Every year around this time I write a blog. However much I have been away from blogging recently, I did not want to break this tradition. The previous blogs around my birthdays have been mixed with happiness for things I achieved in that last year, some dissatisfaction with slow progresses on some other things, apprehensions for what lies ahead and the urgency to do something magical in life. This birthday is slightly different. Even though I feel a sense of dissatisfaction, there is a sense of contentment that things will happen on their own time. Even though there are apprehensions, I get some confidence thinking they may be unnecessary. Even though there is urgency to do something magical, there is also the knowledge when things happen on their own time, they happen in the best possible way.
The last one year has been a very significant year as I changed relationship status from single to married, changed jobs and changed apartments. It is this dynamics of life that keeps me going every year, year on year. All that I want to be stable is the constant desire of doing something for the people of my country, something that can help them change their lives for the better.
I have written about it earlier, but would like to mention it again. Friends of Salaam Baalak Trust is the UK chapter of the established charity Salaam Baalak Trust which has been tirelessly working towards the rehabilitation of street children in Delhi since many years. I still can’t forget the experience I gained during the Indian summer of 2007 when I was teaching the students from 2 extreme spectrums of the society – the elite and talented undergraduates at India’s best St. Stephen’s college on one hand, and the extremely bright, but with latent talent school final kids of Salaam Baalak Trust at a not-very-posh shelter home in Paharganj. While I realised it was very easy to teach students who are talented and they know they are smart and inquisitive and there are all comforts available to teach and learn, it was a challenging experience to teach students who doubted each sentence they learnt - whether they would be able to remember it, whether it will help them earn for food, whether it will help them go mainstream ever. I have seen the brilliance in them, and they need us to help them bring that out to the world. Please donate as much as you can or forward it to people who would like to donate or just help in whatever way you would like (may be organising fund raising events in UK, US or India).
http://www.friendsofsbt.org/how-can-you-help
Coming back to my birthday, I want something magical to happen so that all of these children get all that they want. Something magical happens so that all the terrorists in the world stop killing as the last thing I wanted to hear was about another bomb blasts in Mumbai. Something magical so that all the health problems vanish and we feel hale and hearty always. Something magical so that we have love, appreciation, respect for each other in the world so that living becomes more fun and celebrating birthday truly becomes a celebration of life.
Friday, July 15, 2011
Thursday, March 31, 2011
The Biggest Cricket Mania
As most of you would have expected after reading my last post, I was super-excited about the India Pakistan match. So much so that I actually felt butterflies in my stomach the night before and could barely get a good sleep. The morning of the match was better - there was some sort of strange smile on my face bordering to depicting confidence that I felt for the Indian cricket team. As usual I had the colleague at work to banter with about the match. I went to work and she said that she would like India to win the toss and bat second because of the strong Indian batting line up. However I did not agree, I said if India wins the toss they should bat first precisely because of the strong batting line up. India chasing can be a little dicy because of a very good Pakistani bowling attack. Thankfully Dhoni saw the same argument and India decided to bat first.
As usual this gave me a lot of time to finish off some critical work on my plate and have a lighter second half. I trusted that Sachin will bat fearlessly and with élan and he has never disappointed me. The catches being dropped one after another played the role of a cameo in the middle of a horror film (so called because of the huge amount of tension on the field). 280 on the board would have helped, but with 260 I felt India needed my attention. I started concentrating on the strategies of the game and the performance of the players on field. I started concentrating on the available statistics. I started building a model in my mind, a forecasting model.
It was time to test my model. When I saw 3 dot balls to Younis Khan from Yuvraj Singh, I told my colleague that the next bowl will be out. Bang on target! My next prediction was the next time Harbhajan Singh comes to bowl, he will take a wicket. He came after a few overs as Yuvraj Singh and Munaf Patel were taking turns at that point, and giving away lots of runs, and just as per prediction when Bhajji came, a wicket fell down. And similarly I kept on making predictions to her, and wickets kept on falling, however after a couple of more predictions, I started putting a confidence interval around them. I know most of you would not believe me, but what I experienced yesterday was divine. The colleague of mine to whom I was communicating them was aghast in disbelief, but had no option but to believe at the same time.
Word spread around and everybody started trying to understand how I was actually doing it. Questions like if I have to bet my own money on my next prediction, how much I would be willing to put came up, as this would help get an ordinal measure of the confidence I have on my predictions. Even though I had convinced everybody that I have built a sophisticated model in my mind which was using all the statistical measures on the screen in front of me to analyse and come up with a prediction, the truth of the matter is that I believe it was simply something divine. I wanted India to win so badly, that just with my mental strength of wanting a wicket to fall down; I was actually making it happen. Can anybody justify how Sachin could get so many life lines in yesterday’s match? Probably not! The only answer could be that so many Indians around the world wanted India to win, implying Sachin to continue batting, that divinity had no option but to surrender again and again and again.
I want all the divine powers to come together stronger than before and make India win the World Cup. What a treat that would be to all of us who have worked as hard mentally as the cricketers on the field to help them move forward every step!
As usual this gave me a lot of time to finish off some critical work on my plate and have a lighter second half. I trusted that Sachin will bat fearlessly and with élan and he has never disappointed me. The catches being dropped one after another played the role of a cameo in the middle of a horror film (so called because of the huge amount of tension on the field). 280 on the board would have helped, but with 260 I felt India needed my attention. I started concentrating on the strategies of the game and the performance of the players on field. I started concentrating on the available statistics. I started building a model in my mind, a forecasting model.
It was time to test my model. When I saw 3 dot balls to Younis Khan from Yuvraj Singh, I told my colleague that the next bowl will be out. Bang on target! My next prediction was the next time Harbhajan Singh comes to bowl, he will take a wicket. He came after a few overs as Yuvraj Singh and Munaf Patel were taking turns at that point, and giving away lots of runs, and just as per prediction when Bhajji came, a wicket fell down. And similarly I kept on making predictions to her, and wickets kept on falling, however after a couple of more predictions, I started putting a confidence interval around them. I know most of you would not believe me, but what I experienced yesterday was divine. The colleague of mine to whom I was communicating them was aghast in disbelief, but had no option but to believe at the same time.
Word spread around and everybody started trying to understand how I was actually doing it. Questions like if I have to bet my own money on my next prediction, how much I would be willing to put came up, as this would help get an ordinal measure of the confidence I have on my predictions. Even though I had convinced everybody that I have built a sophisticated model in my mind which was using all the statistical measures on the screen in front of me to analyse and come up with a prediction, the truth of the matter is that I believe it was simply something divine. I wanted India to win so badly, that just with my mental strength of wanting a wicket to fall down; I was actually making it happen. Can anybody justify how Sachin could get so many life lines in yesterday’s match? Probably not! The only answer could be that so many Indians around the world wanted India to win, implying Sachin to continue batting, that divinity had no option but to surrender again and again and again.
I want all the divine powers to come together stronger than before and make India win the World Cup. What a treat that would be to all of us who have worked as hard mentally as the cricketers on the field to help them move forward every step!
Saturday, March 26, 2011
The Cricket Mania
It is that time in years when everybody is talking about cricket and rightly so. We got Zee TV subscription on our TV just for 2 months so that we can see live cricket. This actually works well for me as the package includes Zee Cinema as well meaning some old Bollywood classics!
The crucial Thursday match of India vs Australia was a very interesting experience to watch, first of its kind for me, given I was at work. In the morning, I reached office but my mind was left behind with Zee Café on my home TV as I knew it will be showing that important match just in sometime. I tried finding out if any place in my office building is broadcasting the match, alas no. Just one café some distance outside the office premises is supposedly having it on, which I found a little unfair because had it been football world cups, all the cafés would have it on with special meals so as to attract the crowd. Cricket does not drive that much of attention in England, really strange for a country which invented the game at the first place, but rightly so now as the team is performing poorly, as also seen from today’s match against Srilanka.
Coming backing to my restlessness of what to do, I fell upon the usual option that people away from the luxury of television use – crickinfo! The best thing about this website is that in its minimised form, it keeps on updating the score which you can see. Given Australia was batting first, and I knew it is going to be close chase for India, I decided to only look at the minimised scores once in a while, maximising it only when any wicket would fall down. I decided to complete most of the work in the first half of the day, trying to make sure as much as possible that my second half is light, and I can focus on the match when India is chasing.
Things moved as per plan. I wanted Aussies not to make any more than 250, but 265 was still acceptable. I had been successful in getting over with most of the critical work on my plate. The second half began. India was batting, Sachin was batting. What a delight. The live commentary was getting updated on the computer screen within split seconds. Sometimes I really thank humankind for making the advancement in science, while in other times events like the Japan tsumani make me doubt it.
The experience became more delightful in the company of a colleague – a big Indian cricket team fan and a very superstitious person (she was minding whoever said that India is a good team and will win today – she thought they all have evil eyes and do not really mean so) and another colleague – an Australian with a lot of admiration for Indian cricket. After Sachin went out, one commentator said how he had just opened his one shoe just when Sachin got out. His colleagues in the commentary box have forbidden him to open another shoe and he is roaming around like that. Wickets after wickets that fell after Sachin’s dismissal disappointed my superstitious colleague who could not follow it anymore and went out for a stroll. While she was away, Yuvraj took charge of the game quite nicely, and so when she came back to her seat, I did not let her see the match. And very surprising to me, she agreed stating that as long as India wins, she does not mind not seeing the match. I wanted to go to the loo just then, and she did not let me get up from the seat, saying if India has now been performing well, I should just stay statue until the match gets over. And again, very surprising to myself, I agreed to her. We both said this is our sacrifice to the country! The Australian colleague noticed all this, and he could not stop himself from laughing his heart out. Obviously, because only Indians can do such things! He was very certain since the beginning of the match that India will win, so he was taking more interest in understanding the psyche of Indian fans, a country where cricket is more important than politics, Bollywood or anything else. Every sentence he spoke began/ended or used words like fountain, spring, river, water etc to remind me of the emergency I was in. And strangely that did make things worse for me. But I remembered Bhagat Singh at that moment, and his sacrifice for India, and decided not to give up to any temptations.
I know all this sounds so much over the moon, really exaggerated. I never thought I would be so superstitious. But whatever it was, I enjoyed my day a lot. The big boss who is himself a big cricket fan, later on shared a presentation he had given last year where he showed how a lot can be borrowed from cricket into our modelling world. Senior managers always have a way around of connecting work to everything they do. India won, won because of our sacrifice :-) Overall a memorable experience! Looking forward to an even bigger match on Wednesday!
The crucial Thursday match of India vs Australia was a very interesting experience to watch, first of its kind for me, given I was at work. In the morning, I reached office but my mind was left behind with Zee Café on my home TV as I knew it will be showing that important match just in sometime. I tried finding out if any place in my office building is broadcasting the match, alas no. Just one café some distance outside the office premises is supposedly having it on, which I found a little unfair because had it been football world cups, all the cafés would have it on with special meals so as to attract the crowd. Cricket does not drive that much of attention in England, really strange for a country which invented the game at the first place, but rightly so now as the team is performing poorly, as also seen from today’s match against Srilanka.
Coming backing to my restlessness of what to do, I fell upon the usual option that people away from the luxury of television use – crickinfo! The best thing about this website is that in its minimised form, it keeps on updating the score which you can see. Given Australia was batting first, and I knew it is going to be close chase for India, I decided to only look at the minimised scores once in a while, maximising it only when any wicket would fall down. I decided to complete most of the work in the first half of the day, trying to make sure as much as possible that my second half is light, and I can focus on the match when India is chasing.
Things moved as per plan. I wanted Aussies not to make any more than 250, but 265 was still acceptable. I had been successful in getting over with most of the critical work on my plate. The second half began. India was batting, Sachin was batting. What a delight. The live commentary was getting updated on the computer screen within split seconds. Sometimes I really thank humankind for making the advancement in science, while in other times events like the Japan tsumani make me doubt it.
The experience became more delightful in the company of a colleague – a big Indian cricket team fan and a very superstitious person (she was minding whoever said that India is a good team and will win today – she thought they all have evil eyes and do not really mean so) and another colleague – an Australian with a lot of admiration for Indian cricket. After Sachin went out, one commentator said how he had just opened his one shoe just when Sachin got out. His colleagues in the commentary box have forbidden him to open another shoe and he is roaming around like that. Wickets after wickets that fell after Sachin’s dismissal disappointed my superstitious colleague who could not follow it anymore and went out for a stroll. While she was away, Yuvraj took charge of the game quite nicely, and so when she came back to her seat, I did not let her see the match. And very surprising to me, she agreed stating that as long as India wins, she does not mind not seeing the match. I wanted to go to the loo just then, and she did not let me get up from the seat, saying if India has now been performing well, I should just stay statue until the match gets over. And again, very surprising to myself, I agreed to her. We both said this is our sacrifice to the country! The Australian colleague noticed all this, and he could not stop himself from laughing his heart out. Obviously, because only Indians can do such things! He was very certain since the beginning of the match that India will win, so he was taking more interest in understanding the psyche of Indian fans, a country where cricket is more important than politics, Bollywood or anything else. Every sentence he spoke began/ended or used words like fountain, spring, river, water etc to remind me of the emergency I was in. And strangely that did make things worse for me. But I remembered Bhagat Singh at that moment, and his sacrifice for India, and decided not to give up to any temptations.
I know all this sounds so much over the moon, really exaggerated. I never thought I would be so superstitious. But whatever it was, I enjoyed my day a lot. The big boss who is himself a big cricket fan, later on shared a presentation he had given last year where he showed how a lot can be borrowed from cricket into our modelling world. Senior managers always have a way around of connecting work to everything they do. India won, won because of our sacrifice :-) Overall a memorable experience! Looking forward to an even bigger match on Wednesday!
Saturday, March 19, 2011
Moving House
Over the past 3 and a half years I have been away from home (my home country India), I have been trying to create a home in the UK. This will be my 7th moving-home endeavour here in such a short span of time which makes my average time spent in one house just 6 months. The crucial point is that in this country, moving house every 6 months is not only exorbitant, but also comes with a lot of stress. The main stress is to find out a decent house which also fits in the budget. Some logistic specifications that we have, which makes the choice more difficult than usual, are as follows –
1. It should not be an open plan kitchen because in Indian cooking the smoke can bother the guests sitting in the living room
2. The cooker should preferably be gas instead of electric because it is difficult to make chapattis on an electric cooker
3. It should be a 2 double bed house with the second room being fairly good size and not a study (so that when our parents come over from India, they have a decent night sleep)
4. As per Vaastu the direction in which the front gate opens and where the kitchen and bathrooms are in the house, all play important roles
5. Just the feel that I get when I enter the house should be positive and welcoming (actually I have rejected quite a few because of not meeting this criteria)
Now you can imagine, with such specific requirements (some of which we are scared of even mentioning to the English agents around), finding the right place becomes a nightmare. And even if such places exist, making sure they fall in our budget makes it a rarity. Then the stress does not just get over yet, even by luck if you do manage to find the ideal house to move out, the whole process of shifting is a nightmare. I am a person who likes spending a lot of time planning and organising a smooth shifting. I like making sure that the D-day of moving out is not over packed with –
a) lots of packing to do,
b) loading all the stuff into the van,
c) unloading them from the van,
d) unpacking all the stuff in the new house and
e) designing the new house
Therefore, to make this transition smooth, I start the process of moving out one month in advance, with every weekend being like baking only one slice of a big cake. This weekend is about packing books while in the process identifying those to be marked for charity. We have already achieved this target, so I moved the target forward to include also identifying clothes to be marked for charity so that we could go and do all the charity submissions in one go instead of having to go twice. I have just given myself a break to write down this blogpost, but seems like we will achieve this target very soon as well. So I need to quickly think of another stretch target – hopefully I will not end up packing the whole house one month in advance of the actual day! This only remains to be seen. But you can sense the hard work we do during this process and moving almost every 6 months is not something I fancy anymore.
1. It should not be an open plan kitchen because in Indian cooking the smoke can bother the guests sitting in the living room
2. The cooker should preferably be gas instead of electric because it is difficult to make chapattis on an electric cooker
3. It should be a 2 double bed house with the second room being fairly good size and not a study (so that when our parents come over from India, they have a decent night sleep)
4. As per Vaastu the direction in which the front gate opens and where the kitchen and bathrooms are in the house, all play important roles
5. Just the feel that I get when I enter the house should be positive and welcoming (actually I have rejected quite a few because of not meeting this criteria)
Now you can imagine, with such specific requirements (some of which we are scared of even mentioning to the English agents around), finding the right place becomes a nightmare. And even if such places exist, making sure they fall in our budget makes it a rarity. Then the stress does not just get over yet, even by luck if you do manage to find the ideal house to move out, the whole process of shifting is a nightmare. I am a person who likes spending a lot of time planning and organising a smooth shifting. I like making sure that the D-day of moving out is not over packed with –
a) lots of packing to do,
b) loading all the stuff into the van,
c) unloading them from the van,
d) unpacking all the stuff in the new house and
e) designing the new house
Therefore, to make this transition smooth, I start the process of moving out one month in advance, with every weekend being like baking only one slice of a big cake. This weekend is about packing books while in the process identifying those to be marked for charity. We have already achieved this target, so I moved the target forward to include also identifying clothes to be marked for charity so that we could go and do all the charity submissions in one go instead of having to go twice. I have just given myself a break to write down this blogpost, but seems like we will achieve this target very soon as well. So I need to quickly think of another stretch target – hopefully I will not end up packing the whole house one month in advance of the actual day! This only remains to be seen. But you can sense the hard work we do during this process and moving almost every 6 months is not something I fancy anymore.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)