Driving her crazy

The movie is called "License to Wed". Robin Williams is great. He plays a priest who runs a mandatory course for couples who want to get married in his church. His course is meant to put them through the paces, have them experience the most difficult times in a marriage. This video clip is the last test in the course. I am not telling you the ending, but the clip is watchable for itself.

One more crazy driver

Yes, me! (But hehe, that's not me in the photo.)

I finally passed my practical driving test for my full UK driving licence. On second try.

It was a beautiful day for it, the sun was shining, a cool breeze was blowing, the birds were singing...let's not get carried away, shall we?

This time the examiner was not severe and strict but a nice, gentle, helpful older gentleman who made me feel quite at ease with his manner and I am sure I made fewer mistakes because of that.

This time I chose not to have my instructor with me during the test, I decided that that puts extra pressure on me and is no use to me as my instructor didn't remember the mistakes I made on my last test and the feedback from the examiner.

I got only 5 minor faults, out of a possible 15, if you get 16 you fail. One of the 5 was that I shunted back and forth to get my reverse parallel parking right. My 3-point turn was acceptable, even though I made it 5-point turn with an extra bit or reverse and forward.

On the whole, I passed, my examiner said, "Well done, Sunny!" and I am happy about it as a dog who has just got a driving licence.

Now, to buy a car. Fun stuff.

Helping the butterfly

A man found a cocoon of a butterfly. One day a small opening appeared. He sat and watched the butterfly for several hours as it struggled to force its body through that little hole. Then it seemed to stop making any progress. It appeared as if it had gotten as far as it had and it could go no further.

Then the man decided to help the butterfly, so he took a pair of scissors and snipped off the remaining bit of the cocoon. The butterfly then emerged easily. But it had a swollen body and small, shriveled wings. The man continued to watch the butterfly because he expected that, at any moment, the wings would enlarge and expand to be able to support the body, which would contract in time.

Neither happened! In fact, the butterfly spent the rest of its life crawling around with a swollen body and shriveled wings. It never was able to fly.

What the man in his kindness and haste did not understand was that the restricting cocoon and the struggle required for the butterfly to get through the tiny opening were God's way of forcing fluid from the body of the butterfly into its wings so that it would be ready for flight once it achieved its freedom from the cocoon.

Sometimes struggles are exactly what we need in our life. If God allowed us to go through our life without any obstacles, it would cripple us. We would not be as strong as what we could have been. And we could never fly.

(author unknown)

I got this story long time back from a friend as a forwarded message. Since then, more than once I have had to think about this story. It applies so aptly to life and the decisions we have to take in our lives.

When it comes to helping our kids shape their future, it becomes a painful task of finding the right balance. On one hand is the feeling of letting them down, not helping them enough, not letting them have the benefit of our guidance, our wisdom, and the lessons we have learnt from our mistakes. Then on the other hand is the fear that if we help them too much we are providing them a crutch, spoiling them, ruining their chances of ever becoming a strong, motivated, winning individual.

Of course, they don't make it easy because they do want all the help we can provide but refuse to learn anything from our mistakes. Advice they'd always take with a grain of salt but help and support is always welcomed and often demanded.

Struggle is such an integral part of our life that there is not getting away from it. Until you tire your muscles to the point of exhaustion, your body will not grow new muscles. You will see no increase in stamina until and unless you drive your body the point of exhaustion and beyond it. The same applies to the brain, and any other resources we have.

Struggle defines us, it makes us what we are destined to be. I look back fondly on the 17 and 18 hours days now, but at that time they were murder for the body. I constantly had the sleep-deprived feeling in my eyes and never missed a chance to take a nap, even for 5 minutes.

I look back on the days when I used to work all day and then go to my friend's house at night. No, not to party, to study Visual Basic. The reasons for this were twofold, he had a computer and I didn't, plus he wanted to learn too and two heads are better than one. There I'd work all night with him on some VB project and maybe sleep 3 or 4 hours in the morning, then get ready and go back to work for a new day. I had fun in that, too. Struggle was a way of life, then and now.

How do you explain that, how do you instill that feeling into someone?

"What we acquire too easily, we value too little." Very true. But try telling that to a kid who wants to get ahead in life, quickly, easily and without any painful lessons.

There is an English expression - "Sometimes you have to be cruel to be kind." I don't like it. It lacks a certain pizzaz, that flair which I like to have in my expressions. But unfortunately, I can't replace it and it is indeed a true saying.

Finding that balance, and making it work, seems to me tougher than balancing a mountain on the tip of your nose. And yet, when you see a little butterfly struggling it's hard to curb the impulse to grab the scissors...

Ordering drinks

You know how I always told you, 'it's not what you say, it's how you say it', and you didn't believe me? Well, here's proof.

Lick the Liberty Bell

There's a lesson in there somewhere. Try and see if you can find it. Otherwise just laugh your ass off.

How it all starts:

How Barney gets the idea to lick the Liberty Bell. Liberty Bell, for those who don't know is a real historic bell in Philadelphia. I used to live in Philly and I have seen it, but no, I have never licked it.

But will Ted do it? He's too much of a regular guy to do something that rash. But they, Barney is a rut-buster, after all. Are you asking the inevitable question - what does it taste like? Read on..I mean watch on!

Now, are you thinking of licking the Liberty Bell yourself? Hmmm, perhaps this post should have one of thoese "Don't try this yourself" warnings.

Movie Review - Hello

Crappy name, crappy movie. I got it without knowing it was made on Chetan Bhagat's book "A night in call center". I had avoided that book after reading his first one. His work, I think can only be described as "fluff", there's no substance to it. Just take a cross section of the mundane, every day life, and put it on paper - that's it. No plot, nothing thought-provoking, nothing to make you feel happy that you picked this book up. 

The movie was the same - a good star cast reduced to toally lacklustre characters. The happenings are quite typical to any call center in India and the solution to problems  quite stupid and unbelievable. Though, in all fairness I don't think the author would have written the stupid solution that stupidly. 

Anyway, I am not going to waste any more time on that crappy movie except to warn you don't waste your time on it. 

Ideal Marriage Proposal

This is how one should propose marriage. 

Newsradio - Video clip

Yes, video clip from a radio program. This is an old American TV show based around a radio station.

I like this particular clip because it's..well, it's comedy, why analyse it, just watch it.

Project Declutter - Confessions of a Shopaholic

Usually, when it's Diwali time my parents force me, against my will, kicking and screaming, to clean my room to get it ready for a whitewash and in the process a willy-nilly re-organisation and decluttering happens.

But even though I wrote that in the present tense that's a thing of the past. Now, I live in the UK, now I live alone, well almost alone if you don't count my housemate. And we don't need to count him for this as he doesn't force me to winter clean or reorganise my room. 

So what then? Why? Why suddenly this interest in de-cluttering? I didn't even know there was such a word, I thought I was inventing it when I typed "Project Declutter" in my MindMap. (Mind Maps, what a great idea, remind me to tell you about this some time!). 

Anyhoo, if I start to track the idea back to its origin we might be spending the night here, so let's just say that the amount of clutter in my room got to a point where it was almost crushing me, forcing me to stay on the bed all the time and carefully pick my way through the clutter when I felt the need to pee and did need to leave the room. 

The reason it took so long to start this project was its sheer size, it's mammothness. Also the intricate relationship that exists between different lots of clutter - if I do move the books where do I put them, I do want to straighten out this drawer but where will all this stuff go...and so on. 

But there were some incentives as well, some things that did inspire me to start this project. I mean other than the expected incentive of being able to walk around in my room without tiptoeing like I am on a guided tour in a minefield. (If it's an unguided tour, I just won't move an inch). 

One such incentive was that I could buy more stuff for this project. You know what, I have been thinking, that even though I may not be (I say may be) as sexy as Isla Fisher I may still be a shopaholic. And if you say that it's a girlie thing to shop, I will yell "sexist" at you. Even though I do like to shop in a store, (my neck turns on its own any time I pass an electronics store), my most favourite is online shopping. Nothing like the rush of typing a keyword in ebay.co.uk search box and getting 17,202 records back. And Amazon.co.uk..oh, I love Amazon!

Well, this in itself reminds me of Isla Fisher in her recent movie Confessions of a Shopaholic. But when I am doing the decluttering I am even more acutely reminded of her and how she does her own decluttering. 

Just yesterday when a friend asked me what I am up to I said, "I am working on decluttering my room and my life." And she said, "Decluttering your life...that sounds ominous!". 

And yet, your room and your life are so intertwined that one cannot be cluttered or decluttered without affecting the other. 

Now that I think back on it, the indicator of the rising amount of clutter in my room was the number of books on my night-table. Usually I keep one or two books there on the edge that I am reading. Recently it started growing into a pile. I was adding to these one or two books because there was no place for me to move the books I had finished. So, before this little tower should start to rival the Eiffel Tower and I get a letter from Paris, I thought I should take action. 

While I was waiting for new bookcases to arrive (they have now and they are lovely, by the way), I just took all the surplus books and lined them up on the window sill. Just casually I ran my eye over the titles and realized something. They were not just books, they were dreams, aspirations, enquiries of a curious mind and the efforts to be a better man. By arranging them in a visible, orderly manner in a bookcase I will have more access to them and more of a reminder to pursue these projects that I lauched into with vigour at a time but then let pass out of mind. So, you see, decluttering, room and life both. 

Since this is a huge project, not the size of Bhakhra Nangal but still big, I can fill several pages with details and thoughts regarding this. But in all fairness to my readers, I should stop here. 

 

As usual, your comments and thoughts are welcome. 

Some funny quotes from Cheers

As mentioned above...
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0083399/quotes

Trying out glasses...online

What kind of glasses should I get?

Usually it's a big question for anyone once they get the slip from the optician telling them they need glasses?

But the same thing applies when you want to buy sunglasses though the dependency is not that big so the commitment is not the same. It can be though, if you are buying really expensive ones and you are not a prince like me. :D

Today the question came up as my beloved nephew got prescribed glasses. He asked me if there's any web site that can analyse what kind of glasses would look good on his face. (What am I, a magician?). Well, fortunately in this case I was able to deliver.

And then I started playing with a couple of them myself. And then I thought maybe my readers would like to (or need to) use these as well. So, out of the few services I tried, I am posting the couple that I liked. Plus, my photos in different glasses. Do tell me which ones I look best in.

The links are at the bottom, after the photos. Yes, you have to look at the photos, that's the price for the info. :D

The way it works is you upload your photo, then you adjust it so their software can calibrate it then you can try as many frames/glasses as you like.

http://www.visionexpress.com/tryon/

http://www.tescoopticians.com/tryonline.aspx

And this is the pair of sunglasses I actually own. I bought them for my trip to South Africa. Yes, they are Ray-Ban. ;) 

Memories of South Africa

I don't know who to blame, I took so many photos in South Africa and now I can't find a single one of them. 

But let's start from the starting. I have a G1, that's the latest in cellphones, they call it the Google phone, the grandfather of iPhone, iPhone killer, Android phone, and a few more names....but it's supposed to be the Cat's whiskers, the dog's doodads, the works! And it is!

More about that phone some other time, right now I am lamenting the loss of my photos. I had such a hectic schedule in SA that I hardly got time to take out my digital camera. But I had my G1 with a 3.2 megapixel camera and on the long road journeys I snapped quite a few photos...don't worry I wasn't driving. 

But somehow, when I got back I had none of those photos on the SD card. So, now all that I have left from that trip is this one photo that I posted from the phone directly to my Picasa albums (I told you this phone is the space-age thing). 

This photo was taken on the way back from Johannesburg to the O R Tambo airport. The car was rushing on at about 140-160 kmph, but see the clarity of the photo, it's not my magic, it's the G1. 

Hey, I just remembered there were others who were very active with a camera, esp. one chirpy little girl in my team. I can ask them for the photos they took. :-)

Don't say that!

There are some things you should never say to your friend. 

Here is an example. 

Flight Simulator X petition

I don't usually do the petition stuff but I do love Flight Simulator X and Microsoft is being stupid. 

So, here's the link, read the one page letter and sign if you feel like it. No pressure. 

http://www.supportflightsim.com/

5000, baby!

Okay, so what if it took more than a year, finally the visitor counter hit 5000! And to celebrate, let's have a clip from the American classic Three's Company. This is from season 3, episode 1 called Double Date. If this does not have you in stiches, you need to see the humor doctor. Call my secretary/nurse for an appointment. :-) 

New Hindi Movie Review - Dostana

I review of a movie only if it was very good or very bad. This is the second type. 

The plot: 2 heterosexual guys pretending to be a gay couple in order to get 2 rooms in a flat because they love the flat so much. Well, it's a great flat. The 3rd occupant of the flat is the flat owner Neha, a beautiful, young, single girl! Of course. 

Review:

I guess it's supposed to be a romantic comedy, but romance is tacky and comedy is weak and most of the time disgusting. 

The star cast is fine, but none of them can act worth a damn, not in this movie. But that's mostly the fault of the direction and screenplay. The dialogues are a total washout, no originality, no color, no idiom, just plain, boring, simple like written by a schoolboy. 

The single msot thing I hate about weak Hindi movies is the lack of common sense and that's in abundance in this one. The emotional scenes are actually cringe-worthy, most of them. 

The way they have presented the whole thing I think it's offensive to gay and straight people alike. It's especially offensive to girls; in real life no girl can be fooled for so long by a man or men acting as gay and as poorly as these guys do. 

Music is okay as modern Hindi music goes, nothing special. No songs will survive more than 2 months. 

Priyanka Chopra is a gorgeous girl and they have presented her in a lot of lovely, sexy dresses. However, the picturisation has failed to show her as glamorous or desirable. 

I had decided to see it only because Shilpa Shetty was in it, but she's in as an item girl in the first song during credits. I think I will keep the song and throw away the movie. 

Conclusion: DON'T watch it!

The Target

Just look at this: 

http://www.worldsgreatestbusinessmind.com/20090216-Sunil-Goswami-create.html

The Finer Things in Life

"Sunny, you have no taste for the finer things in life!", she says. 

All because I wouldn't go to the bloody opera with her. 

And that brings up a very interesting question - what are the finer things in life and who decides? 

As always I am going to pose the questions and leave you holding the bag for answers. 

• Why is wine tasting a finer thing while drinking beer while watching sports is uncouth? 
  
• 
  
• Why is watching a boring, insomnia-curing opera is finer but watching a 2-hour rollercoaster of action and suspense with Messers Stallone and Schwarzenegger is not? 
  
• 
  
• Why is reading mind-numbing, brain-killing fat-ass classics is a finer thing even though they were not written for today's life, but reading an interesting, action-packed thriller is junk? 
  

Well, the answer to who decides is simple - the society! How is it decided? I may not have the definitive answer but I have some theories. 

• Anything that's so expensive that only an elite group of people can do it, is a finer thing in life. Case in point - Theatre vs. Movies, Wine vs. Beer. 
  
• 
  
• Anything that's so mind-numblingly boring that doctors can prescribe it in place of sedative is a finer thing. Case in point - opera. 
  
• 
  
• Anything that's fun and enjoyable is eithe forbidden or dirty or both. Case in point - sex. 
  
• 
  
• Anything that's cheap and easy to obtain is junk. Case in point - Burgers and Pizza. 
  

You know the finer things in my life? 

Any moment when I can enjoy the music (any kind of music) and move to it, with or without a pretty girl for a partner. (I am no dancer but I believe in the old adage from Bali island "If a man is happy, he can always learn to dance.") 

Any stupid, silly comedy show that makes me clap and burst into laughter. 

A smile that comes to my lips after I finish a nice meal that I cooked for myself. 

An evening with friends where they are being just as silly as I am (or usually beating me at it) and it doesn't matter what the silliness was wrapped around, a game of pool, a movie or a dance class. 

A parcel that brings me a new book. Read or unread. 

...actually, I have a few thousand more but they all have one thing in common, I don't give a hoot if they are the official "finer" things or not. My life, my rules! [Hmmm, not a bad title for my autobiography! ;) ]

To strive, to seek, to find

Yes, I know I have not blogged in a while, but I have been spending my online time, (which means all the time when I am not asleep or not in the bathroom), in my virtual life Second Life. I will tell you about that in some other post. For now I want to share what actually compelled me to post tonight. It's a clip from the very last episode of Frasier. Season 11, episode 24. 

He is reciting part of the poem Ulysses by Tennyson, the same poem is mentioned in the Heinlein book I am currently re-reading "To sail beyond the sunset". Indeed the title itself is from the poem. 

Oh, this clip also contains 2 of my most favorite quotes from Frasier which he may re-quoting but they are my all time favorite quotes anyway. Prizes for guessing which ones are those. 

So, with that much ado, here's the clip. 

Do you "whoo"?

No, not "who" but "whoo" as in "whoo hoo" without the "hoo". No idea what I am talking about? Well, you have not heard of the "whoo girls" then. What is a "whoo girl", you ask?

Let me illustrate with an example.




With that we come to the most crucial question of this lecture - "Why does a whoo girl whoo?".

Here's why.



Now, let's get back to the original question - "Do you whoo?"