not really move. It comes to an end very suddenly (like all pieces of a jigsaw being tossed and all fall in place automatically).     2. DORK - The Increadible Adventures of Robin Einstein Varghese by Sidin Vadukut   An incredible book. Loved it. Being an Engineer-MBA-Consultant myself, it was absolutely fun to read this laughter roller coaster where the Engineer-MBA-Consultant protagonist keeps messing up things in complete oblivion of the trail of disaster he leaves behind. And it all ends well with some sort of an incident which seems kind of inspired by Jerry Maguire beginning where...