...shoOOonya...

  Losing one's baggage during travel can be a harrowing experience. Once gone, the biggest problem is to list down things that you lost with the baggage.   Misplaced baggage or Mumbai-destined baggage going off to some other exotic location is common and airlines have over the years perfected their processes to get your baggage back to scheduled destination with a good efficiency.   BUT what happens when you lose your baggage?   Well, the mistake is yours and you have no one to blame nor do you have anyone who will take the responsibility of tracing the bag for you. But then there are always Lost & Found counters at the airport and one can 'hope' that the lost baggage has found its way to the lost-n-found.   It was exactly this hope that I had when I 'lost' a bag in Dubai International Airport last month. I realized it only when I reached Mumbai that my bag had not made the journey.   Well … the trials to trace my bag began. I tried the airli...

  Had only heard about such things in movies ... now it is happening to ME in real life ...   So 29 th March gets recorded in my personal book as a historical day for Me   3 meals of the same day in 3 different cities across 3 different countries …   Breakfast in Doha, Qatar Lunch in Dubai, UAE Dinner in Mumbai, India   This reminds me of some old Bollywood movie dialogues (including Border) where some rich guy is bragging about his riches by saying things like Breakfast in London, Lunch in Paris and Dinner in New York !!!   Yeah Yeah ,,, looks grand and that's what I used to think when I used to hear the dialogue in movies ... BUT what I never considered was the amount of 'travelling' involved in between those 3 meals !!   We are talking countries and not just cities so for the above to be true, you gotta travel … travel across the countries to these cities. One ends up spending the entire day between the meals and the flights. So much time spent at...

  I first read Robert Ludlum way back in 2006 … and I became an instant fan   I read what I could get my hands on … including the Bourne Series … and read about 10-12 RL novels during 2006-2007. And there was a kind of break. Reading itself became limited until I kind of restarted reading in 2009-2010. This time around I was reading new authors (I had discovered Matthew Reilly and become an instant fan and was reading all of his works) and did not somehow pick up a Robert Ludlum. I did pick one but it somehow did not give me the Robert Ludlum feeling.   After a long gap, I picked up a Robert Ludlum novel … I started reading Trevayne a few days ago and have enjoyed every bit of the 550+ pages of storytelling that RL indulges in. There is a particular quality in RL's novel. For me, he is a master story teller who keeps you (the reader) in his grips when you are reading his work. The story develops quickly and the story does not stagnate. It is difficult to summarize RL's n...

This was an email forward which came my way ... Thought I would post it here for future reference and for readers of my blog ...  ============================ S tay Young My Friend We all need to read this one over and over until it becomes a part of who we are! HOW TO STAY YOUNG 1. Try everything twice. On one woman's tombstone she said she wanted this epitaph: "Tried everything twice. Loved it both times!" 2. Keep only cheerful friends. The grouches pull you down. (Keep this in mind if you are one of those grouches!) 3. Keep learning: Learn more about the computer, crafts, gardening, whatever... Never let the brain get idle.'An idle mind is the devil's workshop.' And the devil's name is Alzheimer's! 4. Enjoy the ...

Once again I have a book to review from BlogAdda.com as part of their book review program. They were kind enough to send it to me by express courier so that it reached me in time for my trip. The book became a very good companion for me during my flights between Mumbai - Dubai and Dubai – Doha. The 101 stories, related to the Indian workplace kept me entertained on this 'work related trip' of mine. My earliest memories of reading the 'Chicken Soup' series dates back more than a decade when I got my hands on my first 'chicken soup for soul'. It was a nice sentimental read. It was the 'Original' version. And then I began noticing all sorts of 'variations' coming up at the bookstores. Then off late, in recent years I even heard about Indian variants coming up. It was interesting to read the same flavored sentimental humanly touching stories with the Indian 'tadka'. This book which I read brings together yet another collection of 101 stories ...

  The first time you do something, it is always exciting. You become an excited kid (irrespective of your age). You get excited, go to the edge of your seat and stop thinking rationally (really). Think of the small and big incidents of your life when you did something for the first time. Remember the excitement. BUT, as time passes and the thing repeats, the excitement diminishes. The joy and pleasure of the 'first time' can never be replicated. It is only there in your memories. In this post, I am going to focus on visiting a place for the first time; A new city; A new Country. I still remember my first visit to Switzerland. It was a one week trip and the whole week was filled with new experiences wrapped in every moment. In fact the experiences began even before the trip. There was an indescribable excitement of losing my passport virginity and packing for my first business trip abroad. And that too for a destination like Switzerland. The first international airpo...

  Not bad … right?   Well, having a collection of 101 stories spanning 365 pages and only a limited time of 6 days to read them might seem to be a challenge but if it coincides with about 4 international flights and plenty of Airport waiting time and Immigration Queue time; it does not seem to be a big challenge after all J   The challenge then is in writing the review of this book on the 7 th day.   Well … I have just received such a book whose review would be up in exactly one week (if not earlier)

  6 flights in 13 days …. I have never travelled this much in so short a time.   I have been travelling international routes since last 7 years and crossed international borders practically every quarter and off late it became every month too. But crossing several international borders within a matter of 2 weeks in a new one for me I would be crossing international borders 6 times in 13 days in the second half of March   travelling about 3500 km by air ... Add to that 2 train journeys (1500 km) and several Bus journeys (totalling about 500 km) in the first half of the month and it looks like a month of travelling, travelling and travelling .... almost 5500+ km of travelling in the month !!!   And the next month promises to be the similar … phew !

  The Indian Railway website irctc.co.in has been an excellent website for online ticket booking and I have been using it for a long time now. The earlier website at IndianRailway.gov.in , which provided information (although no booking) was also a good one. But in the past several months both websites have disappointed me … in fact they have irritated me no end. The IRCTC Website for online booking is way too slow (or let me say 'excruciatingly' slow) during the peak hours (morning 8 to 12). Several times when I have tried to book tickets on the opening day, it has taken me almost 2 hours to book a single ticket. The website becomes completely sluggish and does not even give basic functionality like the auto complete of the station names which is mostly the first step to booking tickets. The site at 6 AM in the morning and 12 midnight gives a stellar performance and I have booked 2 sets of tickets in less than 5-8 minutes. I understand that internet penetration i...

PARAPROSDOKIANS (Winston Churchill loved them) are figures of speech in which the latter part of a sentence or phrase is surprising or unexpected; frequently humorous.  (I received this as an email forward and found most of them amusing. So sharing it on my blog for my readers as well as my own future amusement.) 1. Where there's a will, I want to be in it.  2. The last thing I want to do is hurt you. But it's still on my list.  3. Since light travels faster than sound, some people appear bright until you hear them speak.  4. If I agreed with you, we'd both be wrong.  5. We never really grow up, we only learn how to act in public.  6. War does not determine who is right - only who is left.  7. Knowledge is knowing a tomato is a fruit. Wisdom is not putting it in a fruit salad.  8. They begin the evening news with 'Good Evening,' then proceed to tell you why it isn't.  9. To steal ideas from one person is plagiarism. To steal from many is research.  10....

  February began with a much awaited Matthew Reilly followed by a new author with her debut novel. It was an awesome start of the month on reading front as well as a nice long weekend with cousins in Mahabaleshwar. After these two reads, I was back to my regulars and also picked up another new author (for me) … Patricia Cornwell. That makes it 3 full length novels (all three of different genres) and my regulars of 3I, Sherlock and Famous Five along with new addition of Satyajit Ray! BTW ... one-third of my Feb reading (5 out of 15) is from the Sherlock Holmes collections. Satisfactory reading score - A nice month !   1. Scarecrow and the Army of Thieves by Matthew Reilly Finally … I got my hands on the latest Matthew Reilly novel. Aptly titled 'The Army of Thieves'; this is yet another Scarecrow / Schofield adventure. It turned out to be as expected … full of high octane over-the-top action with a whole lot of twists and turns in the plot. I have already posted m...

We spend so much time online these days. We are online through our computers/laptops, tablets, mobiles etc and the more time we spend online, less we spend with our near and dear ones, the less time we spend with Nature (in fact, it would not be wrong to say that we spend no time at all with nature). That is yet another reason when we are surprised and astounded by nature and its beauty when we encounter it once in a while (by chance, that is). The vibrant and colorful evening sky which we see by chance as we leave our office before darkness, the sea breeze and the breaking of the sea waves which we see when we chance upon the sea shore, the blast of greenery we see in a garden we might visit by chance again (we usually end up going to the mall over the weekend, not a garden) … all these sights and experiences leave us spell bound. It should not be that way. These should be part of our everyday life. These natural beauties should be something we should get so much used to that we begi...