55 Friday - Take 2

He kept moving, placing one foot in front of the other. His sweat covered his eyes spotted signs proclaiming him to be a “Hero”. Not just me, he thought - but everyone who is doing something to help with underprivileged children’s education. The thought brought a smile to his face as he finished the marathon.

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This 55 Friday is dedicated to all the Asha for Education marathon runners

Nanri Kudukkiren (I give thanks)

The various reasons I give thanks for:

a) A sense of humor
b) Ability to speak my mind
c) Ability to help the less fortunate
d) American football
e) College basketball
f) College football
g) Not having anyone ask for the books I check out from the library - I guess I have to borrow books first for this :)
h) Free speech
i) Separation of state and religion


......... Feel free to add to the list

55 Friday - Take 1

The 55 Friday series is an attempt to write a story or anecdote every Friday in exactly 55 words (better than the devlish 66 Saturday series Im sure ;) ). Bloggers across the world do this and here is my attempt to start doing this on my own blog (as opposed to writing my stories as comments on other people's blogs). So here goes.
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I was lying on the couch watching football. The sweet sound of violins and violas and a very rhythmic bass came from across the street. Then I heard the percussions – almost sounded like Zakir Hussain on the tabla. I rushed over and what did I see – the tapping feet of the wonderfully talented – Savion Glover.

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Inspired by some wonderful performance by Savion Glover as part of his 'Classic Savion' show.

Zindagi bhar nahi bhoolonge ...

I saw the movie "Barsaat" yesterday and it had me in tears. Not that it was a tear-jerker, but I was crying, mourning the loss of those 2 hours of my life that I won't get back.
The movie's hero is Bobby Deol who is an aspiring car designer who comes to the US for graduate school and gets hired by BMW in the US. A little bit of a reach - but fairly reasonable (he could be the Indian Chris Bangle). But then things start getting crazy. He spends more time in what looks like a BMW dealership than in a design studio. The chairman of BMW is an Indian guy (I can see the Quandt family getting ready for a lawsuit) and the hero launches a new vehicle (within weeks - max a couple of months of starting work). Now the vehicle he launches is the Z4 (a decent car - no doubt - but one that's been out for quite a while now :P). A US product launch (and not at an auto show at that) attended by 20-30 people only and to top it all, the guy announces it as the Zed 4.

Made me wish I rather sat in a bar than through barsaat :)

Unbeaten

Spent the day going from meeting to meeting, working furiously through each meeting, getting things ready for the next meeting and finally at 5:45 pm (yeah I work more than 8 hours most days :P), I drove from work and picked up a couple of friends and drove to the Palace. Yes - The Palace of Auburn Hills - home of the Deeeeeeetroit Pistons!!!!!!!
Inspite of the Palace folks messing up our ticket order, we managed to buy the discounted tickets at the box office and saw the Pistons work their magic against the Celtics and slowly dismantle them (take that you beantown fans). The guys that go to work in the palace came back from a 12 point deficit to win by 15 points - yay!!!!!! Its 7 and 0 for the Eastern Conference Champions :)

The night was made even perfect from a basketball perspective with the Temple Owls beating up on the hapless Army team (69-37). This win also gave Coach Chaney his 500th win :)

Go My teams :)

Its time for Maize and Blue to shine this weekend against the traditional rivals OSU

Hello World

Aaaah, the dreaded blog I've succumbed to the temptation as well. No matter how hard I tried to avert my eyes from the evil tempting eye of the blog, I could not avoid it. So here I am trying to identify something that is topical, interesting, intriguing and occasionally funny :)

As I thought about the various things I could blog about, I came upon a realization (call Me the Enlightened one, the Siddhartha who became a Buddha) The realization was that throughout my life, I have been flitting and flirting with things of varied interests. Trying to classify, nay categorize these interests, I found that they all fit a pattern, but then again they do not. In terms of reading, I have gone through various phases (as probably have many others) from Enid Blyton to archie comics to hardy boys to Asterix & Obelix / Tintin to Ayn Rand to Douglas Hofstadter and other books that relate to the philosophy/science category to political discussions to Calvin & Hobbes, Doonebury, ... to Frank Miller/Neil Gaiman to Jhumpa Lahiri, Vikram Seth, Salman Rushdie and various other authors of India origin or those who have written on topics relating to India There are two themes that run throughout these various phases and interests - a) Comics, Fantasy that are innovative for their time (atleast to some extent) and bring about some amount a sense of humor and imagination (beyond the norm) and b) A theme that related to my attempt at understanding who I was and what I wanted to be when I grew up. Be it Science and Philosophy as I went through school or things related to art when I was getting My PhD or things related to India as I try to find out whether Im more Indian, more American, something in between or something completely different. I guess this is part of growing up, part of trying to assimilate one's surroundings into the everyday routine, part of belonging to multiple cultures, part of evolution. But then again, I can't help but think - will I always be a butterfly - flitting from one thing to the next or will I turn into a moth and find the flame that draws me to it :)