...shoOOonya...

THIS is MUMBAI   The Crowded bustling city of Mumbai A concrete jungle where greenery is seen in corners and window sills (within small pots); where traffic and pollution are an integral part of one's life If you notice the Mumbai Map above, you may not seem to agree with the lack of greenery aspect of my comment. After all, you can see a whole big green patch right in the upper centre of the image. Well, that's the Sanjay Gandhi National Park of Mumbai which has taken care of the green cover of Mumbai. Thankfully, it is a protected area and hence the greenery is still saved from the encroachments of the concrete jungle. Above the green zone, is Ghodbunder Road, which connects Borivli and Thane. On the left of the green lung of Mumbai is Western Express Highway while on the right we have the Eastern Express Highway. On the lower side, we have the JVLR … the Jogeshwari Vikhroli Link Road. These 4 major roads form the periphery of the green lung of Mumbai ...

Can you imagine what was the first thing I 'noticed' in Doha, Qatar last month when I landed there for the first time? The Color of their Taxi !!  Yeah ... the Aqua Green taxi color looked very pleasant.  It was in stark contrast to the black-n-yellow cabs I have seen in Mumbai all my life. 

  Well … What I really mean is that I have finished reading all of the original Sherlock Holmes.   I started reading the entire collection of Sherlock holmes Stories last year in January and over the span of last 16 months; have managed to read all of them – so that's like 60 in 16.   Not that I needed that much time. I could have read the entire 2 volumes with 56 short stories and 4 long ones in a matter of a month … but I wanted to enjoy SH over a longer period of time and also avoid a SH overdose. So I stuck to reading a couple of short stories or a long one in a particular month and continued reading other series as well … like Satyajit Ray's Feluda, Three Investigators and Satyajit Ray's short stories collection.   I finished the entire Feluda collection last year and now Sherlock Holmes also is finished. 3I has a lot more stories than I originally thought and I am not sure if they will be finished this year also.   Now that Sherlock...

  Yes. The blog post title is almost contradictory to the previous post I made. But yes, the contradiction is not there. Ever since its launch in 2004; I have been a huge Gmail fan. Its fantastic and innovative features, its huge inbox size, its simplistic and compact design and the conversation style arrangement of messages and labels instead of folders I still love Gmail … it's the new interface that I don't like. I had been a troubled soul when I had seen my gmail box usage touch 97% once upon a time. This was way back in time when the mailbox was 1 GB. I had exchanged emails with my close friends about what will I do now. And then just like that they increased the mailbox size from 1 to 2GB and the 97% went down to 48% … wooohooo …. I was going through similar feelings since past we months as my 7.5GB mailbox began to show near 90% usage. The message in my mailbox at the time of posting is "92% full - Using 7108 MB of your 7710 MB" AND it happens agai...

I don't like the new Gmail .... And the new Blogger interface too   Google has revamped the look and feel of Gmail (followed by Blogger) and I don't really like it. I have always loved Google interfaces due to their simplicity and compactness. They show u plenty of stuff in the visible screen space without the graphical overload on the page and they had a compact layout.   The new interface departs from these basic qualities that I liked. I see a lot of 'space' getting introduced into the layout and this has directly impacted the visual appeal of the page.   I soooo wish Google would allow us to 'go back' to the older version and older look and feel.

A day of extreme variety and adventure … O! What a day it was ! From the sweltering 45 Degrees to the chilling minus 5 degrees From the speed boat ride in the open seas to the snow sleigh and tobogganing tyre sliding on snow From walking on the HOT sand to wading through waist/chest deep COOL water to sliding and slipping on the COLD snow and flying / parasailing over Sea !!! We rode the Bus, Taxi, Metro, Speed Boat, sleigh and even flew with the parachute thingy … all in a span of 12 hours That is how I celebrated my Wedding Anniversary in May last year !!! The end of the day was pretty calm and subtle as compared with the rest of the day … a walk down the sea side and a candle light dinner at Kamat Restaurant It was a truly awesome day and THE MOST Adventurous day of my life ... of our lives ...  Some pictures of our adventures ...          This recollection of an incredible day is co...

My first thought was to post the picture above with Mahatma Gandhi’s quote and close this post. Because that is essentially the message that I would like to put across; That is essentially the change that is needed in the world. Real Change is one that happens at an individual level. A change that is not dependant on you ‘expecting’ change to happen around you … a change that happens inside individuals. It might seem illogical that change can happen without changing the world but the fact of the matter is that change can happen only by changing people …. And people cannot be changed so easily. People change only and ONLY when they want to change themselves. So that is where MG’s quote lays down the entire philosophy of change. Be the change that you want to see in the world. Parting Shot: This might seem strange but this post was inspired by Stayfree (something you might never associate with me :) … Indiblogger.in came up with a contest in collaboration of Stayfree wit...

  March began with book review of short novel by an Anonymous Indian Author. The month had a lot of travel plans for me in the second half which helped my reading; while setting some new personal travelling records (6 flights in 13 days). The reading score may not be high but then it has 3 full length novels along with the usual shorts. New author this month was an Anonymous one, whose book I reviewed. I could also put the authors of Chicken Soup series book in this category but then they are not really authors, they just compile the stories together. In this case, Mark and Victor have Indian help at hand in the form of the third co-author, Juhi Rai Farmania. The reading score may not be high but the month was satisfactory. 3 full length novels (all three of different genres) and my regulars of 3I, Sherlock, and Satyajit Ray (missed reading Famous Five this month)! Best part of the month was reading a Robert Ludlum and Chicken Soup for Soul series book after a long long time....