Life Reloaded!!!

I think this is going to be my longest post of the season. So as Ned Stark would say, “Brace yourselves!” (for long post). I recently read a post by Rutuja on the topic of marriage and career. Since I have gone through a similar thought process in this year, I thought I might pen down some of experience in this regard. It had all started last year when my parents started asking me that long awaited question – “When are you getting married?” I kept avoiding that question till the end of last year. By the end of March however, I realized that it was about time I started looking for my partner, as my school/college friends started getting engaged/married. Whatever one might say about peer pressure in office/studies, there is a similar pressure when it comes to marriage. It can be very awkward in the end of marriage season, as each of your buddies gets committed and you are the only one remaining single. Of course, the real problem isn’t that. As I have always said, life is li...

There never was much hope, just a fools hope. - Gandalf

At Dnyanesh's Wedding Woooh! It has been exactly a month now. What a wonderful time we had! First it was Sangeet (Halad) on 29th November. And boy o boy, did we dance? Of course, probably we were crazier at Kiran's Sangeet, but this one will be remembered for crazy moves by Aditya (he was even better than Viraj!). The wedding was in the late afternoon. Thankfully we all reached on time, before the muhurta . It was unbelievable how Dnyanesh’s friends lifted him after the mangalashtaka were over for almost two minutes (for those who don’t know him- he weighs more than 90kg!). After the muhurta , we had more than 2 hours before the reception started. So we decided to spend time at Shivaji Park with the usual katta level discussions going on. Once we returned back, it was a laughing riot going on, as jokes were targeted from one friend to another including me (Of course, Nikhil will still say that they don’t target me at all). On a lighter note, hopefully, Tejash...

The date is set for one of my best friend – Susmit’s wedding. Of course, that is not the only reason I am excited. At the time of his engagement, few of my friends had performed a small skit which received amazing response. Unfortunately I could not be part of that skit. But this time we are planning a similar but bigger skit at his Sangeet dinner. The anchor will again be Aditya. I will be replacing Nilesh as his side kick this time. There are also going to be a few dance sequences where most of Susmit’s friends will participate. The rehearsals have started and it is going to be fun practicing next few months. Here is video taken at the time of engagement -

My brother informed me about this article. It has less to do with Cricket and more to do with life, so read on – The Masks We Wear by Martin Crowe.

I visited IIT Bombay campus today for some official work. I was in a meeting with Dr. D. B. Phatak in his office. In between the meeting, there was a continuous inflow of students with their queries for the Professor. One such group of 4 students came to meet him for a research proposal. While asking students about their projects, Dr. Phatak mentioned that " Sudarshan Sir " would give a challenging project to his students. After the students left, I asked him if Dr. Sudarshan he mentioned earlier, is the same person as from the "Korth, Silbreschatz, Sudarshan" trio of Database Management System Concepts book. When he affirmed that he is same person, I actually envied those kids. The person, whose book is read by majority of engineering students in Mumbai for DBMS course, is their teacher. It is still one of my favorite technical books apart from all books written by Andrew Tanenbaum. You cannot ask for any better teacher for learning Advanced DBMS, can you?

It has been 2 months since I started the practice. Unfortunately around 10 days ago, my old nemesis - lower back pain - resurfaced. Because of the pain, I have stopped running (honestly I should not say "stop"; I simply "can't" run). Otherwise, I used to run 4-5 km every 2-3 days in half an hour’s time. The marine drive stretch is a treat to run even in the evening. Since I hate to wake up early in the morning, I prefer running in the evening after work (my point is that if I didn't get up early even for studies when it was so important, how can one expect me to get up early for running?). It is a bit crowded when you reach Nariman Point, surprisingly even on weekdays. Once I reach home it actually feels a bit relaxed. I think I would start the preparation again next week or so. Till that time I have to get my "back" back into shape :)

Recently an interesting incident occurred related to my school. One of my  neighbors  studies in 6 th   standard at my former school. I got the news from one of our common acquaintance that he fared poorly in science paper. Few days after I got the news, the boy himself started telling me about his marks. He had got decent marks in rest of subjects. He initially did not talk about science paper, but after a while he started the topic by informing me that all the students got the beating in Science paper. He stressed on the fact that even the topper had 30 marks out of 40. Since, I had seen his casual approach during exams; I thought he himself was responsible for his dismal performance. However, when he told about the way his teacher responded to the students’ queries about the paper, it frustrated me a lot. The teacher had told all the students that if anyone comes to her for changing the marks, she would cut that student’s marks. This according to me is ridic...

Since August this year, I have taken up reading very seriously. Till that point in time, I usually spent free time researching/studying about some exam, certification or future career. August-September was very critical point in my life where I decided to change the priority of these things. Problem is that I cannot spend my free time by doing nothing. In school/college I always had something more to study, even during my 2 year pre-MBA job stints I spent time preparing for CAT. With the free time available after work, I have been able to read more number of books in last 5 months as I did in 5 years before that. I have concentrated more on mysteries, behavioural economics and classics. Agatha Christie has been my favourite. I guess she deserves a separate post. I also read 2 books financial crisis – The Big Short (based on Subprime Crisis) and When Genius Failed (based on Long Term Capital Management). “The Great Gatsby” and “Pride and Prejudice” were followed by the movies (One ...

Its been so long since I blogged last time that even my browser history does not have my own blogger link now. Well, this post is specifically dedicated to 2 of my friends. One who on her FB post forgot to mention me in asking fellow bloggers to start blogging again, but remembered me after hitting the submit button ;)  Thanks   Rutuja for asking me to come out of hibernation :)  The other one is the person who made the most fun of my "self centered" writing when I was writing the blog (and making fun/exposing other friends), suggested me that I could use my blog style of writing to write a speech about a dear friend of ours. The speech would talk about the friend's good/bad qualities, his past "quotes" (" Papad tar papad "), memories related to him. We would present it at the time of his engagement to his bride to be. Now, since I have stopped writing the blog in 2013, I was not sure how I would approach the whole thing. So I have decided th...

It's been a long time since I last blogged. With most people following twitter and Facebook, it had become a bit boring to blog. The reason to restart blogging at this point is simply to track my progress with my marathon preparations. Last year I had contacted my friend Sankalp, to help me "plan" the preparations. He gave some really nice advice and provided me with some useful links online. It's another matter that I hardly referred that material (sorry mate :( ). I ran half marathon with out any preparations and paid heavy penalty for my final two minutes Sprint. I guess you might have already about it in my earlier post on the blog. This time however, I am much more determined to perform better than my previous two attempts. Yesterday I had my first run of 5 kms at marine drive. I have decided to run every alternate day and gradually increase the distance. I might also have to change a bit of my diet as well, I am working on that. Time is currently not a ...

No this is not an episode from FRIENDS, it is a real life incident which happened during my Konkan trip. We had gone to Sagareshwar on the third day of the trip. It is one of the wonderful beaches in Maharashtra. We had lot of fun there. Especially the time when we tried to take the pictures while jumping in the air. The below pic should give you an idea - Jumping Japang!!! After all the jumping japang, we decided to walk back to home. When we reached the Vengurla market, the elders were busy with shopping so we stopped near a temple. As I was having troubles with my allergy for past few days, I decided to buy the medicine from the medical store near the temple. I told Aditya that I was going to the chemist behind the temple and left. It was a bit crowded at the chemist, so the owner of the medical store asked his assistant to search my medicine. Unfortunately, even after several attempts he could not find the medicine. Meanwhile, when I looked back towards the temple I coul...

Today morning I read about the SSC results in the newspaper. I was really surprised to see such a rise in the number of people getting over 90%. I remember, when results used to be declared in my school days, they used to write the number of people getting 80+ percentage, on the blackboard at the school gate. In fact, if I am not wrong, in 2001, when I passed SSC exam, we had 23 people crossing the 80% barrier. I don't know how many scored 80+% this time at my school, but newspapers say that Bal Mohan Vidyamandir had 48 students scoring more than 90%. What was more surprising is the fact that the topper in Maharashtra scored 99.09%. 99.09%? This is insane! I am not sure but am I missing any link here? I thought with 3 languages and subjects like history, it was impossible to get so many marks. I guess inflation has caught with SSC marks as well ;)  To be honest, same would be applicable to my batch as well. Probably in 1991, the fraction of people getting 80% might have bee...

Well, I am just back from "Haladi" ceremony of one of my best friends from school days. Earlier in the week I attended the wedding reception of a friend from VJTI who got married with one of our juniors. I got the pleasure of meeting an old friend Shekhar Gurav who is currently busy with his start up " The Playce ". It usually feels good to attend weddings or engagements of friends as it allows me to catch up with old friends and batch mates. Before the "Haldi" I attended a school classmate's wedding reception. Interestingly, all 3 marriages which I was supposed to attend this week, were love-marriages. I guess after these people start getting married, people like me realize that this is about time one asks his/her parents to intensify the search for the bride/groom. Finally, to talk about Kiran's "Halad" ceremony - we had an awesome time!!! I guess I have never danced so much in public. I remember dancing at college functions but ...

As I had said on Facebook, this trip does deserve a blog post. It has to be one of my longest trips. The last time I went so far away from Mumbai with more than 4 people was in 1997 when I went my mother’s native place Bandivade with my cousins. The journey started on the night of May 7. I was travelling in a sleeper compartment for the first time. Like always even this journey was memorable. We had 4 confirmed tickets and 4 in the waiting list. Fortunately, we did not have not much trouble during the train journey, except for my back problem.  Once the train reached Kudal, another surprise was waiting for us. During the journey, the train made a halt for around 5 min at every station (of course, everyone will always remember that the train made a longer than usual “halt” at the Panvel station for supposedly signal related issue). But at Kudal, the train started within 2-3 minutes with Viraj and Tejashree still in train. They had to jump off the train once they had dumped all th...

“People live their lives bound by what they accept as correct and true. That’s how they define " reality ". But what does it mean to be " correct " or " true ?" Merely vague concepts. Their " reality " may all be a mirage.” - Itachi Uchiha

After a series of blog posts, I had decided that I would write about Motivation - What really motivates me? But never got the motivation to complete the post :)

So this year I completed a hat trick of watching the finals of Sawai . Like the previous 2 occasions, this too was a great experience. Most of the plays were good and the overall performance level was better than that of the 2012 finals. Most of the plays were based social issues like parenting, cynicism among the middle class, etc. Unlike the previous finals, not a single one was of romantic/love genre. Here is the list of finalists- Nat S. M. R. T. We missed this one as we were late. But Viraj's father told us, this was similar to the play " Natasamrat " but a modern version. Emotional Atyachar This was a story of an employee in an e-CRM firm which is hired by clients so that someone can communicate with their family. These clients are too "busy" with their work that they don't have time to speak with their wife/kids/parents. The agent/employee E26 slowly starts getting emotionally attached with his clients' families. Finally, when he is about t...

Lonavala 2008 Trip From Left - Kiran, Aditya, Susmit, Vishwanath, Nikhil, Viraj, Harshad, Vishwajeet, Myself and Vikram Lonavala 2008 Trip

So it is time for the big night of the year! Sawai Ekankika Finals will start in some time now. It will be interesting to see this year's performances and stories. I will update on the same during the weekend.

I still don’t remember why I decided to participate in the race. I had completed the Half Marathon in 2009, but that was pretty slow with more than 4 hours taken. This time I was running with the intent of completing the race within 3 hours. I had even contacted my friend, Sankalp, who had participated in various Marathon competitions in US. I asked him for a plan to prepare for the race. However, like many things in my life, I never prepared for the ultimate race because of my usual laziness (Big Mistake!!!).  On the race day, I arrived at the venue with my friend, Nikhil S. I started the race at 5:51AM, around 10 min after the gun time. During the initial few kilometers, I had some trouble with breathing, so I started having doubts whether I would be able to complete the race. But, then after I got used to the walking/running, I did not have any trouble with it. Main issue then was that of legs. By the time I reached Pedder Road, I was not able to run for more than 6-7 secon...

First thought after I completed the race - Fuck, fuck, fuck. Why did I make that sprint to finish line with 100 meters remaining? Ooohhh… This is bad. I am not able to walk with my right leg paining so much. Damn it!

This has to be the best of the three Dork books(“DORK: The Incredible Adventures of Robin ‘Einstein' Varghese”, “God Save The Dork” & “Who Let The Dork Out?”). It has been wonderful reading experience for past one week. I am sure people around me (at home, in train, in office bus) might have felt, why this fellow is smiling so much while reading this book :) The BBC journo episode, first meeting with Colonel, Sivaji statue fiasco, Tihar jail’s special room, Gym sessions – all were super comedy entries in Robin “Einstein” Varghese's Diary. It will be worth reading it again some time soon. Some of my favorite quotes/lines from the book are as follows - When the going gets tough, the Einstein has already finished going! Women are the easiest things in the world to handle provided you don’t have any self-respect. This is not Europe where people say, “You fool me once shame on you, you fool me twice shame on me.” In India, “you fool me once, I fuck you m****.” The room was...

I watched three movies recently. Reviews for each are as follows –  Life of Pi  This one was suggested by many of my friends. And yes, it was worth it. Based on the Man Booker prize winning book of the same name, the movie is the tale of survival of “Pi” who was stranded in the Pacific Ocean for more than 100 days with a Royal Bengal Tiger. To be honest, the story isn’t as intriguing as the cinematography. The initial sequence of the animals in the Zoo is one of the high points of the movie. In fact, overall this is the best 3D movie I have ever seen. Previous ones like MIB III and The Amazing Spiderman had nothing to do with 3D effects. It seemed as if they were basically filmed in 2D and then converted to 3D just to make more money. This movie, however, was different. Despite the movie being slowly paced especially in the second half, some of shots are so nice that slowness in the story can be forgiven. Balak Palak (BP)   Well, this was one of the most an...

I read this book long time back, however I was never able to post about it last year. In fact, I even missed it in the post titled " Resolutions 2012 " . This book actually took me more time to complete than any other book I read last year. In the past, I read biographies of people like Sunil Gavaskar, John Wright and even former President of India APJ Abdul Kalam. I knew that Jobs had a controversial life with him being thrown out of his own company. I had also watched his famous speech at Stanford Commencement in 2005, which was one of the most inspiring speeches I had ever seen/read. The book starts with the author describing the chain events where he was asked by Steve Jobs to write his biography. It then goes on to describe his birth (even mentioned in the Stanford Speech), childhood, his friendship with Steve Wozniak and various other aspects of his life. One of the interesting parts of the book was the term “Reality Distortion Field” coined by Jobs’ co-workers. To s...

It came to my mind during a discussion with my friends when one of us was planning to buy a house in far Central suburbs. His arguments for buying a house were that it is for investment purpose, and that it is a good case for a guy looking for arranged marriage. This surprises me a bit. I agree that, just as it is expected to have good education, job and salary, it is now required to have your own house when you are looking for marriage. The main reason for this is the ever increasing prices of real estate. My dilemma revolves around the same point – is it prudent to buy a house before marriage or after marriage? Say, to become a better prospect, one buys a house. That means at current level of his salary, say Rs. " X ", he will be able to get a home loan of around 50 times " X " and accordingly he will have to buy a house. But had he bought a house with joint ownership and loan with his spouse, he would have got a house either closer to city or big...

As my friend Vishwajeet has also started watching Naruto episodes, here are few of my posts from the past - http://sidh299.blogspot.in/2009/03/naruto-dialogues.html http://sidh299.blogspot.in/2011/08/jiraiya.html http://sidh299.blogspot.in/2010/02/naruto-quote_05.html http://sidh299.blogspot.in/2011/08/naruto-quote.html http://sidh299.blogspot.in/2008/09/naruto-3.html And this is how it all began for me - http://sidh299.blogspot.in/2008/06/naruto-uzomaki-is-here.html Few more favorite are - “Those in the ninja world who break the rules and regulations are called filth, but those who don't care about their companions... are even lower than filth.” - Obito Uchiha “A smile is the best way to get away with trouble even if it’s a fake one.” “I don't care who I have to fight! If he rips my arms out, I'll kick him to death! If he rips my legs off, I'll bite him to death! If he rips my head off, I'll stare him to death! And if he gouges ou...

Taken at " Harne Bandar " My Friends - Dnyanesh, Viraj and Aditya Mouth watering, no? Karde Beach "Kadyavaracha Ganapati" Suvarnadurga What a view!!! Do visit - Karde Dapoli Trip