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Hello and welcome to the mental health hotline. If you are obsessive-compulsive, press 1 repeatedly. If you are co-dependent, please ask someone to press 2 for you. If you have multiple personalities, press 3,4,5, and 6. If you are paranoid, we know who you are and what you want. Stay on the line so we can trace your call. If you are delusional, press 7 and your call will transferred to the mother ship. If you are schizophrenic, listen carefully and a small voice will tell you which number to press. If you are manic depressive, it doesn't matter which number you press, no one will answer. If you have a nervous disorder, please fidget with the hash key until someone comes on the line. If you are dyslexic, press 6969696969. If you have amnesia, press 8 and state your name, address, phone number, date of birth, social security number, and your mother's maiden name. If you have post-traumatic-stress disorder, slowly and carefully press 000. If you have bip...

Well … I have begun yet another attempt at GM Diet In the last 3-4 months, I have spent more than 50-60% of the time away from home … resulting in a lot of outside food being consumed along with quite some junk food too. My weight today morning stood at 92 KG and that is way too high for my own over-weight comfort. My trousers have needed alteration around the waist and being over-weight is anyway a pretty tiring thing. So, GM diet is my way of getting a bit of my weight in control. I have been thinking about the GM diet for over 6 months now but the constant travelling has not allowed me to get a shot at it. Assuming that I get through the GM diet successfully, I should lose anywhere from 3 to 5 kg in a week with some weight gain after resuming normal diet and travelling lifestyle. So the net loss should be about 2 KG.   So if I can make that happen, I should be able to achieve my target of 80 KG after about 4-5 iterations over a period of next 5-6 mont...

  Book: Chanakya's New Manifesto Author: Pavan Varma No. of Pages: 248 Genre: Non-Fiction, Political and Social Commentary Publisher: Aleph Book Company For a change, I opted to review a non-fiction work on Blog Adda and I must say that I wasn't disappointed. Chanakya's New Manifesto is about solving the current problems plaguing the country with help from age old concepts and core principles prescribed by Chanakya.  By the way; the full title of the book (main title and the sub heading and sub text reads: "Chanakya's New Manifesto to Resolve the Crisis within India ") and the book does justice to the title.    The author does a decent job of identifying the problems which India, as a country, is facing now and also makes an attempt at understanding the source of the problems. As an ordinary citizen of India, I was able to closely identify with the problems and the source of the problems. As a learned Politician, Administrator or Academicia...

I haven't posted a post for more than a week now and that's not normal for my blog anymore. I have a series of blog posts lined up (in my head, titled on a word document with high level points) but I am feeling too lazy to actually pen down the posts themselves.   This month has been busy. Started off with 4 days of marriages and related functions followed immediately by a trip to client location for project activities and this will be followed immediately by the planned Goa Trip with cousins … and in the blink of an eye, more than half of February will be over.   All this has not only kept me busy but also has resulted in a general sense of tiredness which is positively making me feel lazy.   On the other hand, there have been times when I have sat down to write but failed to key in much. I felt almost blank in my mind (although the pointers are there right in front of me) and could not type out any worthwhile content for the post. Not even the January Reading po...

As indicated in my earlier post, I will reading several short story series as well a series of 3 novella trilogies this year. I will be tracking my progress every month on these along with maintaining a count of ACD & PKD short stories along with Satyajit Ray stories of Prof. Shonku (I recently discovered that besides Feluda, even some of the Prof. Shonku stories were translated into English and published). I pulled out from my unread archives; two thick (actually 'very thick') volumes of short story collections – one with 80 short stories by various famous authors while the other has some 200+ short stories by O. Henry. I had bought these years ago (could be even a decade ago) and finally they are out for reading in this (and next) year.      About 2 years ago, I picked up 3 volumes of short stories with Alfred Hitchcock written in big bold letterings on the cover page. I have pulled them out to be read this year. Also discovered that there is a 4 th book in t...

The New Year has begun and so I thought … let me look at my near future reading plans. A year ago, I had made a similar post about 2012 reading plans and reviewed it around July to find that there were 3 authors that I wanted to read but had not begun. One out of the 3 was read but 2 still remained. Clive Cussler and Rick Riordan get carried forward to 2013 for reading. AND a lot many get added to read in 2013 and beyond … Short Stories … Have read them in 2011/2012 and will continue to read them in 2013/2014 Arthur Conan Doyle – Quite a lot of short stories and none of them has Sherlock Holmes Philip K Dick – Quite a lot of short stories still to be read even after reading 35 in 2012 Three Investigators Series – Crime Busters series and Series by Mark Zahn - 23 of them Satyajit Ray – Professor Shonku short stories; recently discovered 2 collections translated in English Novels … Robert Ludlum – I haven't read them all yet ;) Clive Cussler – At l...